Churches slam British government's welfare reforms

Government welfare reforms that include acontentious cut dubbed the "bedroom tax" will cause upheaval for someof Britain's most vulnerable people, religious leaders and anti-povertyactivists claim.

The measure, which takes effect Monday, will reduce rentsubsidies to social housing tenants if they have a spare bedroom.

The government — which prefers the term"under-occupancy penalty" — says it is one of a series of changesthat will make the country's unwieldy welfare system simpler, cheaper andfairer.

But thousands of trade unionists, advocates for the disabledand anti-poverty campaigners held protest marches against the change onSaturday, and on Sunday four churches released a joint criticism of thereforms. The Baptist Union of Great Britain, the Methodist and United Reformchurches and the Church of Scotland argued that "the cuts are unjust andthat the most vulnerable will pay a disproportionate price."

"Our feeling is that these benefit changes are asymptom of an understanding of people in poverty in the United Kingdom that isjust wrong," Methodist spokesman Paul Morrison told the BBC. "It isan understanding of people that they somehow deserve their poverty, that theyare somehow 'lesser', that they are not valued."

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, leader of theAnglican church, has also criticized the welfare reforms.

The British government is trying to reduce public spendingby 50 billion pounds ($76 billion) by 2015 in a bid to deflate Britain'sballooning deficit and kick-start its spluttering economy. It says its welfarereforms will save 4.5 billion pounds by 2014-15.

The measures include changes to disability benefits,below-inflation increases and, eventually, the replacement of a patchwork ofhousing, unemployment and parental benefits with one payment called theUniversal Credit.

The Department for Work and Pensions says the spare-bedroomlevy — a cut of 14 percent to households with one extra room and 25 percent fortwo — will save taxpayers money and will help free up social housing forfamilies because people with too many rooms will downsize.

"It is wrong to leave people out in the cold witheffectively no roof over their heads because the taxpayer is paying for roomswhich aren't in use," Conservative lawmaker Grant Shapps told Sky News.

Officials say the new rules won't apply to retirees, or tothose who really need extra space, such as parents of severely disabledchildren.

But campaigners say the "bedroom tax" has alreadyproduced injustices. Parents whose children are not considered disabled enoughby local officials have been told they must pay. So has a bereaved couple whocouldn't bear to change the bedroom of their 7-year-old daughter after she diedof brain cancer.

To its opponents, the "bedroom tax" is anindignity on a par with the "poll tax," a levy on every adult thatsparked violent protests and helped bring down Prime Minister Margaret Thatcherin 1990. Her successor, John Major, scrapped it.

The government says its welfare reforms are modest measuresthat will encourage people to get off welfare and find jobs. In tough times,officials say, everyone must make sacrifices.

Opponents ask why the government can't tax mansions orsecond homes, rather than the poor. And they allege the cuts will forceimpoverished residents to move from homes and neighborhoods where they havelived for years.

Frank Field, a minister in the previous Labouradministration and now a government adviser on fighting poverty, told TheGuardian newspaper that "the government is introducing social and physicalengineering that Stalin would have been proud of."

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