Frank Little

Councillor for East Central ward on Coedffranc Town Council Learn more

CAB AGM

by franklittle on 3 October, 2010

As usual, the Neath Citizens Advice Bureau Annual General Meeting was full of interest. The 2010 event was probably the last before the merger with Port Talbot CAB and certainly the last at which Jenny Simmons acts as bureau manager and company secretary, after more than a decade of invaluable service. It was the first at which Naz Malik acted as chairman, though he was clearly being modest when he apologised for his shortcomings.

Once again, problems with benefits and debt topped the table of issues raised by clients in the previous year, each showing a slight increase over 2008/9. 2008/9 had shown more than a doubling.

Special guest Peter Hain trembled on the brink of making an out-and-out party political speech. I would agree with him, however, when he made the point that the government front bench has no experience of hardship. The same point could also be made about the Labour front bench. You don’t have to be a millionaire to be out of touch with real life and too many  have not known a life out of politics.

He pooh-poohed the Times speculation thatIain Duncan Smith was going to go ahead with a unification of the benefits system. Events the next Sunday proved Mr Hain wrong, though the project is going to take place over two parliaments. It is a long-standing Liberal Democrat aspiration, and I would guess that Liberal Democrat ministers helped IDS defeat the Treasury over it. However, I am not so happy over the quid pro quo the Treasury is supposed to be demanding, the means-testing of child benefit. On the face of it, there is no justification for giving benefit to well-off parents. However, it is one of the simpler benefits and I fear that the extra administration necessary for its capping will mean that little money is actually saved.

There was some later discussion about the threat posed by the legal aid contracts introduced by the last government, and a possible chink of light in the form of a recent legal judgment that they were illegal in certain circumstances.

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