Social housing cuts while large-landowner & Big Ben benefit-payments are preserved

The social housing budget in England to be cut by more than 50% (taking us back the Annual Spending Review announced today by the Chancellor, George Osborne a spending review announced today by Conservative Chancellor George Osbourne which will disproportionately affect women and poorer families and entrench patterns of poverty and inequality, reducing social mobility and worsening health and social outcomes.

Meanwhile, 197,000 claimants, many of them already millionaires including some M.P.’s , are in receipt of annual payments through the Common Agricultural Policy.

There is no suggestion by the Chancellor or other Government spokespersons of cutting these CAP welfare payments as a contribution to the current austerity savings and there is no mention of such cuts in today’s Spending Review announced by Osborne. Currently, the taxpayer pay £10 billion a year to the EU - of which £3.4 billion comes back mainly to large landowners. The payments element of CAP in 2009 represented a 23 per cent increase over 2008 totals - a windfall increase from 2008 to 2009 of 23% in the size of payments occasioned by the fall in value of sterling against the Euro.

Richard Drax, M.P. for North Dorset as beneficiary of the Drax Estates received £417,846 as annual payment through CAP. George Osborne is the descendant of a wealthy aristocratic family and will inherit a knighthood from his father, Sir Peter, the 17th Baronet of Ballentaylor.

In the midst of this announcement made by a cabinet comprised of 23 out of its 29 members in possession of assets of more than £1 million, poor families at the margins are set to face up to the brunt of reductions in government spending announced by the Chancellor today. Head of housing at Price Waterhouse-Coopers commenting on the effect on the housing association sector has acknowledged that rent increases are likely for tenants in the social housing sector: “Rent increases for new tenants will increase the sums available to invest in new homes – but the Government needs to be alert to the fact that 65% of tenants in social housing are on benefits. So new tenants need to be better off than today’s - otherwise rent increases will simply add to the benefits bill”. 1 Cuts to welfare include further cuts to housing benefit of £490m (10%), which is on top of the housing benefit cut in the budget in June. It amounts to caps on housing benefit of £250 for a one-bed property and £400 for four or more bedrooms. The average monthly private rent in London was £900 in 2006/8 compared with an England average of £574.

Payments under the CAP scheme to UK claimants which amount to £3.4billion for the year 2009. Additionally, foreign residents, because they have bought farm land in Britain, are generously rewarded out of UK tax-payers’ pockets annually.

HM Queen received £1,183,508 in the years 2008/9 from Rural Payments Agency under the Common Agricultural Policy regime of the E.U. for privately owning Sandringham Estates. Prince Charles for the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall received £581,000.Significantly HM Treasury designates those receiving CAP payments as “benefits recipients”- so that’s official! HM the Queen is on benefit!

The Land is Ours campaign sent a letter to HM Queen drawing this to her attention and inviting her as an example to others to repay at least the unearned increment. TLIO recently discovered that the bank account at the Treasury to which benefits claimants can make refunds is titled the “General Funds and Accounts at the Treasury”. TLIO campaigner James Armstrong obtained this information in a reply to a Freedom of Information request, in a letter dated 4th October, after seven unanswered and unacknowledged letters.

James Armstrong from TLIO said: "I am confident HM will contribute. Only absolutely all the British people working together can get us out of the mess. A bankrupt Treasury would have no funds to pay the Civil List to Her Majesty nor to pay the £10billion annual fee for E.U. membership. Then there would be no more CAP payments for landowners to receive and no Britain to rule."


References:
1. “Spending Review: Social housing cuts not a huge surprise”, by Gary Howes, Director of Finance Online – Ref:  http://www.dofonline.co.uk/content/view/4935/152/


See also:
“Tory multimillionaire witch-hunts welfare claimants”, by Robert Stevens  http://wsws.org/articles/2010

If you are interested to do more on this issue, please email James Armstrong from TLIO at:  james@tlio.org.uk