Agenda item

Welfare Reform and Work Bill

It was moved by Councillor Vickie Priestley, seconded by Councillor Katie Condliffe, that this Council:-

(a)       recalls previous resolutions this Council has passed denouncing the Government’s planned cuts to the welfare system;

(b)       is disappointed that 4 of Sheffield’s 5 Labour MPs chose to abstain on the second reading of the Government’s Welfare Reform and Work Bill, including former deputy leader of the Council, Harry Harpham MP;

(c)        notes that the eight Liberal Democrat MPs, including Sheffield Hallam MP, the Rt. Hon. Nick Clegg, voted against the Bill;

(d)       recognises that these cuts will have devastating effects on many of our city’s residents, as latest estimates suggest that:

(i)         22,000 Sheffield residents and their families will lose an average of £260 per year;

(ii)        3,500 of which are hardworking people whose families will have to make up an average £280 shortfall per year in lost tax credits; and

(iii)       around 4,200 residents in the Employment and Support Allowance work related activity group, considered only temporarily too ill to work, will lose a further £30 per week as their allowance is brought down to the level of Jobseekers Allowance;

(e)       recalls previous resolutions this Council has passed remarking that the impact of the previous Coalition Government’s cuts to welfare in Sheffield were ‘hitting hardest the poorest in the City’;

(f)        regrets that after 5 years of attacking the Liberal Democrats in the coalition government on welfare cuts, Labour MPs have, through silence, nodded through much deeper and unnecessary ideological cuts to the welfare budget which will hit the working poor hardest;

(g)       recognises the Liberal Democrats’ role in the previous Government as a moderating force, blocking many of the harshest measures put forward by the Conservatives; and

(h)       proposes that a copy of this resolution be sent to the four Sheffield MPs that abstained on the Welfare Bill.

Whereupon, it was moved by Councillor Mazher Iqbal, seconded by Councillor Bryan Lodge, as an amendment, that the Motion now submitted be amended by the deletion of all the words after the words “That this Council” and the addition of the following words:-

(a)         is opposed to the Government’s Welfare Reform and Work Bill and believes it will push more people into poverty;

(b)         is stunned by the outrageous hypocrisy of the main opposition group’s concern for those set to lose out as a result of the Government’s Welfare Reform and Work Bill, when their Party were partners in a Coalition Government which:

(i)       implemented the hated and unfair bedroom tax;

(ii)      cut tax credits;

(iii)     froze the uprating of working-age benefits at 1%, breaking the vital link between benefits and inflation;

(iv)     made a total mess of the work capability assessments, with 40% of claimants found fit for work appealing, and almost 40% of those appeals proving successful;

(v)      oversaw a massive increase in the use of benefit sanctions;

(vi)     delivered a 10% cut in funding for council tax benefit, when the scheme was localised; and

(vii)    presided over a huge backlog in claims for personal independence payments, leaving disabled people short of vital benefits while waiting for their claim to be processed; and

(c)       recalls that the main opposition group supported the vast majority of the previous Government’s cuts to welfare which hit the poorest in the city the hardest and believes that their feigned opposition to welfare cuts is nothing more than cynical political opportunism.”

On being put to the vote, the amendment was carried.

The original Motion, as amended, was then put as a Substantive Motion in the following form and carried:-