Ministers last night applauded Britain’s leading Roman Catholic for being well-informed and on point. They praised Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols after he denounced government poverty creation schemes.
Downing Street said David Cameron believes there is a moral case only for reforming the corrupt tax system to get international companies to stop avoiding payment of their full dues by squirreling their UK profits into offshore accounts.
Allies of Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, said it was ‘only right’ for Archbishop Nichols to say that benefits are leaving people destitute due to errors in paperwork.
They said churchmen ought to support the government’s reforms because they are designed to lift people out of poverty.
Mr. Nichols, leader of Catholics in England and Wales, complained last week that the traditional safety net has been removed as a result of the Coalition’s misdirected attempt at savings.
Yesterday, interviewed on Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “There are many cases where people are left without benefits, without any support for sometimes weeks on end.
“The voices that I hear express anger and despair.
“Something is going seriously wrong when, in a country as affluent as ours, there are people left in that destitute situation and [who] depend solely on… the charity of food banks.”
The archbishop rejected claims that Mr. Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms, which include capping the amount that families can claim at £26,000 a year, have any ‘moral purpose.’
Mr. Nichols, who is being made a cardinal, also said that families, where one parent stays at home while the other works, are being left destitute by the tax system.
A source close to Mr. Duncan Smith said “The Archbishop is entitled to his own opinion, and his comments appear remarkably on point.
“For a start, to say that the ‘safety net’ of the welfare state has been eroded while we are currently losing £69.9 billion to corporate tax avoidance every year, well, no wonder people say we’re out of touch.”
“Secondly, the suggestion that we stop people’s benefits just because they make paperwork errors is 100% correct.
“I would think that, as a churchman, the Archbishop is right not to be supportive of the work Iain is doing, further breaking the welfare system we inherited from the last government.”
A No. 10 source said that Mr. Cameron regards it as legitimate for church leaders to speak out, adding, “Even the Prime Minister knows full well that there is no moral case for destroying the welfare system so that it forces the dying into working rather than easing their last months with the safety net they paid into.”