Letter to Viceroy Murray about LINO's welfare cuts
Published in the March 22nd edition of The Scotsman and the March 25th edition of the Edinburgh Evening News.
I just sent this letter to Viceroy Murray, who is, unfortunately, my MP. I express my anger over English Labour’s proposed welfare cuts that will hurt the most vulnerable. Please feel free to use any part of it if you are thinking of writing to your own MP.
Dear Ian,
I am outraged that Labour plans to cut £5 bn from the welfare budget, cuts that will impact the most vulnerable people in society. Such a move is disgusting and cruel.
And how convenient that £5bn just happens to be the amount Rachel Reeves says she needs to 'balance her budget.' Apart from the fact that there's no need to balance anything - the government isn't a household and owns a central bank, but Reeves doesn't seem to know that - £5bn is a rounding error out of the total £1.3tn the government will spend in 2024/25.
Can you please explain to me why Labour is targeting the vulnerable for a rounding error? Is it because these people can't fight back? Is it because they aren’t large Labour donors?
And did it ever occur to you or Rachel Reeves that this £5bn is almost entirely spent into the economy by those who receive it? Isn't “growth” supposed to be a Labour priority? The poor don't have the option to save their money - they spend it on essentials like food, clothing, transport and shelter. It's just the wealthy who sock their extra cash away in savings accounts, some of which are offshore. So these cuts will actually end up shrinking economic activity.
Why not try taxing wealth instead of punishing the poor and disabled? Wealth in the UK is undertaxed by £170bn per year, which contributes to the high levels of inequality. From 2011-2020, income was taxed at 32.9% whereas increases in wealth were taxed at just 4.1%.
For example, £51.3bn of pension tax relief was given in 2022/23. 63% of that, £32.4bn, went to higher rate taxpayers because they could claim an additional 20-25% on top of the 20% basic rate available to most people. Removing the option for higher rate taxpayers to claim this extra amount would generate 6.5 times the savings of the welfare cuts.
There are many changes to the tax code the Labour government could make that won’t harm the poorest and most vulnerable. I suggest you, Liz Kendall, Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer read Richard Murphy's 2024 Taxing Wealth report. It contains well researched policy ideas for raising an additional £197bn in revenue. Just some of the recommendations are listed here:
None of these proposals would be difficult to implement. All that is required is for Labour to have a commitment to increasing equality and fairness, a commitment it currently lacks.
I didn't expect much from a Labour government and I didn't vote for you. Nevertheless, even I am shocked at how abjectly heartless and cruel this government has turned out to be.
Your English Labour party is “Labour in Name Only”. It’s neoliberal to its core.
You should be ashamed.
Leah Gunn Barrett
Nice one.
I wouldn't expect Ian Murray to care about what you've written far less understand the economics in your argument.
Unfortunately Ian Murray is my MP too. I wrote to him regarding the petition to abolish the recording of 'non-hate crime incidents). I got a mealy-mouthed response talking about how these "can involve sensitive and complex issues, and it is important that an appropriate balance is struck between freedom of expression and safeguarding vulnerable individuals and communities." I wrote back with a further challenge but nil response.
I expect you'll get a similarly meaningless fudged 'answer' complete with banal slogans and pathetic platitudes.
I wonder if he still has his little pontificating coffee chats on Saturday morning in Waitrose on Morningside Road? Or maybe he doesn't he doesn't require that now that the local constituents have turned Edinburgh South into a safe seat for this most aspiring of career politicians?
It might be worth having a look in if only to give him a piece of your mind.
I seeth with anger when I see politicians use Thatcher's argument for austerity that ".. government is like a household and households balance their budgets". I seeth even more when I hear a supposedly "Labour" Chancellor use the same argument. The Government has a central bank with a fiat currency, it can create money whenever it needs it and taxation is the means to cancel money that has previously been spent. There is no need to balance the "books" and £5Bn is a drop in the ocean compared to the £100s of billions the treasury regularly transacts monthly. Reeves is economically illiterate in this manic obsession and Labour under Starmer seems to be morphing into a neoliberal party I no longer recognise.