Even The Sun, the ultimate scrounger bashers, thinks Steve Hilton’s latest idea is “daft”, writes Richard Darlington, head of news at the IPPR.
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Richard Darlington is head of news at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR)
Even The Sun, the ultimate scrounger bashers, thinks Steve Hilton’s latest idea is “daft”.
On page 2 today they quote a source close to Iain Duncan Smith saying the idea to cut another £25bn from the welfare bill is “absolute nonsense”, adding:
“Steve’s gone totally rogue.”
Lib Dem peer Lord Oakeshott says:
“This is wacky even by Hilton’s standards.”
But let’s take a moment to test the hypothesis. If you really did want to get £25bn cut from the welfare bill, how would you actually do it? Try and do-it-yourself.
Here are your options:
• Breaking down the benefits bill 21 Mar 2012
Even if you entirely scrapped all out of work benefits – jobseeker’s allowance, plus income support and ESA – you’d come up £4bn short. You’d have to almost halve the state pension – not really a vote winner. Or you could entirely scrap Child Tax Credit and Child Benefit or Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit.
Like The Sun says, daft. Bye, bye Steve.
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41 Responses to “£25bn welfare cuts? Hilton’s plan is absolute nonsense”
Blarg1987
One way the benefit bill could be reduced is to regulate certain areas more i.e. the private rented sector, where by caps can be put on what they charge, this would gradually feed through the system as a saving.
But witha goverment that believes in the free market who’s job is to make money at any cost, the benefit bill will only go up as more is outsourced to private companies with no ceiling on charges and porr regulation on service provision.
There are to many sticks for the person in reciept of benefits and to many carrots for companies running these services, there needs to be a swtich, as if this goverment is saying it is helping all tax payers, they would be focusing more on organisations that spend tax payers money, other then the oublic sector itself.
Anonymous
Those dirty American lefies use rent caps in many cities, it’s far too radical an idea to be used here, Blarg! It wouldn’t “feed through” either, it would be immediate savings.
(But yes, real solutions are in short order from the coalition)
Anonymous
Live in poverty. Starve. All the things you hold to be fine for the poor.
Making sure that the poor have no opportunities, and that your birth class determines your life chances…cardinal principles of your set, quite.
Anonymous
That’s hardly abandoning the poor, though, as a straight 25 billion cut would.
It’s also, personally, too radical for my tastes. Smaller steps for me…
…Rent caps
…Raise the minimum wage and abolish the WTC
And so on.
Blarg1987
Well their solution reflects their ideology let the markets and the privatee sector sort itself out, except when it says it needs the state to give it money, as some commentators havesaid, capatalism for the poor, socilism for the rich.