Overwhelming backing for Tory peer's amendment wrecking charging proposals for Child Support Agency
The Government's troubled Welfare Reform Bill, which has been severely mauled in the Lords, received a sixth set-back this evening over charges for people using the Child Support Agency. The scale of the revolt on this issue dwarfed any other reversal the coalition has suffered in this Parliament. To read the full story, follow the link to the Guardian's excellent Society blog, where up-to-the-minute analysis can be found.
By the way, did you know also that the Social Fund it to be abolished as well, with the rump of the funds being transferred to local authorities without a ring-fence? Having been cut by 39% by the Coalition, it has now seen fit to pass off the funds of last resort for the poorest families in the country. Where will they go for emergency loans? Just check-out day-time TV and you'll see the plethora of disgusting companies offering loans with APR's of thousands of per cent - that's where...or just maybe the burgeoning 'Big Society' of soup kitchens, food banks and 'dumpster divers' will have to help pick up the outcomes of this particular piece of socio-economic engineering.
I can't help thinking that as the still empty rhetoric about tackling executive and bankers' pay drones on in the foreground with the added diversion of stripping knighthoods from errant bankers, looks ever more like a kind of smokescreen to cover the dismantling of the welfare state. This at a time when unemployment is at a 17-year high, the recession is now official, economic growth prospects are at a level that most accountants would call a 'soft rounding' in numbers terms, the vaunted private sector fails to provide anywhere near the number of jobs required to address the loss of 710,000 public sector jobs and so on. The diversion of attention away from these important aspects just leaves such a nasty taste in the mouth.
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