Meeting for Sufferings: Welfare Reform
The effects of proposed changes to the benefit system were brought to the attention of Meeting for Sufferings
The damaging effect that proposed changes to the benefit system will have on low-income working and non-working people was brought to the attention of Meeting for Sufferings on Sunday morning. A minute from Wirral and Chester Area Meeting highlighted the effect of the cuts on the poor and vulnerable and praised the work being done on economic justice at Friends House.
The minute urged Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW) to focus more urgently on low-income working and non-working people. It supported QPSW’s participation in the Church Action on Poverty’s ‘Close the Gap’ campaign and encouraged it to continue the good work it was doing in lobbying with other groups and organisations.
Meeting for Sufferings was reminded of other minutes brought to them on this subject, over the past three years, from Meetings throughout Britain, including one that urged Area Meetings to collect evidence of the inequitable effects of cuts and of hardship, particularly in the area of housing and housing benefit and in health related benefits. The appeal had equal relevance today.
Friends were reminded of the link between economic justice and the testimony to equality and of the ‘compelling link between economic equality and environmental sustainability’.
They were also urged to use a variety of means of advocacy to highlight the issues and to be specific in what is said and ‘root our witness in the life of our Local Meetings’.
