New year, same old Chris Philp.
Foot in mouth problem: Tory MP Chris Philp
The gaffe-prone Tory MP for Croydon South put his foot in it yet again and angered millions of TV news viewers as he claimed that the nation’s benefits system is “very generous”.
Philp, 47, who boasts that he is an “entrepreneur”, is reckoned to be a millionaire through various shady off-shore development business interests. But he has refused to publish his personal tax returns throughout his near-nine-year parliamentary career – including during the very brief spell when he was the second-most senior politician at the Treasury under national disaster “Thick” Lizzy Truss (yes, that’s right: Philp was personally responsible for the economic meltdown that followed).
Philp, the floundering Conservative Government’s regular rent-a-gob, was speaking yesterday to Sky News on the steep rise in levels of shoplifting. Asked if he had any sympathy for people stealing for food, policing minister Philp said that there was “no excuse” because the benefits system is “very generous”.
He said: “We have a very generous benefits system, we’re spending well over £100billion on working age benefits, they went up by 10% in April this year…”, he means last year. He’s just soooo 2023, “…they’ll go up by another 6% or 7%. National Minimum Wage has just gone up by around 10%.
“There is no excuse at all for any criminal activity, including shoplifting.”
It was Philp who previously suggested that shoplifting could be reduced by other shoppers making citizen’s arrests. He’s full of great ideas is our Chris…
Philp’s net worth is estimated to be around £3million, which is supposed to include a family home in his constituency, although he’s been conspicuously low-profile in Croydon South apart from the occasional Saturday when he turns up for a street stall in Purley or Coulsdon, often accompanied by notorious car lobbyist, KIpper and “person of interest” to the police, Peter Morgan…
Choose your friends…: Chris Philp campaigning in Purley with Peter Morgan
Peter Underwood, a Green Party parliamentary candidate in Croydon at the next election who has shared a hustings stage with Philp in the past reacted to the “generous” claim by pointing out Philp’s reluctance to share the hard details of his murky business interests.
Philp “has consistently refused to publish details about his income and taxes so we can see who is being ‘very generous’ to him”, Underwood noted.
Others responded to the Sky News report on social media, accusing the Tory minister of being “disconnected from reality”.
One tweeted: “Rental prices and bills have risen to unmanageable levels. The benefit system is completely inadequate.”
Eighteen months ago, when Philp was wheeled out on to BBC Newsnight to put the Tories’ feeble case against a fair wage settlement for rail workers, union chief Mick Lynch called him a “liar” 16 times on live television.
According to the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Britain’s safety net for the unemployed is the lowest of all western European countries, offering a meagre 17% of previous in-work income. In Ireland, the figure is 54%. In Norway 78%. In Belgium it is 90%.
Indeed, according to research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a “shameful” 61% of working age adults in poverty are in families where at least one adult is in work. Rowntree also found the number of children in destitution in this country has nearly tripled to around 1million since 2017.
Chris Philp has been MP for Croydon South since 2015.
At present, Philp receives an MP’s and minister’s salary of more than £110,000 per year. The average salary in Tory Britain in 2023 was less than £35,000.
In addition, Philp and other MPs are able to claim allowances to cover the costs of running an office and employing staff, and maintaining a constituency residence or a residence in London.
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