IDS will drop plans to impose a 10% cut in housing benefit on anyone unemployed for more than a year. But the Welfare Reform bill includes other pernicious reforms.
Iain Duncan Smith confirmed on the Today programme that the Government would drop plans to impose a 10 per cent cut in housing benefit on anyone unemployed for more than a year but denied that Nick Clegg was instrumental in the u-turn. But the Welfare Reform bill published today still includes a series of pernicious reforms to housing benefit.
Research by London Councils has estimated that the entire package will lead to 82,000 families being “at risk of losing their homes“. Some of this will be mitigated by today’s climbdown but the main problem is the reduction in Local Housing Allowance falling from the median of local rents to the 30th percentile.
Research by Declan Gaffney for Left Foot Forward and used by the Observer showed that:
“the change with the biggest numerical impact in the medium term will be the move in October 2010 from setting maximum entitlements at 50 per cent of the local housing market to 30 per cent, which will lead to losses of on average £39 a month for some 775,000 households nationally…
“It is clear that while households in London will see the most severe losses, the impact will be felt in all regions, with the north west having the highest numbers of households affected after London.”
A briefing from Shelter, the housing and homelessness charity, outlined that:
“We expect that many households will try to remain in their home and be forced to make financial sacrifices in order to do so. For those households already struggling to balance very tight budgets, a reduction in LHA will only push more of them over the edge, triggering a spiral of debt, eviction and homelessness. It will also force many households into overcrowded and sub-standard accommodation.”
Others have expressed concerns about switching indexation of Local Housing Allowance to the CPI inflation rate rather than to the cost of living. Shelter say:
“This is potentially very significant. Although rental costs are included in the CPI, the full impact of rent increases tends not to be reflected. This means the CPI may not increase at the same rate as average rents.
“To illustrate the point, over the period 1999 to 2007 the CPI increased by 15%, compared to a 44% increase in average rents. Had the LHA been set to increase in line with the CPI in 1999, it would be 20% below the level needed to rent the average property.”
The vast majority of housing benefit claimants are either pensioners, disabled people, those caring for a relative or hardworking people on low incomes, and only 1 in 8 people who receive housing benefit is unemployed.
40 Responses to “IDS’ housing benefit u-turn masks full horror of reforms”
S Grist
All of the current policies reflect the commonly held prejudice that unemployment is to be blamed on the unemployed. We are told they are “refusing to accept jobs”, that “work doesn’t pay” (ie benefits are supposedly too high.)
The simple fact that neither the media nor politicians are willing to acknowledge, is that the root cause of long-term unemployment is the refusal by employers to offer work to anyone who seems to have been out of work for very long. Employers are spoilt for choice, They are not running charities,so we cannot blame them for this behaviour, which merely reflects the misconceptions peddled by the media and by all politicians, regardless of their party allegiances. It is still perfectly legal to discriminate unfairly against the long-term unemployed on the basis of this prejudice which provides a convenient, if socially irresponsible filter in the job selection process.
Unless this state of affairs is remedied by legislation, there will continue to be an underclass of decent individuals who find themselves permanently excluded from work, in spite of the fact that many of us are highly qualified and experienced. The latest batch of policies seem calculated to drive this underclass into abject destitution – and presumably under the wheels of a train or into the river.
Robert
For god sake do not bring Hitler or the Jews into this.
yes both Labour and the Tories have been doing this for a while now, but sadly the people of this country have decided the media is right and sadly we are all scroungers….
Poppy
Ah yes. The Tories and the right-wing press in league together. The Tories have made sure there are no jobs by cutting everything in sight whilst the right-wing press bash the unemployed and call them “scroungers”. As a soon-to-be scrounger, I know that there are few jobs out there. I’ve been applying for jobs since last July, am well-qualified, got interviews but no further. I am hanging on by a thread in my current job but don’t hold out any hope of getting another one once I get the boot. Capitalism has screwed me totally (I was unemployed under the last Tory government) and the employers are having a field day – workers are so desperate they will take anything, and work for terrible pay and conditions. Presumably the Tories and their banker friends are rubbing their hands with glee.
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