Tragic lessons
Posted: May 13, 2013 Filed under: Housing benefit, Welfare reform 1 Comment‘She was fine before this bedroom tax. It was dreamt up in London, by people in offices and big houses. They have no idea the effect it has on people like my mum.’
I’m not sure how the architects of what ministers prefer to call the spare room subsidy will react to the words of Steven Bottrill or the tragic suicide of his mother Stephanie. A spokesman for the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) told BBC radio news yesterday that it would be ‘inappropriate to comment’ on an individual case but that did not stop a ‘source’ from adding that the government had made discretionary help available.
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
Jules Birch 
Please sign the petition that I have started calling for IDS to be sacked after the suicide of Stephanie Botrill, a disabled woman who threw herself under a lorry as she could not pay the bedroom tax nor find and alternative, smaller home. Please send the petition to your email/social network contact lists.
https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/the-prime-minister-the-rt-hon-david-cameron-mp-sack-iain-duncan-smith