I spoke earlier about the bedroom tax. It’s a good example not simply because it’s unjust – though it is – but because it’s a policy which could never have been passed by a parliament with Scotland’s interests at its heart. It is driven primarily by rising rental and housing benefit costs here in London and south-east England, not by increases in Scotland. And although 60,000 people in Scotland will be penalised unless they move into single-bedroomed accommodation, we currently have a supply of just 20,000 single-bedroomed homes for social rent. In many parts of the UK, the bedroom tax is unpopular - in an independent Scotland, it would have been unthinkable. Because of devolution, Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP have been able to work together in the Scottish Parliament to mitigate the impact of the bedroom tax. As a result, nobody will face eviction in Scotland this year, solely as a result of the tax. But we haven’t abolished the bedroom tax, because the Scottish Parliament doesn’t have the power to abolish the bedroom tax. Instead, we’ve had to develop a very expensive framework of measures, to cancel out the consequences of a policy which nobody in Scotland could ever have come up with in the first place. Wouldn’t it be better for us to have responsibility for our own welfare system instead?
Posted on: Sun, 09 Mar 2014 11:49:03 +0000
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