10:07am Tuesday 16th April 2013 in News Exclusive By Craig Manning
Dawn Thomas with the boxes of petitions
A WIRRAL carer’s online petition against the ‘bedroom tax’ has gathered 130,000 signatures from opponents across the world.
Dawn Thomas, from Birkenhead, set up the petition in December and presented a printed version of it to MP Frank Field at his constituency surgery on Friday afternoon.
It has since been forwarded to welfare minister Iain Duncan Smith.
The changes, which came into force at the beginning of April, mean those living in a house deemed too big for their needs will have a proportion of their benefit cut.
The shake-up means tenants in council houses and social housing could face paying £728 extra a year.
Meanwhile, those with more than one spare bedroom face a 25% cut in housing benefit.
The cover letter for Dawn’s petition reads:
“This ‘tax’ has not been thought out properly. It will further damage family life and long-standing communities.”
Dawn, a full-time carer whose son David has Down’s Syndrome, told the Globe: “I want this government to repeal this dreadful and immoral tax on people’s homes.
“I’m a realist and am not confident that it will ever happen, but I want Iain Duncan Smith to realise how much opposition there is to this tax.
“The bedroom tax is Tony Blair’s baby. David Cameron has come in and taken up the idea.”
Dawn, a Wirral Partnership Homes’ tenant said:
“The distress this ‘tax’ has brought about is immeasurable.
“Social housing was intended for people who cannot afford to buy their own homes. Now the same people are being taxed out of their homes.”
Ministers say the “under occupancy penalty” will reduce the housing benefit bill, currently more than £20 billion a year.
The Department for Work and Pensions said the change would save taxpayers £480m a year and affect around 600,000 people. The average loss for a single empty bedroom will be £14 per week, it adds.
Last month around 40 protestors gathered outside Wallasey Town Hall to make their views heard on welfare reform, claiming the changes would unafirly penalise benefit claimants living in council or social housing.
6 Responses
And has anyone realised that all Crisis & budgeting loans have been scrapped,?
The local council has to be approached if you need help with removal costs, and that help is an advance of benefits. God help anyone whose costs are hundreds of pounds!
That is a very important point that may have slipped under campaigners radar. Thanks for bringing it up.
bedroom tax disgraceful
1o million for a funeral disgraceful feed the starving people of the world you twats
Well done Dawn, you are an inspiration to us all……………
It may be just a list of names on sheets of paper but you have sidestepped the usual road, the media, and demonstrated people power is alive and kicking……
Strange how the media pick up on it just in case it ruffles too many feathers and they would be seen to be biased?
That list of names is as important as the dead sea scrolls!
It demonstrates the feelings of the people against an elitist government, hell bent on driving the poorest to an early grave.
A handful of toffee nosed mandarins who think they can impose radical changes on the people less able to fight back.
This amalgamation of names is the stepping stone of democratic anger that will, hopefully, bring these arseholes to their knees……
They will try to look away as though nothing can stop their onslaught, deep down they are cringing in the corridors of power.
The plebs are beginning to fight back……………………..
Excellent work Dawn.
If the DWP & government were so keen to save tax payers money.
Then they could register every landlord in the UK and make it compulsory. A cap on the rent for every house being rented could then be easily established.
It would slash the housing benefit bill by billions
But this of course would mean taking money from the well off and not the poor, that just wouldn’t be fair would it.