Benefits axe could force 70,000 Scots into poverty claims SNP

ALMOST 70,000 Scots could be forced into poverty if a benefit for disabled people is axed a government minister has warned.

Communities minister Alex Neil said the Westminster government wants to abandon both the attendance allowance and the disability living allowance.

MSPs were told research forecast that removing the attendance allowance could result in 40 per cent of claimants falling below the poverty line.

“Across Scotland that would mean over 67,000 of our most vulnerable people being forced into poverty by a Labour government,” he said.

Scottish Labour’s deputy leader Johann Lamont accused the SNP of “scaremongering” because UK ministers are still consulting on proposals for the future of social care and had made no decisions.

About 150,000 elderly people in Scotland receive attendance allowance, which is paid to pensioners who need help looking after themselves, the minister said. And 330,000 people in Scotland received the care component of the disability living allowance, designed to help disabled people cope with higher living expenses.

“It is incredible than an anti-poverty measure introduced by a then right-wing Tory government is going to be abolished possibly by an even more right-wing Labour government in London,” Mr Neil said.

But Ms Lamont said the SNP is implying that “there has been no discussion and that not only will Scotland suffer as a consequence of these discussions but that Scotland will somehow lose funding which will then be directed towards care in England”.

This is not the case, she said.

Jackson Carlaw MSP, the public health spokesman for the Tories, said the policy will not be introduced if the Conservatives are elected to govern the UK in May.