The Lib Dems' Steve Webb on today's welfare reforms: "All governments would have to be making these sorts of changes"

Comments

[Drant001]

How interesting is this the first statement on Conhome by a Libdem that has not featured on, 'Leftwatch' is Conhome feeling a little euphoric having reached its eighth birthday are have they now accepted the Libdems are 'onside' and acceptable?

[Andy]

Steve Webb will Paedophiles and rapists dodge the bedroom tax while hard-hit families face homelessness.
Good to see the governments looking after the right people.

Andy Edinburgh

[ToryCruelty]

IDS can change the law to suit his own whims, whereas poor people and disabled people are now being denied legal aid and life preserving benefits. IDS should hang his head in shame, and so should the rest of the Tory SS men and women.

[Michael mcgough]

I see Andrew Pierce in the Mail has a fine piece of Gobbledegook fro from ex academic/no commercial job Webb.
Unfortunately he and IDS don't understand the difference between contribution and income based benefits,
Meanwhile they are robbing those who are contracted in but whose accrued benefit is less than the difference between the current and proposed single tier pensions.
Webb and IDS are responsible for what looks to be the most divisive act in the UK;
There will be two classes of pensioner,those who retire before the introduction of the single tier pension and those retiring after.Expect a class action.

[paul scott]

It's funny how the bedroom tax 'makes common sense' but the issue of MPs' second homes is supposedly different? What, having large, mostly uninhabited houses (paid for to be empty by us the taxpayer), or renting them out whilst they are meant to be there for them need I go on? this shambolic hypocrisy by all parties makes me puke. how dare they? Remember the Lib-Dems and their Tory cronies at the election folks.

[Denis Cooper]

Here's a Liberal Democrat saying what Osborne should have been saying, again and again and again, in 2009:

"When the government spent four pounds for every three pounds it raises in tax, you simply can't go on like that"

"The equivalent of half of all what we spend on welfare at the moment is borrowed money"

But why didn't Clegg say anything like that during the TV debates before the general election?

It's a pity that even now Steve Webb can't go on and tell the rest of this unpalatable truth, that to fund its massive budget deficit the government has had to resort to borrowing from the Bank of England under the guise of "quantitative easing", and that because it has failed to reduce the deficit fast enough it may well have to do more of that in the future.

[Malcolm Dunn]

Why is the government leaving this to Steve Webb? IDS and Osborne should be all iover the airwaves today. The 'submarine strategy' does not work, how much evidence do we need ?

[paul scott]

Also, half the benfits bill is taken up with pensions. Why are there no cutbacks there by Cameron? (I don't mean to implement them) Because half the people on those pensions are Tory voters and he hardly has any support anymore anyway, that's why.

[Charlie]

I don't know what all the fuss is about.

IDS reckons he can live on £50 a week. Some of the people he's shafting could live on the unearned wealth he's actually got.

Why don't they just swap?

[Denis Cooper]

Just to get this straight, the state pension is NOT welfare.

Even so, the pension entitlements gained through contributions to the compulsory state pension scheme are being eroded.