Independent Group MP Heidi Allen defends previous support for Conservative welfare cuts
4 min read
Independent Group MP Heidi Allen has defended her previous backing for £12bn of Conservative welfare cuts, as the breakaway bloc of MPs faced a grilling about their policy platform.
Ms Allen - who quit the Conservatives last week with a blast at Theresa May's leadership and handling of the Universal Credit welfare overhaul - was challenged over her decision to stand on the Conservatives' 2015 election manifesto.
Then-chancellor George Osborne announced a further £12bn reduction in the UK's welfare budget in the wake of that election.
Ms Allen told the BBC's Andrew Marr: "At that moment in time, yes, we were in a dreadful position regarding the debt and the deficit. And decisions had to be made."
But she insisted governments should be judged on how they reviewed the impact of their policies - and doubled down on her attack on Universal Credit, which aims to roll six existing benefits into one.
"You know, clearly, with inflation, so many other factors now - we have a risk of no-deal Brexit on the horizon - the Government has to constantly review and check what its policies were," she said
"And it's the way that Universal Credit, from my point of view, has been rolled out: it's not just the money in it...
"It could be the most phenomenal benefits system out there, but at the moment it's treating people not like human beings but like a sausage machine."
Ms Allen and Luciana Berger, one of eight Labour MPs to quit the party this week, were also pressed for their take on issues including state ownership of utilities, taxes for the wealthy and tuition fees.
Asked whether the water industry and the railways should be renationalised, Ms Allen said: "My gut instinct is no, but like all of these things it needs to be built on evidence and actually, rather than just choosing ideological solutions, what will work and what can be learned from other countries."
Labour's last election manifesto pledged to scrap tuition fees entirely.
But, asked whether she still backed that promise, Ms Berger said she believed "the greatest thing we need to focus on is the early years".
"It starts with the first 1001 days and that's not being addressed at the moment," she said.
Ms Allen meanwhile said that a 50% top rate of tax "doesn't feel right to me".
But she added: "Let's base it on evidence.... We want, a bit like you do in business, [to] coalesce around the evidence, battle a policy out until we actually know what this is going to work for our country right here and now and for the future.
"It isn't about decrying policies that any of us had in the past. This is starting again with something completely new and a very different approach to politics."
Ms Berger pointed out that the new group was just six days old, and said it was important not to judge their positions "through the prism of the old politics".
"The platform that we've come together at the moment on is our values," she added.
THORNBERRY BLAST
The questioning of the two MPs came just a day after Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn trained his fire on those who had quit the party.
He said: "Walking away from our movement achieves nothing. Not understanding where we have come from is a bad mistake."
Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry meanwhile told the same rally that those MPs who had left Labour had "betrayed" their seats.
She added: "It was our manifesto and our leader that gave them the huge majorities that they now have in their seats - those seats they have betrayed by their actions...
"If our new independent splitters have got the guts to have by-elections, we will crush them."
But Ms Berger said that kind of rhetoric would only reinforce the feeling she had made "the right decision".
"And actually, that's the culture of a politics that I'm leaving behind and, again, I think that we should be operating in an open way, and in a tolerant way," the former Labour MP said.
"That is what, in the 21st century, the country deserves."
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