Gavin Newlands, SNP MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, has called on the UK Government to abandon their harmful welfare polices following the High Court’s ruling, which found the UK Tory Government is causing ‘real misery’ for ‘no good purpose’. The High Court ruling found that applying the benefit cap to lone parents with children under two is unlawful and discriminatory, after a judicial review brought by four lone parent families. The revised benefit cap, introduced by

Gavin Newlands, MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, joined calls from the First Minister and SNP colleagues at Westminster for the Chancellor to take the opportunity in his Autumn Statement to suspend proposed changes to Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). The current proposal would cut £30 a week from the support given to sick and disabled people in the ESA work-related activity group. His comments follow a backbench business debate on the reductions to ESA and Uni

Gavin Newlands, MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, has highlighted a report from the University of Oxford which found a link between increases in the number of benefit sanctions handed out by the DWP and rising number of adults receiving food parcels – offering further proof of the deeply damaging impact of Tory welfare policies. The study found a direct relationship between the numbers of sanctions and the level of referrals to food banks – yet more evidence of what t

Gavin Newlands, MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, has hailed the ‘fantastic’ work that Advice Works do to help local people deal with reforms to the benefits system. Advice Works is a free, confidential and independent service which provides a range of money and debt advice to people in Renfrewshire including budgeting, negotiating with creditors, bankruptcy, mortgage and rent arrears, checking that people are getting all the benefits that they are entitled to and helpin

Gavin Newlands, MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, took part in a debate in Parliament on Wednesday on the UK Government’s intended cuts to housing benefit for vulnerable people in specialist housing, including people fleeing domestic violence. It was announced in the Autumn Statement 2015 that Housing Benefit claimants living in dwellings rented from a social landlord would face future restrictions on the amount of Housing Benefit they would receive. The government is pl

Gavin Newlands, the MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, has welcomed the UK Government’s latest embarrassing defeat at the hands of the House of Lords – stating that the government would be utterly “callous” and “morally bankrupt” to not drop the 30 per cent cuts to Employment Support Allowance for the disabled and ill. The House of Lords were considering the UK Government’s Welfare Reform and Work Bill and voted to reject the government’s proposals to cut ESA for claimant

Gavin Newlands, the MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, has written to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith MP, to urge him to initiate an independent review of his department’s Work Capability Assessment’s (WCA) after expert research suggested that 600 suicides may be associated with the government’s policy. Researchers from Oxford University and Liverpool University studied data from 2010-13 and found that the WCAs could be linked to an increas

Gavin Newlands, the MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, has today highlighted deeply concerning figures that have been recently released by the Department of Work and Pensions, which show that thousands of people have died after being found fit for work. The Department of Work and Pensions’ figures show that 2,380 people died between December 2011 and February 2014 shortly after a work capability assessment found them fit to work. The DWP's data also reveals that during th

Gavin Newlands, the Member of Parliament for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, has today – on the first day of Carers Week 2015 – lodged an Early Day Motion (EDM) that celebrates the 759,000 carers in Scotland and has called on the UK Government to scrap their plans for a further £12 billion of ‘callous cuts’ to the welfare budget. Carers Week 2015, running between 8th and 14th June, recognises and celebrates the selfless commitment and care that Carers provide for loved ones.