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IDS.....yet again...................
Welfare controversy: Subject to the bedroom tax - even if the room is used for a kidney dialysis machine
Plight of MP's brother raises questions about fairness of controversial welfare reform
It has been 30 years since Rivers Pound moved into his specially adapted council flat in Earl's Court, west London. The 55-year-old has been on and off dialysis since his first kidney failure at 19, and his flat was one of three in the block designed with its own dialysis room, part of a council scheme to house residents with renal problems.
Then, in April, the Coalition introduced its welfare reforms and everything changed. Although Rivers's body was rejecting a third transplanted kidney, he was not on dialysis at that moment and so the room that housed his equipment was deemed surplus to requirements.
According to the inflexible rules of the under-occupancy policy known as the "bedroom tax", he had to find another £120 a month for this "spare" room - or find a new home.
Too proud to accept charity, the musician decided to sell his only possession of value: a piano worth £1,500. He hoped it would cover the extra rent until he was on dialysis again, and thus free from the charge.
Growing up as one of seven children, Rivers Pound is used to being self-sufficient. As a result he didn't want to ask his siblings for help - even though his brother is an MP. Yet his story so encapsulated the new uncompromising welfare system introduced by the Department for Work and Pensions that last week Rivers' elder brother Stephen - the shadow minister for Northern Ireland - felt compelled to raise it in Parliament.
Without at first revealing the family connection, the MP said: "There is a young man who lives in Earl's Court who is in total renal failure. May I tell you that this man's spare bedroom is a dialysis unit. He has been told that he now has to pay the bedroom tax."
It was only in his concluding remarks that Stephen Pound revealed his personal interest, saying his brother faced losing his home "for being a kidney patient".
Full story Independent.
