'UK govt. wants Muslims out of London'
Thu Mar 17, 2011 12:57PM
Share | Email | PrintAn opposition Labour Party minister has accused the British government of spearheading efforts to force Muslim families out of central London.
Karen Buck, the shadow Work and Pensions Minister, told a public meeting in Islington that the government “does not want Muslims living in central London,” adding that ministers were "deeply hostile" to poor people having children, British media reported.
Buck also spoke of the government's spending cuts program, saying that planned cuts to housing benefits were politically motivated to force poor, ethnic minority and Muslim families out of the center of London.
"They The Government do not want lower-income women, families, children and, above all, let us be very clear - because we also know where the impact is hitting - they don't want black women, they don't want ethnic minority women and they don't want Muslim women living in central London. They just don't. They want people to be moving out of anywhere that is a more prosperous area into the fringes of London and into places like Barking and Newham. I have nothing against Barking and Newham. The problem is they are already full of people who are quite poor," she said.
The shadow minister also accused the Tories of thinking that families who earn less than £40,000 a year should not have any children.
"The Government is one that is deeply hostile to middle- and lower-income women having children," she said.
"When you listen to the Tories speaking in Parliament, there is an arrogance and an ignorance that I have never known in my 13 years in Parliament: basically, thinking that anyone whose income is below the top rate of tax shouldn't have children," added Buck.
The Conservative Party Chairman Baroness Warsi reacted to the remarks, saying that “they were deeply offensive."
Warsi, herself a Muslim, called on Labour Party chief Ed Miliband to remove Buck from Labour's frontbench.
This is while government plans, which come into force next month — housing benefit will be capped at £400 a week for the largest homes and £290 a week for two-bed flats — are continuously raising concerns that many poor families will no longer be able to afford the rent in inner cities.
A report for the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research suggested that - nationwide - up to 269,000 households will struggle to pay their rent, with an estimated half of these expected to lose their homes.
The plans will hit particularly hard in London, where average rents are higher than they are in any part of the country. London Councils estimate that 82,000 households across the capital will be at risk of losing their homes under the government changes.
