An
immoral attack on the poor
I don’t have any kind of
political education; my little politics knowledge comes from television, radio
and a variety of newspapers. So, as a member of the general public, these are
some of my thoughts on the budget.
Maintenance Grants
Currently, students from
low income families can claim a maintenance grant of up £3,387, essentially a
gift from the government to help cover their living costs. Osborne has declared
this “unaffordable” and has proposed plans to scrap it. More than half a
million students rely on this grant and so, for me, abolishing it forms part of
an apparent systematic attack on the poor. I understand that the economic plan
of the government is to cut the deficit by making savings, a plan which I don’t
agree with but it is what the electorate voted for and so must be followed. Why
though, must these savings be taken the poorest students? Why not reduce the
amount of money that students from high income families can borrow? Although
this may be paid back, a lot of student debt is not and so contributes to the
deficit just like grants do. The government justifies targeting the poor as
they claim removing the grants will not deter poorer students from attending
university, as numbers actually increased when tuition fees were raised. This
may be the case, but I can’t help thinking that the morals behind such an
argument are totally abhorrent. Low income students are obviously determined to
go to university and just because a lack of grant won’t stop them going, it
doesn’t mean their experience won’t be a lot more difficult. Meanwhile,
students from more wealthy backgrounds are unaffected by the budget, their
student lifestyle being paid for by a healthy maintenance loan from the government
and a grant from the bank of mum and dad.
Inheritance Tax
The inheritance tax reform
means that by 2020 parents will be able to leave a property worth up to £1 million
to their children- without the children having to pay inheritance tax. As I understand
it, each parent is allowed to leave up to £500,000 in property tax free (the
allowance is currently £325,000) and if one dies first, their allowance is
transferred to their spouse. In my opinion, this is another policy which
exposes the Conservatives’ obsession with the rich; the IFS has said the reform
would “affect a relatively small number of high-income individuals”. If we
lived in a prosperous, deficit free, poverty free economy I would not have a
problem with this policy. But we do not. While Osborne is giving this tax cut
to millionaires, he is cutting £12 billion from the welfare budget and
enforcing a policy of ‘austerity’. It appears that this austerity only applies
to the poorest in society, perhaps he should rename it ‘poorsterity?’. Cutting
taxes while cutting welfare is, for me, completely and utterly immoral.
The Living Wage
This is the feature of the
budget which I understand the least about and I think that is the point. The
‘living wage’ is a headline grabber for Osborne and the ins and outs are so
complicated for the general public, that many will not understand that this is
a con trick (I didn’t until I researched it further). The new national living wage
will start at £7.20pa from April 2016 and rise to £9pa by 2020. Great? I thought
so, until I found out the tax credit cuts that are going hand in hand with this
policy. According to many journalists, by the time you take into account tax
credit cuts and inflation, £9pa by 2020 will still not be a decent ‘living
wage’. The poor have been conned and all for the sake of a good headline.
What’s more, the so called ‘living wage’ only applies to those over 25; a
policy which I think comes from the ‘Oxbridge’ background of those in politics.
I think that because most politicians come from wealthy families, they believe
that all parents will be able to somewhat support their children up until the
age of 25, for example, by lending them a deposit for a property. Therefore,
this fuels the Conservatives’ belief that those under 25 do not need as higher
wages as those above this threshold. This is simply not the case. With other
children to support, and only being on minimum wage themselves, many parents
cannot afford to support their children past 18, let alone 25. I believe it is
this mindset which has fuelled the maintenance grant cut, the government assume
that all parents will be able to subsidise their children. The ‘living wage’
insults the intelligence of the general public and is quite simply an insult to
those who will receive it.
The first Conservative
budget since 1996 was damaging and discriminatory and the sad thing is that no
one seems surprised.
