http://www.kenlivingstone.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Women1.pdf
In his foreword to the comprehensive but London focused report, Livingstone states:
“Cuts on this scale mean a war on equality. They will – as initial estimates of the coalition government’s spending plans have demonstrated – fall massively on women. They will erode the entire fabric of our society – wrecking core public services, cutting essential benefits and tax credits and destroying jobs. In so doing so the government’s programme will deepen inequality – women, disabled people, black and minority ethnic communities are already disproportionately likely to be in the poorest sections of society.
"Child poverty cannot be tackled when government is cutting a myriad of child related benefits and tax credits. Benefits relied upon by disabled people have been targeted for cuts. By removing important supports to children and young people these cuts will cut off potential.
"The government can declare its commitment to social mobility all it wants: its policies will entrench inequality. Such policies will fall particularly hard on women – and that is why I welcome the legal challenge by the Fawcett Society who correctly described the cuts as the biggest in peacetime.
"Women are 52 per cent of the population: attacks on this scale, falling disproportionately on women, would devastate women’s lives and will be felt right across our city.”
