How best to react to the ‘bedroom tax’

Now he has further fuelled the controversy over the welfare reforms with his own remarks about being able to live on £53 a week (your  report, 2 April).

Neither event in the overall debate about how to get the benefits budget down has been edifying.

Cool heads are required about the implementation of the “bedroom tax” in particular.

Some campaigners are comparing the campaign against the measure to  the protests over the community charge (or poll tax) more than 20 years ago.

But there is an important difference. Non-payment of the charge meant that local authorities were deprived of only one part of their overall income (which still comes in the main from government grants and business rates).

They were still able to provide services. By contrast, rents are the only source of housing revenue income.

Reducing that supply makes it much more difficult for a council to carry out a housing and maintenance programme.

That will simply mean that tenants, and the community overall, suffer in a different way.

I oppose the bedroom tax on grounds of individual  liberty, its impracticality, and the problems it can create for people with disabilities and local authorities’ capacity to provide cost-effective quality services. There ought to be a  civilised effort to ensure its repeal.

But until that can be achieved, the prudent use of discretionary powers to support those who fall into rent arrears must be the way forward.

Bob Taylor

Glenrothes

If coalition minister Iain Duncan Smith reckons he can live on £53 per week, he obviously means £53  instead of his salary, but  in addition to his MP’s  expenses, because I imagine that £53 would not even cover his council tax, if he is required to pay council tax, that is.

I would like to see him take a short test in which he was asked to value a basketful of basic supermarket groceries, estimate the price of average energy bills and the cost of public transport or running a car for a week, and then see how much change he had from his £53. If anyone doubted that our government is out of touch, then Duncan Smith’s comment has surely settled any argument.

Walter J Allan

Edinburgh

As we come to the third anniversary of the introduction of the 50p tax rate for high earners, can we now dispel the myth that its demise suddenly makes millionaires richer and the “poor” poorer.

If it had been such a great idea as a revenue raiser then why did the last Labour government spend 13 years thinking about it, only to introduce it a month before it was kicked out?

It’s easy to be in opposition – you just disagree with everything the current government says.

Once they actually have to have policies we will see broad agreement with what the current government is doing, given that Labour brought financial ruin on Britain.

What we must also bear in mind when the SNP’s referendum comes along is that we have to be able to judge on reality, not rhetoric.

We are seeing many harsh measures being introduced but listening to either a discredited Labour Party or to the promise of Brigadoon from the SNP is not an answer to a European, if not global, malaise.

The only popular government I can remember is Tony Blair’s – because it spent on popularity, not sound policy.

Look where that got us, and our children and their children.

Ken Currie

Edinburgh