‘Pooling of risk and resources is good for Scotland’ THE UK welfare system is based on need not nationality. We all club together and support each other.

This pooling and sharing of risks and resources across the United Kingdom is good for Scotland. Our welfare spending is around two per cent higher than the rest of the UK and, when you look at some benefits such as disability, it’s 22 per cent higher. Right across the UK, irrespective of where you live, everybody gets access to the same level of support.

People out of work in Inverclyde can have their benefits paid by the taxes of somebody in Glamorgan – and people receiving child benefit in Liverpool have it paid for them by a young person starting work in Greenock. By pooling our resources, we have 60 million people shouldering the burden of funding and administering benefits, rather than five million.

UNCOSTED PROMISES – The nationalists promise high levels of welfare spending, while, at the same time, saying we can have low levels of taxation. You don’t need to be a mathematical genius to know this doesn’t add up. They’ve provided no detailed costings. An independent Scotland reliant on oil for a high percentage of its income, and with no record of borrowing on the international finance markets, is in no position to guarantee anything.

NO SERIOUS PLAN – The SNP have no idea how they would deliver benefits. They blatantly assert that we would continue to use the IT system belonging to the UK Department for Work and Pensions. Nicola Sturgeon has admitted that keeping the UK welfare system would “make sense”. Even the nationalists own Expert Group on Welfare say there would be a “serious risk to the continuity of payments” in an independent Scotland.

YOU COULDN’T MAKE IT UP – The SNP spent the last 80 years saying the United Kingdom is the cause of all our problems. Now they tell us that, in fact, pooling our resources with the rest of the UK makes sense.

After spending the entire referendum campaign attacking the UK, they now want it to retain control of the benefits system.

The core IT welfare system run by the UK Government is incredibly complex and integrated. Suggesting another country should have control over your welfare systems means there is little you could do to change anything. Would the UK allow an independent Scotland to use it? If they did, how much would it cost?

Who would pay for the thousands of Scottish civil servants needed to administer it? All basic questions, none of which the nationalists answered. The nationalists are playing politics with the welfare benefits of people in Inverclyde. They’ve no plan for the payment of our benefits and can’t even tell us what currency they would be in.

Replicating the UK IT system would take years and if you could use the UK system – and that’s a big if – then you’re abdicating responsibility for some of Scotland’s most vulnerable citizens.

There’s only one way to protect our welfare benefits – Vote No on September 18th. Find us on Facebook or join our campaign by visiting www.bettertogether.net ‘Independence gives us power to tackle poverty’ THE mark of a civilised society is how it looks after those less fortunate. Scotland is the 14th wealthiest country in the world according to the OECD and the UK is the 18th.

Why then do we have poverty and an uncaring welfare system? Not everyone who is unemployed wants to be that way or chose to be that way.

We only have to look at the 1980s in Inverclyde to remember the thousands of people who were made redundant as our shipbuilding industry was all but destroyed.

How many of those people, i.e. you the Tele readers, wanted to live on welfare? The same can be said today.

A Yes vote in September will ensure that Inverclyde and Scotland has the opportunity to build a future where those unfortunate enough to be unemployed, can be helped back into work.

Those unfortunate enough to be unemployed can be assisted as compared to being called scroungers and benefits cheats. Many of the welfare reform changes coming from Westminster are having a negative effect upon Inverclyde and Scotland.

We know that most Scottish MPs and the majority of MSPs are opposed to many of the Westminster welfare cuts, including the ‘bedroom tax’.

With an estimated 80 per cent of households containing a disabled adult, this policy alone makes the Westminster elite seem uncaring. The only way it can be scrapped is for the power over welfare to come to Scotland.

Unfortunately, the worst of Westminster’s welfare reform is yet to hit us with the roll out of the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payments (PIPs).

In its white paper “Scotland’s Future: Your Guide to Scottish Independence”, the Scottish Government has committed itself to establishing a benefits system that is “fair, transparent and sympathetic to the challenges faced by people receiving them, respecting personal dignity, equality and human rights”.

An example of this is the pledge that any future health assessments required as part of the benefits system will be undertaken within the public sector. In contrast, both the UK Government and UK Labour are signed up to the austerity agenda.

Only last month we saw this in action again as the Westminster elite supported a cap on the welfare budget. Save the Children claim it will see an additional 345,000 children plunged into poverty. We already know about poverty in Inverclyde. Last year, over 970 children were fed through the Inverclyde Foodbank.

Also, Save the Children reported that around 1,000 (11 per cent) of children in Inverclyde are living in severe poverty with 24 per cent of our children living in poverty.

A Westminster elite who are out of touch will not increase the opportunities for these children.

Welfare reform will make it harder for them, and with a further £25bn of cuts promised by the Tories, and supported by UK Labour, things will only get tougher.

Scotland is the 14th wealthiest country in the world so we have a duty to help our children out of poverty.

Only independence gives us the power to do this.

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