Have Tory MPs lost moral compass with Bill?

Are Ministers doing enough to tackle child poverty?

HAVING watched the recent House of Commons debate on the Lords’ amendments to the Welfare Reform Bill, I am even more convinced that Conservative MPs have no moral compass. The first amendment concerned ensuring that child poverty was monitored by reference to household income.

However, a succession of Tory MPs argued that this should not be the case. The Lords’ amendment was thus duly overturned.

This leads me to conclude that in five years’ time, the Government will claim that child poverty has disappeared.

The second amendment was also overturned, meaning that, from April 2017, new Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) claimants in the work related group lose £30 per week.

This, according to the Tories, will encourage claimants to work. However, this is totally flawed as the claimants are clearly already declared unfit for work, due to serious sickness, physical and/or mental health issues or disabilities.

Rather this measure is ideologically driven, to take much needed finance from over 400,000 of the most vulnerable people in society, in the vain belief that the economy will be regenerated.