“The Conservative and the Lib-Dem coalition were an absolute disgrace in the way they treated the poorest people in our society. And they punish them because they are the easy ones to punish,” Mike Hancock told Sputnik on Wednesday.
He said that the austerity policies have led to the rich getting tax breaks, while the poorest people had their benefits cut and lifestyles dramatically reduced. The most vivid example of this is food banks, which have seen a dramatic rise in their number of users.
Hancock noted that Westminster should relax the austerity measures, resisting “the easy temptation to cut benefits for the poorest people.”
Since 2010, the United Kingdom has been applying austerity measures aimed at cutting the country's budget deficit spearheaded by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government. The program was initially designed to last until 2015.
In 2012, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced the extension of the program into 2017 or 2018, a move he justified by the fact that the government had failed to meet some of its targets.
