SDLP leader Colum Eastwood has taken a swipe at Sinn Fein after British Work and Pension Secretary Ian Duncan Smith dramatically quit tonight over cuts disabled benefit payments.
In a tweet, the Foyle MLA wrote: “So Ian Duncan Smith has resigned because he wouldn’t accept the benefit cuts that Sinn Fein supported by handing the power to the Tories.”
The former Tory party leader said he was resigning because the changes announced by Chancellor George Osborne in his budget speech on Wednesday were “defensible in narrow terms, given the continuing deficit”.
Osborne announced £4 billion of planned cuts to Personal Independence Payments (PIP), which is expected to affect 640,000 people.
But the Tory MP said they should have formed part of “a wider process” of finding the best way to focus resources on those most in need.
“I am unable to watch passively whilst certain policies are enacted in order to meet the fiscal self-imposed restraints that I believe are more and more perceived as distinctly political rather than in the national economic interest,” he said.
“Too often my team and I have been pressured in the immediate run up to a budget or fiscal event to deliver yet more reductions to the working-age benefit bill.
“There has been too much emphasis on money-saving exercises and not enough awareness from the Treasury, in particular, that the government’s vision of a new welfare-to-work system could not be repeatedly salami-sliced.
“It is therefore with enormous regret that I have decided to resign.”
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