EARLIER this month I attended the AGM of Financial Fitness.

The team at Financial Fitness are a credit to Inverclyde and deserve thanks for their continued commitment to helping some of the most vulnerable members of our community who are being attacked and penalised by the despicable actions of the current Tory and Lib Dem Government.

Through the evidence raised at the meeting and through my own casework since 2011, I am even more determined to do all I can to help return a Labour government in May to put a stop to these attacks.

Since winning in 2010, the Con/Lib Dem government have unleashed a series of unfair and unjust attacks on those who need help the most. Universal Credit is in crisis. The Work Programme is failing.

And there is a 100 per cent rise in the number of working people claiming housing benefit. Not to mention the abhorrent ‘bedroom tax’.

There is an end to this misery. The end can and will come by a Labour government in May.

Labour knows it is only by getting more people into work and creating better paid and more secure jobs that we will tackle rising benefit bills and ensure the system is sustainable for the long-term while giving dignity to those with illness, disability or caring responsibilities who cannot work.

Labour will do this by: Raising the national minimum wage; introducing living wage contracts; tackling the root causes of rising housing benefits spending by making work pay; getting young people and the long-term unemployed off benefits and into work through a compulsory jobs guarantee; pausing the implementation of Universal Credit in favour of a reformed system; reforming work capability assessments; and scrapping the cruel, costly and unjust ‘bedroom tax’.

The social security system was created so that you paid in when you were in work and received support when you were out of work, ill or elderly. Labour will reform our welfare system to ensure people are given the support they deserve when they need it.