Housing Benefit (Abolition of Social Sector Size Criteria)

Sandra Osborne Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)]

This is a tax by any other name. It is horrendous and pernicious, as was said, and targets some of the most vulnerable people in our communities. It attacks the elderly, the disabled, families of all sizes and, above all else, those already struggling to get by day after day. I am incredibly saddened to see that my city of Glasgow is one of the worst affected in the whole UK: 12,000 people in Glasgow have been hit by the bedroom tax, including 2,000 in my constituency alone. That is too many.

[Sandra Osborne (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend think that the Secretary of State learned anything when he visited Easterhouse in Glasgow and listened to what he was told about the level of poverty there?

[John Robertson]

The one thing we know about Ministers, who are having a wee chat among themselves, is that they do not listen to anybody. That is the problem with the Government. They sit and have their little chats because they are bored by the common people in the Opposition trying to help them. [Interruption.] They can say what they like, but that is how it looks to me.