Latest editorial
Staff at a benefits advice centre in north-west England are being given “suicide awareness training” because increasing numbers of clients are threatening to kill themselves.
The centre says media vilification of benefits recipients is adding to the pressure and worry caused by the government’s welfare cuts to the area’s most vulnerable people.
Salford Trade Union Council Unemployed and Community Resource Centre said it was the first time in the centre’s 33-year history that suicide training had been necessary.
Labour will find increases in the state pension age are unacceptable, just as cuts to the Winter Fuel Allowance, personal independence payments and universal credit are — it needs to change direction immediately, writes PCS general secretary FRAN HEATHCOTE
A new report from the Citizens Advice destroys the government narrative about disabled people ‘choosing’ not to work, showing the £3,000 annual cuts will create a two-tiered system based on claim dates rather than needs, writes DYLAN MURPHY
Government urged ‘to tackle the root causes’ of the NHS crisis and improve ‘social care services’
The BBC and OBR claim that failing to cut disability benefits could ‘destabilise the economy’ while ignoring the spendthrift approach to tens of billions on military spending that really spirals out of control, argues DIANE ABBOTT MP