I have been summoned to Tottenham magistrates court on Thursday 4 August because I am refusing to pay my council tax to the London borough of Haringey. I am fighting against state-imposed ill heath. When Grant Thornton, Haringey’s accountants, audited the £125 costs added – more than 20,000 times – to council tax arrears by Tottenham magistrates in 2013/14, they refused to consider the impact of poverty on the health of Haringey residents.
I asked: “Please will you ask the local GPs and NHS by how much their costs have increased due to the increasing impact of debt and austerity on the health of residents since their benefits were taxed in April 2013.” They replied: “we have no remit … to opine on the impact of this policy on the wellbeing of those required to pay council tax”.
The point has been passed where the arithmetic of the powerful should bend to the damaging and state-imposed insolvency of the powerless. The cumulative impact of caps, housing benefit cuts and council tax on the diminishing incomes of the worst off has damaged their health and life expectancy. Hunger is the tip of the iceberg.
Rev Paul Nicolson
London
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