Post by Focus on Aug 30, 2013 15:29:55 GMT
BOLTON Conservatives have gone head to head with Prime Minister David Cameron — and have called for the government’s controversial bedroom tax to be scrapped.
The pledge followed a decision by the majority of the borough’s Tory group to back a Labour motion at a meeting of the full council calling for the under-occupancy charge — dubbed the bedroom tax — to be axed.
The policy has cost Bolton residents more than £500,000 in less than six months.
The Conservatives’ deputy leader Cllr Andy Morgan told our reporter that “The group have had detailed discussions with regards the policy and the implication of it on some of our residents in Bolton.
Cllr Andy Morgan
“The implications and anomalies thrown up by the current policy are unfair for the majority of us to support the policy as its stands.
“We as a group are not afraid of going against government policy if it is for the benefit of the people who elected us, and will continue to make representations to government to repeal the policy and start again.”
The motion was tabled by Labour’s Cllr Nick Peel who claimed the decision by the Tories to back the vote marked a U-turn — after most of the group voted against a similar motion in April.
Bedroom tax deducts housing benefit from people living in social housing if they are deemed to be in property too big for their needs.
At the meeting Cllr Kate Lewis, a board member at the borough’s biggest social landlord Bolton at Home, revealed that the 2,384 of its tenants hit by the charge had lost £502,000 in benefits since its introduction on April 1.
Cllr Kate Lewis
Calling a named vote at the meeting, the motion was backed unanimously by Labour and the Liberal Democrats, and from the Conservative leader Cllr David Greenhalgh, deputy leader Cllr Andy Morgan, and Cllrs Bob Allen, Mudasir Dean; Hilary Fairclough, Stuart Haslam, Alan Walsh and Paul Wild.
[The implications and anomalies thrown up by the current policy are unfair for the majority of us to support the policy as its stands] - Too fcking right they are unfair, all they have done is heap heartache, misery and panic on to the most vulnerable factions of the British people - GET IT SCRAPPED AND QUICKLY!! - Fx
