As I walked to breakfast this morning to get a paper and my
coffee, I came across a rather dishevelled man in ‘The Co op.’ He stood in front
of me, swaying over the automated checkout. He was holding up my line. Paying
for a 99p cheese sandwich with some 99 pennies, he one by one, placed them
carefully into the slot of the machine so as to ensure success. Annoying I thought
(on a Sunday morning I can be heartless.) I just wanted a paper and to get to
McDonalds for my weekly treat, the ‘McDonalds Breakfast.’ Anyway, later as I
found myself in the McDonalds queue who was there but the unnamed unfortunate.
It was whilst watching him scrape the palm of his hand for a measly £1.25 in
copper coins, handing them over one by one, that I saw his unrivalled and
indeed not uncommon act of bounteousness. After paying for his sustenance, the
man put the remainder in the charity pot by the till. I was struck by this act
of generosity in, what was clearly for this man’s life, a time of hardship.
I turned my thoughts to our politicians and their respective
plans for welfare. Labour, backed by research from the Trussel Trust attacked
the Tories this week on the apparent existence of a relationship between the
fall in welfare spending and the rise in the use of food banks in this country.
After Last week’s Question Time debates, during which the PM
took a question on the moral implications of future cuts, I wondered,
especially after this morning, whether this is a consideration for any
prospective PM. The number of food banks have risen, according to the Trussell
Trust from 25,899 in 2009 to, 1,084,604 in 2015 and according to William Hague,
21 Billion of cuts have been achieved since the inception of the coalition
government. So when, as she did this week, Esther McVey says that, “the rise in
food banks predates most of the welfare reforms this Government has put in place,”
and she was backed by a swath of other senior tory figures, It is easy to see
why there might be widespread anger from the public.
So irrespective of any economic argument, whether
oversimplified or not by brandishing a letter to the chief secretary to the
treasury around, shouldn’t politicians as the questioner during the Question
Time debates suggested, consider the moral angle. The Labour Party have signed
up to 30 Billion of more cuts and as Liam Byrne said in 2012 a Labour
Government may also cut welfare in real terms. There may not be a cut to Child
Benefit, Child Tax Credits and other working age benefits as it was suggested
earlier this week that the Tories would like to. However cuts or freezes to the
welfare budget are likely from any prospective government.
Earlier this week Mr Miliband was video-taped in another
kitchen putting the world to rights with his pal Russell, like two stoners at
University. Saying things like, “We need to make sure the country works for the
poorest in our society,” my mind was conjuring an accompaniment of script. “Yea
man, for real,” or perhaps “woa…dude.” However hopeful and ‘free-loving’ it all
sounded in my mind, Ed did actually say this, "I want to be clear: if we had won
power in May [2010], there would have been cuts." So after
the country felt all ‘cheated on’ by a ‘LibCon’ government is it reassuring to
voters if Ed defends, in principle at least, the Tories’ record on cuts, especially
if you are worried about further cuts to Welfare. No, pure and simple.
So as I marvelled at the generosity of the dishevelled man
this morning, I thought perhaps each of the prospective candidates should just
take a trip down to a city centre McDonalds and think about the moral side of
welfare cuts.