We would be very grateful if you will join our Chairman, Rev Paul Nicolson, at the vigil outside the House of Lords from 1 – 3pm tomorrow Monday 23^rd , Wednesday 25^th and Tuesday 31^st January, the days the Welfare Reform Bill is being debated in the House of Lords. Read about previous actions here. 

On Monday the 23^rd January, we ask you to take serious consideration of two amendments to the Welfare Reform Bill which are vital to the mental wellbeing of the poorest citizens of the UK because they provide safeguards against the damage done to mental health when debts are enforced against poverty incomes.   The Royal College of Psychiatrists, Mind, the major Christian Churches, CAB and Liberty are among the 20 NGOs supporting;

1. Lord Ramsbotham’s Amendment 62A, which will ensure that Jobcentre and local authority officials do not punish welfare claimants with sanctions and penalties,  nor enforce overpayments made in error by officials, when they know there is good reason not to, by requiring officials to examine the facts and circumstances of each case,

1. Baroness Hollins’s Amendment 62ZC, which will retain the current legal prohibition on enforcing overpayments of welfare against claimants which are made in error by officials.

The Department of Work and Pensions has been advised by the Royal College of Psychiatrists that poverty is trigger factor for poor mental health, a factor in maintaining poor health and part of the experience of many with poor mental health. We know from our experience of serving welfare claimants in debt to the State how seriously depressed they are: and it hurts their families too.

Welfare incomes are already set at poverty levels to act as an incentive to look for work; but the Welfare Reform Bill,  coupled with cuts and caps on one hand and rising prices of food and fuel on the other, is creating debts without the necessary safeguards for welfare claimants or poor people in work. The Centre for Mental Health has shown that mental health problems already cost the economy in England £105 billion in 2010/11; the debts this Bill will create will increase that cost.

This comes at a time when the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill will remove access to legal aid for those on low incomes. When access to basic justice through the courts is being removed it is all the more vital that mistakes are not made by officials to begin with.

It is the landlords who profited from the £billions paid in housing benefit every year; now we learn that £100 billion of UK property has been placed in offshore accounts beyond the reach of the taxman.

It is not fair on welfare claimants that they are bearing the heat and the burden of deficit reduction and welfare reform with cuts and caps, forcing them into unmanageable debt, while the landlords get off Scott free.

Fairness to tax payers matters but there is no balancing mantra from government or opposition regularly repeating the unfairness to welfare claimants.

Landlords have exploited both the market and the tax payer by increasing their rents in a housing market in short supply and receiving more and more housing benefit.

The mantra pouring out of the Department of Work and Pensions repeats it is unfair to taxpayers if welfare claimants are placed in expensive properties by local authorities with housing benefit paying the rent, which hard working tax payers could not dream about living in.

That is nothing compared to the unfairness to the tax payer and welfare claimants of tax the free palaces of the landlords that none of us can dream of living in.

The Bishops are right to oppose the cap on the Universal Credit in the Welfare Reform Bill.

Please sign our e-petition on

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/25438

Stop the housing benefit and universal credit caps.

We would like to wish everyone a Happy Christmas and New Year’s!

Our office will be closed from the 23rd December 2011 – 2nd January 2012.

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/25438.

London Councils have calculated that there are 133,000 of the poorest households in London who will sustain an average loss of £105 a week as a result of the housing benefit regulations, which start coming into effect on the 1^st January 2012, and the cap on the Universal Credit (UC), which will be debated by Peers on the 10^th, 17^th and 23^rd January.  This will have a devastating effect on the tenants capacity to buy let alone eat a healthy diet, and damage the mental and physical health of individuals, parents and children. Already Waltham Forest council is taking households pushed out of Westminster and Kensington, they have been warned to get out before the axe falls, therefore prices are going up in Waltham Forest whose council has made a deal with private landlords in Luton to take their deprived households.

We need help to get 100,000 signatures on our e-petition on the government website calling for abolition of the cap on the UC in London and a reform of the housing benefit caps in London before Peers debate the issue in January. I am working on the domino principle; if one city goes down that will start knocking down the others. The underlying problem is a lack of a coherent national policy for affordable housing of all tenures and in all locations.

The petition is on;

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/25438.

With best wishes,

Paul Nicolson