The new parliamentary session starting today has prompted some pre-emptive strikes on welfare reform from campaigners and a fresh round of scrounger stories in the right-wing press.
Campbell Robb of Shelter was on the Today programme this morning [listen here from 47 minutes in] warning that cuts to housing benefit will hit 54,000 families with children who are already living below the poverty line.
He countered the government’s argument that the system has to be fair to poorer families who are in work by pointing out that only one in eight people on housing benefit are unemployed and said the changes would hit the poorest hardest.
Meanwhile research by the TUC highlights the effect of the cuts on people who are unemployed. It said plans to cut housing benefit by 10% for anyone on jobseekers allowance (JSA) for more than a year would cost at least 194,000 people almost £500 a year.
The figure takes account not just of the 102,000 adults who have already been on JSA for 12 months or more but also of the people that will be forced on to JSA from other benefits under coalition plans. These include 68,000 lone parents currently on other benefits and at least 24,000 disabled people who will be moved off incapacity benefit. On average they will lost £489.06 a year to save £95m.
These are just the opening shots in a parliamentary session that quite apart from the small matter of the spending review will include the Welfare Reform Bill and an inquiry by the work and pensions committee into the housing benefit reforms.
It’s probably no coincidence that the tabloids are ramping up the pressure in the opposite direction with scrounger stories. Last week The Sun reported that more than a thousand families are getting more than £800 a week in housing benefit and that a Somali family was getting £2,000 a week in Kensington.
Today the Daily Mail takes the story outside of asylum seekers and west London with a report on a Bristol family receiving £95,000 in benefits including £49,000 in bed and breakfast payments.
Will stories like that about a few hundred people drown out the warnings of the losses facing hundreds of thousands more?
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Readers' comments (5)
Melvin Bone | 06/09/2010 1:17 pm
Obviousley if Labour had remained in power no-one except the rich would have been effected by any cuts...
What were Labours plans by the way...oh they never really said did they...
Oh sorry...except Mr Balls who said we should simply borrow some more money up to our credit limit to spend our way out of this crisis...Genius, I cannot imagine why the British public did not re-elect Labour at the General Election...
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Chris | 06/09/2010 1:25 pm
Labour's plans would have continued to marginalise the poor, impoverish the average waged, and increase the wealth of the privilaged.
The 30-year transfer of wealth from commonwealth to individual wealth would have continued, and the tax loopholes would have remained as arteries through which the rich have bled us dry.
The only real difference would have been a slower death, with more smiles (or in Brown's case maybe not advised) than the current bunch.
The absolute lack of choice is the most serious risk to democratic freedom for 100 years.
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Melvin Bone | 06/09/2010 2:25 pm
'more smiles'
Thank god the ConDems got together.
'The absolute lack of choice is the most serious risk to democratic freedom for 100 years.'
Cheer up we'll allegedly get a vote on Voting Reform soon(ish)...
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Anonymous | 06/09/2010 5:31 pm
... and very predictable screams of faux anger from the left wing press.
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ivor williams | 07/09/2010 11:48 am
So once again the Right wing whingers rant on about how good it is to hit the poor, the groups who fight for the poor in this country do not have the clout the rich have. How many poor people ever get in positons of power to make a difference to their own kind.
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