Miliband confronts PM over disabled victims
Wednesday 06 February 2013
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EmailLabour leader Ed Miliband challenged Prime Minister David Cameron today over vicious cuts in housing benefit for social tenants deemed to have too many bedrooms.
Mr Miliband's attack came amid a flood of letters to Labour MPs from anguished constituents who face cuts of up to 25 per cent in benefit from April.
Two-thirds of the victims are disabled people and some are service families.
Mr Miliband quoted an email from a man whose wife is disabled with a degenerative condition and is cared for in bed.
The man usually slept in the spare bedroom due to her illness and his own medical condition.
"Why is it fair for him and hundreds of thousands of disabled people like him to be hit by the bedroom tax?" asked Mr Miliband at question time.
Mr Cameron retorted that it would be "unfair" for social tenants to continue receiving money for an "extra room" while private tenants could not.
Housing benefit cost £23 billion a year, he complained. "We are on the side of the people who work hard and do the right thing."
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