Elderly dying mum forced to move because of Tory 'Bedroom Tax'!

An 82-year-old sick pensioner, who has less than a year to live, is facing eviction from her three-bedroom home because she cannot afford to pay her Tory Bedroom Tax.

Mary Bennett, a widow from Runcorn, Cheshire, has been told that she must leave the home that she has lived in for the past 20 years because she cannot afford to pay the £14 a week tax. The widow, who’s dying wish was to die at home, suffers from a cardiac condition and dementia. Over the past 20 years, she has spent £10,000 on disability adaptations to her home.

Although pensioners are normally exempt from the Bedroom Tax, Mrs Bennett cannot claim the OAP exemption because her son Alan Clark, 47, is her live-in carer. Mr. Clark gave up his job as a hotel manager, to look after his mother. A discretionary grant from Halton Council has paid the short-fall in Mrs Bennett’s housing benefit since she fell into arrears, but she will be forced to move from her home, when this expires in March.

Alan told the Daily Mirror that though he plans to move his mother to a smaller rented house where his sister lives, he fears that the ‘upheaval could unsettle his ill mother’ and added: “How dare they take away a dying woman’s wish for the sake of £14 a week. It is a travesty.”

A council spokesman told the newspaper: “Discretionary housing payment cannot exceed March 31 in any given year as the council receives annual fund allocation from Government. Until this grant is known any awards cannot be made into the next financial year.”

Since the introduction of the Bedroom Tax in April, thousands of families have been pushed into homelessness and a spiralling cycle of debt as they struggle to pay the tax. According to a recent study, more than half of households hit by the Bedroom Tax have been unable to pay their full rent.

While the Tory government imposes punitive taxation like the Bedroom Tax on hard-up families, it is making the British taxpayer foot a £1 million legal bill so that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, can go into battle with Brussels to defend banker’s mega-bonuses. The chancellor has filed a complaint against the European Union (EU) over its plans to cap bonuses, even though this measure has the support of the EU’s twenty-six other European Finance Ministers.