Tory MP Suella Braverman says ‘too many rely on benefits’, yet claimed £159,000 in expenses last year. Let’s unpick that

31 comments

  2. Covid gave millions of people their first experience of having less, hopefully the opposition parties will be able to capitalise on that

  3. Too many people do rely on benefits, the solution is to support people in getting better jobs and regulate companies so that they have to pay a liveable wage. Not just arbitrarily making people’s life harder.

  5. How murch do the lords get a day alot more what else do the lords get oh yea unelected old men what else do they want a democracy say what you want about benefits just alboish the house of lords

  7. Meanwhile Therese Coffey, the work & pensions minister, is currently pushing for the DWP to be given extra powers to arrest benefit claimants accused of fraud, raid their homes, remove evidence, and fine them even if no prosecution goes ahead. Source: John Pring, Disability News Service. This is despite the fact that about 85% of benefit fraud accusations are false. Braverman, if she has her way, will no doubt be backing Coffey’s efforts while she continues gouging the public purse, convinced she’s earned the right to live off the state by being born lucky.

  13. Fuck me. Imagine being such a piece of shit you can compete with Priti Patel for the title of ‘biggest thundercunt in the country’.

  14. You can’t title your article “let’s unpick that” if you can’t be fucked to give any details at all about what the expenses were actually claimed for.

    Legitimate business expenses are a thing. You don’t pay for stuff that you need to do your job. Is that what was happening here? Impossible to tell with this article, which therefore has a journalistic value of roughly zero.

  16. I find it absolutely shocking that there are still Tory-lovers around who defend this sort of “let them eat cake” bullshit. This thread is a perfect example.

  17. Guys she’s a fucking ghoul but can we please move on the conversation to the point that people understand that MPs aren’t claiming expenses to their back pocket. That did happen, it was a big scandal, but unless you think MPs don’t need to hire staff or rent offices etc, or travel to parliament, or stay in London when in parliament, then obviously they will need a lot of expenses.

    You can and should criticise excessive spending, but criticise what it’s spent on, rather than just listing an amount purely because you know the fuckwits in comments assume the MP got that much money.

  19. But expenses aren’t benefits?

    For all the angles to attack Tories on, this one is super dumb

  20. If they sorted out free or at least very heavily subsidised childcare from birth they would see the amount of people claiming benefits reduce significantly. If you work full time, but in a low paid job it’s extremely difficult to return to work. The cheapest option for childcare is with a childminder that charges you £5 an hour. If your job starts at 9 and finishes at 5 of any combination of that you will end up paying between 9-10 hours of childcare a day depending on how long it takes you to get to and back from work to the childminder. That’s £50 a day, £250 a week, £1000 a month out of your pay before you’ve even taken into consideration commuting costs. If you earn anything under £24k a year you’ll be left with around £500 to actually keep. That doesn’t cover much. If you have more than one child you can forget about it completely. Most people on benefits are not on them because they are lazy, but because they have no other viable options of survival otherwise.
    And before the “don’t have children if you can’t afford them” crowd comes in – you can’t exclude a huge chunk of society from having families just because they are not in a high paying job. Also, young people are more likely to have children as they are more fertile and they are also more likely to be at the beginning of their career, not earning much. You can’t tell people that your work is important and keeps society going like supermarket workers, nurses etc but tell them they are not important enough to be able to afford children.
    And yeah, ideally you have two parents in a household and the other one can work. But that pay is not always enough to keep the family going, so of course people will go on benefit. Not to mention, that again you can’t tie working class women to the home because they can’t afford childcare.
    They have some free hours from age 2, but if both of you work and earn a little more than minimum wage you won’t qualify. There’s more free hours from age 3 that everyone gets that is honestly a life saver for many families. It should be the same from birth, allowing people to make the decision to return to work or stay at home because they want to and not because they have no other viable choice.

  21. Is this bit true?

    >She is entitled to a £99,732 cabinet salary on top of her £81,932 pay as Conservative MP for Fareham, Hants. So, her combined salary is likely around £181,600 a year.

    I thought the cabinet position meant a total salary of 99k, but that’s the add-on? More than doubling the total? Surely not?

  22. Labour leader Keir Starmer claimed £168,115.03 last year between 1/06/20 and 31/05/21. All MPs claim lots in expenses not just Torys

  23. I’m anti Tory, despise the lady but the article is just crude bashing.

    some expenses like travel to London is justified, if work sends you elsewhere they either pay for the travel or you claim it back. otherwise you have MPs from Shetland having to pay to travel to and from London and their constituency weekly.

    Also most businesses when working away from the main office will provide a food allowance. MPs don’t get a food allowance when working in London.

    if we had the breakdown of what she claimed it would be more interesting as we could then see the proportion used. A lot of the headline figures will roll up the costs for constituency office supplies, post etc to get a big figure but these are not part of a personal expenditure but from IPSA towards running costs.

  24. So you think she should be £159,000 out of pocket for doing her job and paying staff salaries?

    If the expenses were claimed legitimately, then what is the issue – they are not a perk, they are to cover costs incurred in doing her role.

  25. Too many rely on benefits but at the same time you have the Bank of England saying you shouldn’t ask for hire wages?

    Perhaps if people didn’t have to work two jobs, or could afford childcare, they wouldn’t need to rely on benefits?

    You’ve had more than a decade to sort this out.

  26. OH NOOO SHES CLAIMING EXPENSES TO RUN HER OFFICE AND PAY HER STAFF, THATS LIKE HECKIN THEFT AM I RIGHT REDDIT

  28. “The average cost of an MP was £203,880 in 2020/21, a 29.2% increase from the average £157,747 spent in 2019/20.”

  29. That’s a very normal amount of expenses for an MP. It’s mostly used to pay their employees (both in the constituency and in Westminster).

  31. I just can’t believe we’re doing the whole “benefits scroungers” stuff like it’s 2010 again.

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