A mysterious cloaked crusader attended Mondays Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council meeting on Monday evening to hear Councillors debate government imposed cuts to Council Tax Benefits.

The Government will scrap council tax benefit from April 2013 and replace it with a grant called “council tax support” but which only covers 90 per cent of the bill - in a bid to save £500 million.

Therefore in order to make up the 10% difference, it is up to Welwyn Hatfield council to decide who qualifies for council tax support and who will have to begin paying a proportion of tax whereas before they paid nothing.

The Coalition has stated however, that the Council are not allowed to reduce support for vulnerable people or pensioners, and this includes those with disabilities or those with children under five, who will be shielded from the cut.

The flipside of that is those who do not fall into these categories, will have to make up the difference to those who do, with estimates that this could push up the cuts to almost 20%. Councillors heard how this would mainly fall upon those of working age.

Pulling no punches in his condemnation of the proposals, Councillor Kieran Thorpe (Labour) said “This is just another example of a desperate government, reverting to type and bashing the poor.” – they expect people to swallow this while they give tax cuts to the richest people in this country – It is disgusting”

Leader of the Council John Dean (Conservative) said of the criticism of the Governments decision that it was “not up to us to object to Coalition policy” adding “we are as distressed as everyone else”. Congratulation his Conservative colleague Councillor Steven Markiewicz said “we cannot go blindly along objecting to things” and that it was a “fairly good start in addressing the problem”

Drawing cheers from his Labour colleagues and condemnation from Conservative councillors facing him, Councillor Steve Roberts said “we must stop this nonsense now” arguing that the Government should instead concentrate on recovering some of the estimated 70 Billion pounds lost to the treasury through tax avoidance as “only a small change in that would easily cover this (£500 million)”

After further arguing from both sides the issue was put to the vote which was comfortably passed by the Conservative majority. The public consultation on the issue ends this Friday (28th Sept) after which the Council’s cabinet will meet on 4th December to decide on the details of how to implement the controversial Government policy.