Imperial Party forum

thomas davison

Does the PM really need benefits?If your Government sets out to restrict welfare payments to those who really need them, you do rather open yourself to scrutiny on your own claims.

The Prime Minister plans to take Child Benefit away from higher-rate taxpayers on the grounds that they don�t need it. He has also cut housing benefit so that welfare recipients cannot live better than people who work for a living.

Both these are reasonable steps. But in that case, what do we think of the fact that the Tory leader, who is by no means poor, claimed Disability Living Allowance?
Flying high: David and Samantha Cameron during their tour of the U.S. this week
I know, I know. All of us must sympathise with the Premier over the tragedy which befell his son Ivan. And I, of course, do so.

But should that sympathy get in the way of a reasonable examination of relevant personal behaviour by our head of Government?

The fact that Our Leader claimed disability payments was revealed by him, in an answer to a Labour MP, Joan Ruddock, during Prime Minister�s Questions in the Commons on Wednesday, March 7.

I have sought further information from No 10 Downing Street and at the time of writing have had no response. But I should say that for a couple as rich as the Camerons undoubtedly are, the sums involved (probably no more than �150 a week) cannot have been vital.

In any case, they do not compare to his enormous and still little-known claims for mortgage interest on his substantial country house near Witney.

I have always wondered whether he really needed to borrow �350,000, or indeed needed a house at all in a constituency only 70 miles from Parliament.

But I have absolutely no doubt that he did not, in any true sense of the word, need you and me to fork out roughly �1,700 a month in mortgage interest payments on that house, for eight long years. We might call this payment �Parliamentary Housing Benefit�. Worse than a duck house, any day, I�d say.

Is there a pattern here? I personally think this keenness to apply for other people�s money, even when he has lots of his own, undermines claims about �all being in it together�.

How rich is he really? We do not know. But I think he was rich enough to manage without filling in the claim forms

Peter Hitchens

The richer they are the greedier they all, we are all in this together rubbish is just that, you pay they take.

WHEN INJUSTICE BECOMES LAW REBELLION BECOMES YOUR DUTY