LONDON, March 19 (APP/AFP): Britain’s welfare minister Iain Duncan
Smith resigned on Friday over planned reductions in welfare payments for people with disabilities unveiled by the finance minister this week.
“Changes to benefits to the disabled and the context in which they’ve
been made are a compromise too far,” he wrote in a letter following uproar against the plans, including from lawmakers in his own governing Conservative Party.
“While they are defensible in narrow terms, given the continuing
deficit, they are not defensible in the way they were placed within a budget that benefits higher-earning taxpayers,” said Duncan Smith, a former party leader and one of six senior ministers supporting a vote for Britain to leave the EU.
Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne told parliament on
Wednesday the planned changes would cut around #1.3 billion (1.7 billion euros, $1.9 billion) a year off the bill for so-called Personal Independence Payments (PIP), which aim to help people with long-term ill health or disabilities with extra costs.
The main opposition Labour party has criticised the proposals as
“appalling” and a government source on Friday said they would be “kicked into the long grass”.
“We need to take time and get reforms right and that will mean
looking again at these proposals,” the sources.
Prime Minister David Cameron said: “We are going to discuss what
we’ve put forward with the disability charities and others.”