Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride has accused the Government of making rushed welfare cuts, including to disability benefits, to save money. He said ministers "lacked ambition" in finding fair savings and warned of "hard cases" emerging from the plans. Report by Covellm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00My main concern is that these are rushed changes, so there was nothing about changes to personal
00:05independence payments, for example, in the Labour Party manifesto. They then pussyfooted around
00:11welfare reform when they got into office. Why? Because it's deeply divisive within their own
00:16party. What has happened subsequently, of course, is they've had this disastrous
00:20budget back in October which has killed growth stone dead across the economy. The Chancellor
00:26now needs to find some money when she stands up next week on Wednesday with her emergency
00:31budget and they've straddled around to get some savings out of welfare. And that is not how you
00:36should approach principled welfare reform that is both fair to the taxpayer but equally fair
00:43to the most vulnerable in society. Actually, they've lacked ambition in terms of what they
00:47can save in order to be fair to the taxpayer and to get on top of an unsustainably growing
00:53welfare bill. But I also do have concerns that we're going to see a lot of hard cases
00:58in what they brought forward. Now, we need to see a lot more of the detail there
01:02but those are the things that happen when you rush things.