Hail of bedroom tax protests hit UK

Britain’s biggest union Unite will begin a new wave of almost 40 protests in a few hours against the government’s so-called “bedroom tax”.

Two days from now, the government will set in motion the controversial under-occupation criteria that families will have their welfare benefits cut if they are considered to have a spare bedroom in their houses.

The union said it will continue to protest the hated policy that comes into force on Monday April 1 in a bid to allow people to keep their current residences with no fear of a penalty.

The policy imposed by Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith is already in chaos after a court granted a judicial review into the criteria and its impact on people with disabilities and former welfare minister Frank Field criticized the new tax.

“The inconvenient truth that Iain Duncan Smith is avoiding is that 650,000 families across the UK are suffering sleepless nights because of this government’s ill-conceived plans to drive them from their homes and push them deeper into financial misery,” Unite general secretary Len McCluskey said.

“This is Tory-led social engineering on a massive scale,” he added.
McCluskey further stressed that the bedroom tax is a ploy to “marginalize” the disadvantaged in the society.

According to the National Housing Federation, the proposal will affect 31 percent of existing working-age housing benefit claimants in the social sector where a majority has only one extra bedroom.