News / Politics
MP ‘could lose seat’ over tax credits
Senior Labour shadow ministers have written to Charlotte Leslie urging her to vote against her party’s plans for cuts to tax credits or face losing her seat.
The Labour Party claim that Leslie, MP for Bristol North West, is one of 70 Conservatives who could lose her seat over the tax credits row.
They say that her majority of 4,944 could disappear if an estimated 6,400 families currently receiving tax credits in her constituency chose to change allegiances following the cuts.
In an open letter, Seema Malhotra, shadow chief secretary to the treasury, and Owen Smith, shadow secretary for work and pensions, urged the MP to vote against the cuts “to help avert deeply damaging cuts to the incomes of low and medium paid working people”.
In the letter they went on to claim three million working families are due to lose an average of £1,300 per year, helping to push 200,000 more children into poverty.
“This issue transcends narrow party lines, as surely none of us came in to politics to take money away from low and middle paid workers,” the letter added. “Tuesday’s vote is a chance to show that by voting to reverse the cuts to tax credits.”
They added: “We respectfully ask you to work with us, grasp that opportunity and help end the deeply unfair tax credit cuts.”
A vote on the tax credits plans was due to go ahead on Wednesday.
A spokesperson for Charlotte Leslie dismissed the “flawed logic” in working out her seat was under threat, adding that the MP would not be responding.
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