Austerity of Conservatives, Lib-Dems Punishes Poorest, Helps Richest

Mike Hancock, a British lawmaker, said that austerity measures hurt the poor and benefited the rich.

MOSCOW (Sputnik), Daria Chernyshova — The coalition government of the Conservative Party and the Liberal-Democrats is a disgrace for their treatment of the poorest in the UK, a British lawmaker told Sputnik, adding that the austerity measures hurt the poor and benefited the rich.

“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.”

According to the British Trade Union Congress (TUC), UK living standards, measured over a five-year period, fell for the first time in over half a century. The union blames this drop on the austerity program pursued by the UK government over the past several years.

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.