Agree with everything above.

By way of a contrast – this will also be debated in the Welsh Assembly later this afternoon, with a motion calling for the welsh government to bring forward measures to tackle the stigma faced by people on benefits. Welfare isn’t a devolved matter hence the limited nature of the motion. However given previous statements made in Wales, all the points above will probably be raised, including by Carwyn Jones who has opposed the welfare reform agenda from the start. I will post a link to the transcript once it has gone up.

Any Members of the labour party who still think the UK is worth defending are advised to contrast how the devolved institutions are dealing with this issue compared to a house of commons devoid of principle, in the pockets of the tabloids and wedded to the idea that winning elections can only be done by appeasing the demands of the most selfish demographic in europe.

Hi sue,

“It is vast and impenetrable – most of the ministers arguing for it have very little understanding of the detail within it. Yes, that’s right, they don’t understand the details or effects of their own policies.”

What are you basing this on?

The ConDem government is attempting to cut £18 billion from welfare benefits in the latest wave of austerity measures, that they insist is necessary to cut the UK budget deficit and borrowing requirements. This policy seems to have attracted a fair amount of populist support in the country, with the government’s friends in the right wing press producing screaming headlines about ‘benefit scroungers’ and the like.

http://haringeygreens.blogspot.com/2012/02/welfare-claimants-are-scapegoats-for.html

@2

Maria Miller is the welfare bookworm in the cabinet and despite having an office with staff and direct access to figures before they become public; she knows about as much as I do. Whilst I’ve been reading on the history of welfare in Britain and how the system works now for fifteen months; I would not call myself an expert. Miller started learning about her brief not long before I did.

Both myself and Sue have had direct opportunities to speak with ministers and actually gauge their knowledge. Out of all of them, Miller is the most on the ball but she is very far from an expert and relies on being briefed beforehand, she can’t think on her feet and recall stuff immediately from memory and in detail.

There’s further confirmation when following their public statements made in the press and Parliament during the second and third reading in the Commons and during the readings and committee stage in the Lords. David Cameron famously was asked by Edward Miliband the same question five times at PMQs over a simple detail regarding recovering Cancer patients on ESA and five times the prime minister completely fudged it even with Duncan-Smith and Grayling sat next to him where they could have corrected his error any time if they knew or if they even listened to the consultations.

The Benefits Cap sounds very plausible but in practice it will be a disaster.
The benefit system is complicated and such a simplistic solution is stupid.

If the system of complex rules works out that a family has a need for more than £500 per week to live on it is perverse for a millionaire Prime Minister to declare that the family can manage on less than the calculated amount.

If this “Average Wage” Cap is to be the new creed then lets see it applied to MPs and Lords. Those who have above the social capital limits should be limited to £26,000 pa from the public purse.

Top Civil Service and MPs Pensions should be limited to £500 per week as well

@4 – Thanks for the response, glad to hear this is based on reality rather than assumption.

Also, kudos for managing to reply without calling me a cunt. Very refreshing

‘Like watching a slow car crash’ about sums it up.
I think there is something very wrong in society when you have a so called democratic system that is just about to waste the vunerable and the poor.
Maybe they are only doing it because they havent any knighthoods to take away.
Time to dust off the Malleus Maleficarum me thinks.

@ 5

If the system of complex rules works out that a family has a need for more than £500 per week to live on it is perverse for a millionaire Prime Minister to declare that the family can manage on less than the calculated amount.

Not sure this need any comment.

I think I’ll just lie down in a darkened room……….

“we have the lowest levels of benefits and the toughest sanctions of any developed nation. ”

This is what is known as “a lie”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state#Welfare_expenditure

The truth is we have a fairly generous welfare state, which has only got more so over the last ten years. Roughly half of tax revenues go directly to welfare state spending.

We’ve argued this before, but I’m not sure how capping benefits at £26k will put anyone into poverty (given the definition of poverty rests at 60% of that level), and it is a policy that more than 2/3 of the public agree with, not to mention it also being Labour party policy.

But please Sue, tell me a REALISTIC way of paying for the ever increasing burden of the welfare state when we have a ~10% or ~150bn budget deficit.

Mason Dixon, Autistic,

Does not the fact that the brief is so difficult to understand suggest that it is need of serious reform – if it is not comprehensible, it is unlikely to be worthwhile. This may not be the right bill, but clearly something is needed.

Incidentally, I would be quite surprised if there were not civil servants who knew the system (or specific bits of it) pretty well – are you suggesting it is so complex that even they are unable to present a full picture to ministers?

@9

growth and a proper taxation system might help. I cant think that putting children into poverty is a great idea.

Tyler @ 9

This is what is known as “a lie”

Explain the lie here? Sue’s point being that we have the lowest levels of benefits and the toughest sanctions. In what way is that a ‘lie’? You then claim that we have:

A generous welfare State, and
that has become even more generous over the last ten years.

It goes without saying that you have provided not a shred of evidence to back up either claim. In fact, you even link to a wiki page pointing out we spend about one percent of our GDP LESS than Poland and point six of percent more than Portugal and that we fit in neatly about halfway in terms GDP spending.

Sue, Mason Dixon

We’d all perhaps understand this better (well, I would!) if you could give us actual specific real examples of what people are currently receiving & why (DLA ESA etc) and what they will receive once this bill is enacted, and what assessment, if any, is made to change their current level of benefits.

Thanks

This vote’ll tell us who’s worthy of the Labour ticket.

And what about ‘none of the above special cases’ that is, simply people who find themselves penalised for being out of work. How can you live in £68 per week. Seriously. How? Without not eating properly or not paying bills and wearing rages. When Labour fight openly and fiercely to raise JSA – then I will know they have got the point.

@10

The system is complicated because it has been developed in increments over decades in response to serious concerns about what is fair and humane. Complexity is the price of fairness. The civil servants that understand this are the ones that were serving over a great length of time but who are now retiring. Others have gone on to work for the kind of charities which strenuously opposed previous welfare reform bills and oppose this one. Many of the ‘experts’ the government are choosing to rely on are special advisors or ‘SpasAds’ from lobby groups like the TaxPayers Alliance and the PPI industry. They don’t concern themselves with the details of the history of social security.

@13

My example will focus on claimants of ESA and DLA as they have been my main focus. The government presumes that a significant number of claimants, even if they are disabled do not actually need these benefits long-term. Labour repeatedly commissioned research into Incapacity Benefit and DLA throughout their administration and repeatedly they failed to find large numbers of people who were committing fraud so their attention instead turned not to fraudulent claims but to legitimate claimants who it is said improved so gradually they didn’t know when they no longer qualified. The current government are basing their extraordinary claims on research that is almost eight years out of date and wasn’t particularly thorough.

ESA is being changed so that anyone on the contributions-based ESA who finds themselves in the Work Related Activity Group(said to be able to work once they have recovered from a malady or with the right support) will be time-limited to just one year. Then they must either apply for Jobseekers Allowance or income-based ESA. The threshold for income-based ESA is an incredibly low £7,500 for the entire household: so if there is a single member in the household doing a minimum wage job, the disabled person will not be eligible at all for ESA unless they are placed in the Support Group.

I think I’m reaching the hidden letter cap so will continue into another post..

@ Tyler

“I’m not sure how capping benefits at £26k will put anyone into poverty (given the definition of poverty rests at 60% of that level)”

But it *doesn’t* rest at 60% of that level – it rests at 60% of median income, after tax and housing costs, taking household composition into account. Remember?

http://poverty.org.uk/summary/key%20facts.shtml

The poverty line for a family of four is, logically enough, rather higher than it is for a single person: £288 after tax and housing costs vs £119 after tax and housing costs. The poverty line for a larger family is higher again. It’s a mathematical inevitability that a total income of £500 a month is going to leave some families in poverty, if they’re large enough and/or their housing costs are high enough. (No one could seriously maintain that, say, a family of ten living on £250 a week after paying £250 in rent was not living in poverty – even if they didn’t accept the existence or relevance of ‘relative poverty’ as just defined.)

There’s a shameful item on the BBC website today about the benefit cap:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16812185

It’s a case study of a family of eight that’s set to be affected by the cap – seeing their benefits cut from £582 to £500. And it paints exactly the picture the Tories want to paint of these families – complaining about having to choose between ‘heating and eating’, but actually spending more than £100 a week on lager, fags and Sky Movies.

Just one problem: this family lives in a council house in North Wales, and is paying £76 a week in rent. They are not *remotely* representative of the families in London and the South East being affected by this cap, who would be lucky to find a privately rented three bedroomed house costing three times as much.

£500 a week benefits minus £76 a week rent = £424 to live on.

£500 a week benefits minus £228 a week rent = £272 to live on.

There’s just no comparison, and a cynical individual might think the BBC example was calculated to create the entirely false impression that this cap typically has the effect of taking away people’s beer money rather than money families need just to make ends meet.

(continued)

DLA is being replaced with the Personal Independence Payment and the Social Fund is being abolished. The government expects local authorities to take over the functions of the Social Fund and are(I believe) providing some money for this, but the money isn’t ring-fenced: local authorities are under no obligation to spend it on anything like what the Social Fund was used for. The PIP will have only two rates for the Care component rather than three. It’s widely believed that almost no one on the lowest rate for DLA will be eligible for the lowest one for PIP. One of the more shocking details to emerge from the published descriptors is that a person able to wash themselves above the waist is considered as able to bathe themselves. Help required getting in and out of a bath or shower is not a factor; being able to approach and operate a sink then splash yourself is sufficient.

In my own case, I receive DLA Care and Mobility at the lower rates(about £20 each a week) specifically because I am unable to safely cook a meal without help and I can not cope in unfamiliar places without a familiar and qualified person present. Despite having far more significant problems, these were the only descriptors that matched up with Autism. The government says I shouldn’t worry because PIP is being designed to take conditions like Autism more into account; a great deal more weight is being applied to trouble with interpersonal interaction and communication. I was hopeful for this, because PIP regards being able to put something in the microwave now as ‘cooking’ and if you can only do this it is worth just 2 points, the same number of points is also awarded if you need prompting. But now microwaves are taken into consideration, I fall short of the new descriptor and the points will only add up for the same activity, not across different ones. So I could score 6 in almost every daily living activity required to satisfy the criteria for receiving Care, but if I had scored 8 in just one and 0 in the rest I would be eligible.

So I’m going to be left very dependent on the criteria that is said to specifically consider Autism and similar conditions. Here is the second draft criteria document if anyone wants a look: http://www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/pip-second-draft-assessment-regulations.pdf

For communication, I would score just 4 points. No definition is given for the difference between ‘basic’ and ‘complex’ verbal information. I’d score just 4 for ‘Engage Socially’ and I haven’t a clue where I would be for Making Financial Decisions. I would almost certainly lose the Care component under PIP.

The new Mobility criteria only cover Planning And Follow A Journey and Moving Around. I would only score 4 for the first and 0 for the second. The descriptor under which I currently claim Mobility is not included at all. So as long as I can get somewhere, it apparently doesn’t matter how I am able to function. My ability to get home in an emergency, enabled by DLA, counts against me as that is also an ability to plan and follow a journey. The reasons why that kind of journey would be necessary are not factored in.

If I lost both these components, I would also lose passported stuff like my concessionary bus pass and disability premiums. Banks do not allow income-based Jobseekers Allowance claimants to have overdrafts, unless they claim DLA. A disability premium is also added to JSA to make it equal to Incapacity Benefit and ESA. I would lose that. This would total a loss of £70 a week if I’m still on JSA when it comes into force, I don’t know how much I would lose if I find a job by then because so much about Universal Credit hasn’t been thought through. It seems much of it is going to be announced during the regulations stage after the Welfare Reform Bill becomes law. But despite significant trouble with day to day living, I will no longer be considered disabled at all in the system.

I can not risk claiming ESA at all because it is very unlikely I would be put in the Support Group. My mum is my de facto carer but she works and the means-test would make me completely ineligible. There is some evidence that failed ESA claims are being used to withdraw DLA and there’s been no law change for that; just a change of government. I’d rather hang onto it for as long as I can but once it is gone, I have no idea what I’m going to do.

G.O. – my thoughts exactly on reading that article.

The comments on it make me sick: all these legions of morons apparently consumed with rage and envy at a family of 8 people living in a 3 bedroom house who haven’t had a holiday since 2001. Perhaps they would also find they needed cigarettes and alcohol to get by if living in that situation. They’ll also find that removing a few percent of income from this tiny minority of large benefit-dependent families makes about as much impact on the deficit as banning the police from calling the talking clock.

(By the way, £228 a week will barely get you a serviceable two bedroom flat anywhere within the M25 – and there’s a very limited supply at the cheap end. There’s going to have to be a lot of kids taken into care.)

Oh how this will come to bite them….

I expect most of them have been to countries where there is little, or no, welfare, but people like them will not have seen the results of this…not in their 5 star hotels or gated communities.

Well, they’ll see it here.

Hell mend them.

@ jungle

“By the way, £228 a week will barely get you a serviceable two bedroom flat anywhere within the M25 – and there’s a very limited supply at the cheap end”

You don’t surprise me. I was being cautious with my guess because I don’t have accurate figures, and it all sounds like a different planet to me (I live in Yorkshire.)

I can’t honestly say I object to the idea of reducing that particular family’s benefits to £500; I don’t begrudge them their mobile phones or the dad his evening at the pub or even their Sky Movies, if those are the little luxuries they choose, but it’s pretty hard to defend a further £5,000-a-year state subsidy for lager and fags.

£424 a week after housing costs seems a reasonable income, even for a large family. The point to me is just that most of the families affected by this cap are not going to be left with anything close to that income.

Been checking and if I am in work when the changes come, I will actually lose more. Working Tax Credit also receives a disability premium and it’s £20 more than the one for JSA. I’m over 25 now so would keep the Working Tax Credit, but anyone in my position who is under 25 would no longer qualify until they reach that age; these tax credits are only given to under-25s if they have children, are carers or disabled.

Working Tax Credits will also be merged into Universal Credit, so the conditionality will change. Even working claimants will be continually pressured to seek a higher income so that they don’t draw on the benefit at all, a seemingly impossible goal without systematic economic reform of the whole UK and not just the public sector.

@ 12 Jim

Are you now saying that half the countries on that list are not civilised? And remember, UK GDP is significantly higher than Poland and Portugal, so 1% less of total GDP spent on welfare equates to significantly higher welfare spending.

Please don’t answer though – you’ll only come back with osmething moronic.

@ 17 G.O.

The measure used by the government is 60% of median household income. This DOES not include housing costs. Given that benefits are tax free, capping them at £26k would represent a pre-tax household income of £35k.

For your information, it’s quite easy for a family of 4 to live on £272 a week, after housing/council tax are paid for. It’s especially easy if other people are paying for it.

Regardless – as usual all the lefties are busy with attacks saying how cruel/unfair/hard it is to live on so little (really?) of benefits, yet NEVER answer the question of how the benefits system is to be paid for.

Seriously, if someone can give me a serious, sensible, costed answer, I’ll take my hat off to them….and they should probably be on a hotline to Ed Milliband.

The £500 cap is being used as a smoke screen for the real much nastier cuts. The Tories are very succesfully it focusing on it as the main issue; please stop helping them everyone.

@ Tyler

“The measure used by the government is 60% of median household income. This DOES not include housing costs.”

Fine. But it’s still *equivalised* median household income that’s relevant – it would be nuts to have the same poverty line for households of one person, five people, and ten people – and therefore £26,000 is going to be below the poverty line for households above a certain size (especially where there are older children, who are assumed to be more expensive to support).

“For your information, it’s quite easy for a family of 4 to live on £272 a week, after housing/council tax are paid for.”

OK. How about for a family of 8?

“Seriously, if someone can give me a serious, sensible, costed answer…”

OK then: ‘for your information, it’s quite easy for a country with [insert convenient number of welfare recipients here] to support them on [insert amount available for welfare spending here]’.

You’re surely not going to argue with my methodology in arriving at that answer?

They only talk about a £500 cap on larger families. What will a small family receive ? £150 possibly. Families are going to starve.

I believe that Cameron and company are praying that thousands of people are going to commit suicide.

Tyler @ 24

And remember, UK GDP is significantly higher than Poland and Portugal, so 1% less of total GDP spent on welfare equates to significantly higher welfare spending.

It does not matter though, because what you actually linked to was the proportion of GDP that is spent on welfare. Poland spends more of its gross domestic product on welfare than we do and Portugal spends slightly less. On that list, we are about halfway down. Some of the Countries above us spent just under a third of their GDP on Welfare, about half again of what we spend. So, by no stretch of the imagination are we spending more than most of our European counterparts.

Anyway, you still have failed to explain why you think Sue’s remarks are a lie. No comment? Nope, thought not.

Given that benefits are tax free, capping them at £26k would represent a pre-tax household income of £35k.

That is a straightforward lie. To be fair, it is no more of a lie than everyone on the Right, the media in general and Labour supporting morons peddle and of course, that is never challenged, but none the less, it is a lie.

£26k on benefits is NOT the equivalent of a £35k income or anywhere near it. Every basic tax rate parent is eligible for child benefit, so counting that as part of a ‘taxed’ income is not relevant. You get it anyway.

If you have a family large enough that would attract £26k in benefits, you would be in receipt of Family Tax Credits as soon as you work for 16 hours a week. At the minimum wage, you would earn far below the tax threshold. Nobody would need a ‘pre tax income’ of thirty five grand or anything near it to be better of than a family with no-one working.

GO @ 22

To be brutally honest, not too much in that budget I object to. Personally, I would grudge the Sky and the mobiles (at that price anyway). People get addicted to fags, life happens and of course, if we paid her to go to classes that would cause uproar too.

Anyway, what has happened here is two families have been joined together and a single large family created. Wasn’t that supposed to be the Tory big idea? The couple penalty and all that? We are told that ‘stable families create good environments’ and ‘families need fathers’ etc. It seems that they are about to lose £5000 because they got married.

Anyway, what this family and the thousands like them really need is a job. If he is getting job seekers allowance, he must be actively seeking work. If he has been unemployed for over a month (in fact ten years), he will no longer be able to restrict his search to software writing. Even if he gets a low paid job, he will get family tax credits.

The harsh brutal reality is there are simply not enough jobs to go round, right now, nor is that situation likely to change in either the near or medium term, either.

This is the great conundrum for many of us. It is pointless to harass people onto non-existent jobs. Workfare is a nasty idea and will no doubt appease the fuckwits among us but it is worse than useless for job creation goes. For a start it kills stone dead the market for jobs in the first place thus exacerbating the unemployment issue in the first place.

Poundland were in the news for two reasons in January. First of all the student shelf packer:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2086000/Cait-Reilly-Human-right-stack-shelves-Poundland-Shes-trolley.html

Secondly for their 5% profit increase.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/9027260/UK-retail-sales-rise-as-shops-cut-prices.html

So, there you have it. Poundland can make profit by having their shelves stacked for free.

The irony is, I wonder how many people who agree with the benefit cap and think people should work for their dole money will still be as keen when the dole punters replace them in low paid work.

Oh, one other thing. Don’t think that we are only taking five grand from this family, we are also taking five grand from the local economy as well. Okay, you object to the guy with 24 cans of lager, but take into account those cans are somebody’s job. Deflating high the economy of areas of high unemployment is unlikely to create jobs, is it?

@OP, Sue Marsh: “It is vast and impenetrable – most of the ministers arguing for it have very little understanding of the detail within it. Yes, that’s right, they don’t understand the details or effects of their own policies.”

Thus it is proclaimed.

I have no doubt that the welfare reform bill is complicated. But Sue Marsh does not demonstrate that ministers do not understand it. Some things are just Sue Marsh Fact, so vast and impenetrable that Sue Marsh cannot find a ministerial quote to support her position.

For the record, I can see fundamental liberal failures in this bill. Failures of principle.

Let’s be very clear – it is a dangerous, incomplete bill based on flawed evidence and unpleasant ideals.

And the evidence that the evidence it is based on is flawed is what? Unpleasant ideals? I don’t find anything unpleasant about the idea that people should not remain on welfare indefinitely. Why do you?

we will all eventually be transferred onto Universal Credit where both parents will be expected to be in full time work when their children reach the age of 12.

And this is bad because ….. ?

Everyone will face sanctions.

Good.

Make no mistake – this bill fatally erodes the already inadequate social security provision we have in the UK. For all the big numbers the government like to toss around, we have the lowest levels of benefits and the toughest sanctions of any developed nation.

So what? We also have the biggest problem with welfare-related deviancy. Nor do i accept those claims are true. We spend something like 33% of our GDP on welfare. Higher than almost anyone else. We get the worse outcomes. We need to change.

This bill is the tipping point. People are going to die and we’ve done everything – and more – that we possible could to highlight the most dangerous areas.

You don’t know it is the tipping point. It is not even an interesting claim. And please, spare us the dramatics. You have no idea if people will die because of this. Although we can be sure people are dying because of the existing system.

The Lords is packed full of ex-CEOs of charities, disabled members and those who have enjoyed full and varied careers before becoming peers. They analysed every line of this bill carefully and thoughtfully.

A pity that the Peers were chucked out and replaced with placemen then isn’t it?

Today, the DWP expects Conservative and LibDem ministers to saunter into the house of commons, without having heard any of these arguments and vote as they are told to.

I bet that you have no evidence for a single one of those claims. They will probably walk, not saunter. Some of them will have heard a lot of those arguments. And some will vote as they please.

It disgusts me.

That I can believe.

This is not democracy, this is utter cowardice. This is not sane it is utter madness. This is not safe.

It is laughable that you deny the will of a democratically elected House of Commons as undemocratic while praising the entirely undemocratic House of Lords. Democracy != Agreeing with Sue Marsh.

I promise you, now, today, that this bill will be an utter disaster. It is like watching a slow car crash.

How do you know?

@ Jim 29:

“People get addicted to fags, life happens and of course, if we paid her to go to classes that would cause uproar too.”

Yeah, but it’s a damned sight easier to make a moral case that the state should pay to treat someone’s addiction, than it is to make a moral case that it should pay for their cigarettes. Plus it seems wasteful to build a ‘cigarette allowance’ into every family’s benefits, just in case they smoke; better to target extra resources at smokers via the NHS?

“Anyway, what has happened here is two families have been joined together and a single large family created. Wasn’t that supposed to be the Tory big idea? The couple penalty and all that? We are told that ‘stable families create good environments’ and ‘families need fathers’ etc. It seems that they are about to lose £5000 because they got married.”

It’s a good point. In fact the figure must be higher than that; if this was two smaller families, needing two houses, each of them would undoubtedly be receiving more than half the £582 a week they receive as a single unit. This cap certainly provides a powerful incentive to large families to split into two units, so as to double the overall cap applying to them.

All of which illustrates the senselessness of a per-household cap that takes no account of number of children; a family of 8 on £30,000 draws attention to itself in a way that two families of 4 on £16,000 (say) do not, but the people in that larger family, seen as individuals, are actually cheaper to support than the ones in the smaller family.

“Anyway, what this family and the thousands like them really need is a job.”

Well, quite.

The non-existence of proper jobs and affordable housing is the problem little mentioned, surely? I heard some comments along these lines by Labour MPs in the debate but you can’t find it in the coverage unless you use a microscope.

@29: “People get addicted to fags, life happens and of course, if we paid her to go to classes that would cause uproar too.”

Actually the wife was enrolled on a stop-smoking course. (click on the interactive graphic).

Guess what? That’s right she didn’t turn up.

Maybe she should expect the course to come to her instead. Anything else would be cruel and unfair.

To the working poor who live on council estates (rather than reading about them through the pages of The Guardian), this stuff is sickening.

@ 26 G.O.

You always make this poinht about large families….the extreme case. In this extreme case you might be right, but at the same time, what makes it easier for a working family of 8 with a take home household income of £26k to survive?

Are you saying that there are no large families on low incomes (yes, even including benefits) that work? That large families are only for the rich or for those who survive on benefits?

You also essentially are saying that there is a certain number of children at which point the cap should be lifted, and by extension….having more kids should give you more benefits still.

@ Jim

You are so unwaveringly dumb.

Benefits cap = £26k

Household median income in UK = £26k AFTER tax paid, INCLUDING benefits.

So some households might work, pay some tax AND recieve some smaller benefits, yet across the UK, the median income after taking into account the effect of welfare on those working is that the median household income is £26k.

UK GDP is roughly 5 times that of Poland. Population is roughly twice that of Poland. So spending 1% less of GDP on welfare means that per capita, in real world dollars/pounds/zloty we spend a lot more per head on welfare. You can do this same calculation with all the other counrties and tell me what results you get. But I’ll tell you for free, the Uk isn’t at the bottom of the heap by a long way.

So yes, Sue Marsh is plain lying when she says that the UK has the lowest level of benefits in any developed nation.

As for Sue Marsh saying “This is not democracy”; maybe not in Sue Marsh world, but back here in the real one it is. All three parties are committed to a cap in benefits (even Labour with their weak “we want a cap but not this one” BS) and more than two thirds of the electorate also agree with a cap. If that isn’t democracy, I don’t know what is.

Record is now up:

See page 54 of the pdf

http://www.assemblywales.org/bus-home/bus-chamber-fourth-assembly-rop.htm?act=dis&id=230078&ds=2/2012

That is what parliament needed to do yesterday.

23 etc Mason Dixon

Thanks for the various posts.

As far as I can see in summary you get a range of payments in addition to JSA plus some ‘passported’ benefits all of which relate to disability, and which (presumably) have criteria for them being granted, which you currently meet.

These various benefits are being changed to PIP, ESA etc which have different criteria attached and you don’t think you’ll meet them and will therefore lose benefits.

If the criteria were the same as your current benefits (DLA etc) would you receive the same amount under the new PIP etc? (I’m trying to understand whether it is the change of benefit e.g. DLA to PIP or the change of criteria that is the problem).

Also, I think there’s a process of re-assessment of individuals as they are moved from the old system to the new. Has anyone actually been through this yet, or are all the issues raised in the OP assumptions against the new criteria?

I suspect I’m like large numbers of the population who have little if any contact with the benefits system and cannot understand what is going on.

@ Tyler

“You always make this poinht about large families….the extreme case.”

Well, yes – it’s only extreme cases (families with lots of children and/or very high housing costs) who are affected by the cap. Average families with average housing costs aren’t getting £26,000 in benefits in the first place.

“what makes it easier for a working family of 8 with a take home household income of £26k to survive?”

Nothing. But I don’t imagine there are any such families. I ran some figures through a tax credits calculator to see what a working family of 8 with one parent on 12k and one on 6k would be entitled to; the answer is around 15k a year. You can add around 4k of child benefit to that. Other benefits I don’t know about, but you get the picture.

“You also essentially are saying that there is a certain number of children at which point the cap should be lifted, and by extension….having more kids should give you more benefits still.”

Yes, that’s because benefits are supposed to reflect the cost of living.

“Household median income in UK = £26k AFTER tax paid, INCLUDING benefits.”

Where are you getting this from?

I’m less and less convinced that you even know what ‘household median income’ refers to in this context. It’s not the actual cash income of whichever household happens to have a higher income than 49.999% of households and a lower income than the other 49.999%; it’s the income a theoretical, benchmark two-adult, no-children household needs to be better off than 49.999% of households and worse off than the other 49.999%.

This is so that comparisons between different households can be meaningful: a family of four on 27k is worse off than a couple on 26k, which is worse off than a single person on 25k, so ranking those households by actual cash income would make no sense.

Hence households’ position in the income distribution depends on their ‘equivalised’ income. The income that would place a family of four at the midway point is whatever income would make a family of four precisely as well off as a couple on the ‘headline’ median income (which is around 20k, by the way, not 26k).

Have a play around for yourself if you want to get an idea of where different types of household on different incomes sit on the income distribution. A family of 8 on 26k is nowhere near the midpoint, I can assure you.

http://www.ifs.org.uk/wheredoyoufitin/

Tyler @ 35

So some households might work, pay some tax AND recieve some smaller benefits, yet across the UK, the median income after taking into account the effect of welfare on those working is that the median household income is £26k.

Fucking lying Tory scum. Too stupid to understand the figures you quote and too stupid to understand the point you are attempting to make.

Anybody in a position to claim benefits of £26k would be able to claim family tax AND BE BETTER OF with Family Tax credits, with a lot less than a PRE TAX income even close to £35k. Given that the many of the benefits working families receive are exempt from income tax, trying to compare incomes on a PRE TAX scale is just idiotic.

Anyway I see G.O. has ripped you to pieces on this, so I will happily leave you to his mercy.

UK GDP is roughly 5 times that of Poland. Population is roughly twice that of Poland. So spending 1% less of GDP on welfare means that per capita, in real world dollars/pounds/zloty we spend a lot more per head on welfare

Again, you are too stupid to understand YOUR OWN FUCKING EVIDENCE. You have posted a link to the GDP vs Welfare Spending.

Note to non Tory lice, look at the post # 9 and the link the halfwit posted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state#Welfare_expenditure

And look at where the UK is. He thinks it points to the British at the top of the table, I think it points to us being mid table. Every human being can draw their own conclusions.

Remenmber, he is as good as it gets when you deal with the Tory lice.

Even when their own fucking links points them out to be liars, they STILL argue that is does not.

Take away the bluster and you all you have got lies.

Ovaljason @ 34

To the working poor who live on council estates (rather than reading about them through the pages of The Guardian), this stuff is sickening.

Yeah, well the working poor better be careful what they wish for, because if you think this going to stop here, then you had better have another think about it.

To put it plainly, there are no jobs out there, or at least there are not enough jobs to cover the number of claimants. Therefore, there will have to be a considerable downward pressure on the terms and conditions of those in work. Given that people with large families can receive uncapped ‘tax credits’ (i.e. benefits by another name) working for as little as 16 hours a week, there is going to be a shift from full time to part time work. It will be cheaper to employ two part time people than one full time person.

Now if you are ‘working poor’ and single you may find yourself having to take a cut in hours to keep your job. Not only that, of course, but large numbers of people requiring employment will have a detrimental effect on the minimum wage as well. Within the next few months be a clamour for the minimum wage to tumble to accommodate the number of people who are looking for work. Large companies will be sacking people to replace them with workfare people. Then what? I suppose the working poor will be happy with people on the dole stacking the shelves nothing that they used to stack for a wage?

@ 38 G.O.

So you ARE saying that large families are solely the preserve of the rich or those on benefits?

Household median income is *defined* as take home pay, after taxation and including benefits. Hence *income* – otherwise it would be *pay*.

It doesn’t normalise for size of household.

I do understand that different households of differing sizes need differing amounts of money to survive, but I’m sure there are plenty of large households in the 8m households living under the £26k level. Unless you believe that statistically only people on benefits or the rich have large families.

The point is the £26k is a CAP for benefits, where you do nothing. If you earn under £26k, you might still get some benefits taking you over that level, especially if you do indeed have a large family.

But you still don’t answer the real point which is that why should families get £26k a year for nothing, when 8m odd families work for less?

You also are indirectly incentivising large families for those who can’t afford them with the idea that the more kids, the more benefits…I don’t really want to get into an argument about that but that is the logical conclusion. Why is it ok for a family that can’t afford to have lots of kids able to effectively make it a burden on other taxpayers, who often have to make hard choices and plan their finances to have a family.

@ 39 Jim

You really are too stupid for words. I honestly don’t know how to spell it out any simpler for you, short of sitting you down in kindergarten with some finger paints.

£26k is household median income. That means, the family in the middle of the UK income distribution takes home £26k a year, after they’ve paid any taxation and including any benfits they get. It means 50% of familes take home more, 50% less. It is not wholly dependent on salaries, because benefits are factored in.

Nor did I ever say the UK was at the top of the table in welfare spending, but we are not at the bottom as Sue Marsh says. We might spend 1% less of GDP on welfare, but UK GDP is 5x that of Poland, with the population only 2x. Which means in very simple terms, that the UK speanding per capita is about 2.5x that of Poland, not accounting for living costs.

Or don’t you count Australia, Japan, USA, New Zealand, Ireland etc as “developed nations”?

I don’t need bluster, when I have data.

All you and Sue Marsh have is hysterical nonsese, divorced from reality, and in your case especially, abuse.

Tyler @ 41

but I’m sure there are plenty of large households in the 8m households living under the £26k level.

Oh, you are ‘sure’ are you? Oh, well then there is no need to check then, because a Tory is ‘sure’ of something. Perhaps you could back up that with some actual Data, for the humans that read this blog? Nope? So this assertion for the for the Tory lice?

If there are people with large families out there who are below the £26k income, then it will be because they are not claiming tax credits and they will be living in poverty.

But you still don’t answer the real point which is that why should families get £26k a year for nothing, when 8m odd families work for less?

Because in these very exceptional circumstances, they have large families. If you have two kids you need less money to live on than you have eight. That much should be pretty obvious.

Why is it ok for a family that can’t afford to have lots of kids able to effectively make it a burden on other taxpayers, who often have to make hard choices and plan their finances to have a family.

People end up unemployed all the time, even if they have no intention of being unemployed. Sometimes normal sized families join together to form large families and someone loses their job after they got married. Someone can lose their job if a partner gets too sick to work, or a child contracts cancer or something like that, it is really not too difficult to think of a scenario where a family may suffer one tragedy or another. Really, most of can do that.

Which means in very simple terms, that the UK speanding per capita is about 2.5x that of Poland, not accounting for living costs.

So? That is meanigless! You cannot compare Poland and the UK in those terms, that is a clear nonsense. You have to compare what the level of benefits against average income levels per Country.

If you want to compare it in broad terms of GDP makes sense, because it broadly represents how ‘generous’ their system is compared to ours. Are you are seriously suggesting that the size of the economy is relevant here? That must be crap because as a Nation Poland spends more of the GDP on welfare than we do. This SIZE of that GDP is not relevant.

@40 “To put it plainly, there are no jobs out there.”

And yet (at least) 1.4 million motivated and hard-working people from Eastern Europe have managed to create work for themselves in this country.

Let’s go back to May 2007. UK unemployment was nearing a record low: 1.66 million on the dole.

It took Ken Livingstone, of all people, to observe the following: “In seven years I have only been served coffee once by a born-and-bred Londoner. Everybody else has come from abroad to take these jobs.”

What did Ken think the problem was:

Quote: “They [London unemployed youth] have grown up their entire life in a house where nobody gets up before midday. We have really got to tackle this from scratch… otherwise a whole generation is going to be left behind.”

Ovaljason @ 43

And yet (at least) 1.4 million motivated and hard-working people from Eastern Europe have managed to create work for themselves in this country.

So? Jobs come on the market all the time and millions of people become unemployed every year and move back into employment as well. That is called frictional unemployment. We are recruiting people from Eastern Europe as well.

If we want those people who are long termed unemployed to get a job, we need to create jobs for those people who are recently unemployed, jobs for those Eastern European migrants as well as jobs for those long term unemployed as well.

To be honest, Jason, the labour market is a buyers market. Obviously, no employer will willingly employ a British born person with a lower skillset, than his European counterpart. The thing is that immigrants have traditionally out competed indigenous labour forces. Immigrants coming from the higher end of the labour market bell curve than the people they displace once they arrive. British ex pats out perform unemployed in every Country they go to, irrespective of whether or not benefits are paid in those countries, so it is hardly surprising that aspirational Poles displace the left hand of our bell curve too.

That isn’t going to change anytime soon. To be honest, it is a sticky one to tackle, but short of finding a way to ban them coming or ban the likes of Tesco from employing them, I am not sure what you can do to make them more attractive to employers? Any REAL ideas?

The only thing I can think of is either a labour shortage (European wide), or a long term work programme that we can make for British people only.

Quote: “They [London unemployed youth] have grown up their entire life in a house where nobody gets up before midday. We have really got to tackle this from scratch… otherwise a whole generation is going to be left behind.”

Yes, fair enough. We need to employ British people, but how?

If ‘Burger King’ open up a branch where I live and thirty people apply for each job, what do we do with the other twenty nine who are unlucky and what if the best candidates for the job are all Polish in the first place?

@37

In a nutshell: I can’t be certain either way. If the criteria were to remain the same and I were to receive PIP at the lower rate for both Care and Mobility as I do for DLA, I might not be affected at all: the government is so far banking on reducing the claimant count to make savings, so they are hoping there really is a large number of claimants who have got better and they are able to accurate identify them. However, children on the lower rates are going to lose out because the government will be significantly cutting the disability premiums that DLA adds to other benefits, namely Child Tax Credits.

The amount for each PIP award is still to be decided and the government have given some vague assurances that the same passport services will apply. The confusion is over how PIP will interact with Universal Credit and what most people don’t realise is the government are giving themselves an unordinary amount of power by supplying only bare-bones legislation, rich in proposals but starved of legislative detail, to Parliament and then controlling what actually will happen in the regulations.

The most significant proposals they have announced frequently conflict with existing legislation such as the Human Rights Act, Disability Discrimination Act and Equality Act among many others. But those proposals are not explicitly included in the legislation, so they don’t have to repeal or amend hundreds of clauses from a lots of previous bills in order to avoid a judge ruling them illegal. If the worst happens and they are taken to court and lose, they can make the bare minimum of changes required without having to consult Parliament.

@ Tyler

“So you ARE saying that large families are solely the preserve of the rich or those on benefits?”

I’m not quite sure what you mean. Yes, all large families, at least if they’re claiming what they’re entitled to, are either on higher incomes, on in-work benefits, or on out-of-work benefits. But the same is true.of all small families: if they’re not on higher incomes, they’re entitled to child benefit and (generally) child tax credits, plus housing benefit etc. if they’re on a low income, plus out-of-work benefits if they’re out of work.

“Household median income is *defined* as take home pay, after taxation and including benefits. Hence *income* – otherwise it would be *pay*.”

This is true, I suppose, but I’m not sure what it has to do with the debate about the benefit cap. The £26,000 figure it’s based on is supposed to represent the *average earnings* of a working household, not the *median income* of all households. Working households with children typically get child benefit and tax credits in addition to their earnings from work.

“Unless you believe that statistically only people on benefits or the rich have large families.”

Only people on benefits have large families in the same sense that only people on the state pension are over 65. It’s kind of true, but a back-to-front way of looking at it.

“But you still don’t answer the real point which is that why should families get £26k a year for nothing, when 8m odd families work for less?”

Because they need that money to live on.

“You also are indirectly incentivising large families for those who can’t afford them with the idea that the more kids, the more benefits”

No more than you’re incentivising large *working* families by paying child benefit and tax credits for each child. Does anybody really have kids because they think they’ll be quids in after they’ve bought the pram and nappies and cereal and school uniform? I doubt it.

“Why is it ok for a family that can’t afford to have lots of kids able to effectively make it a burden on other taxpayers, who often have to make hard choices and plan their finances to have a family.”

Whether it’s OK or not is irrelevant. If those children are born and the parent can’t afford to feed and clothe and house them (etc.), the state needs to step in.

And here’s an argument you might understand: the better the start in life those children get, the better the chance they’ll succeed in their education and go on to get work and pay taxes themselves.

“£26k is household median income”

Where are you getting this from? I’m genuinely curious.

As mentioned above, I understood that £26k represented the average *earnings* of a *working* household. It would be a strange coincidence if it was also the median *income* of *all* households.

“That means, the family in the middle of the UK income distribution…”

Your understanding of the income distribution is clearly different from mine (and that of the IFS).

I thought it was all about ranking households according to how well off they are, taking household composition into account via a process of equivalising incomes – which would mean there was no such thing as ‘the’ family in the middle and ‘the’ income of that family. Instead there would be lots of families, on lots of different incomes, all in the middle because they’re all equally well off.

E.g. they might include a couple on 20k, a single person on 14k and a family of four on 30k (these are just guesstimates). The ‘headline’ median income, around 20k, is just a benchmark relating to that theoretical childless couple.

If you’ve got a different model in mind, could you maybe provide a link to help me get my head round it?

@ 47 G.O.

The £26k figure came from someone correcting me higher up the thread. The data I found actually had median income lower – which makes the case for a cap higher than median income more acute.

Politicians/media calling it “average earnings” are simply being lazy with their definitions. Median household incomes are used in definitions of poverty etc, and INCLUDE benefits, so your argument that working families also get benefits is null and void, because it has already been accounted for.

I’m not sure what data the IFS use, but I understand median income is statistically calculated with certain assumptions – the main one being that family sizes have a certain distribution which assumes there isn’t a predisposition for particularly large families at one end of the scale. Which again renders your argument about family size null and void.

Your argument really boils down to larger families need more money (possibly true) so we should give it to them, no strings attached.

I am saying we spend too much already, and can’t afford it as a nation. The welfare state, with benefits at a level equal to median income become a serious lifestyle choice, and it incentivises the poor behaviour and low aspirations that are clearly becoming habitual in some areas. If you give people enough that they don’t need to work, many won’t. If every time you have another kid you get enough extra cash to pay for it, family planning will become haphazard at best. The welfare state used to be a safety net, for basics and essentials, but now we find it paying for entire lifestyles including beer, fags and sky TV. Why should people who work hard, save and plan their families have to pay so much to allow so many people to be just as well off as them, many of them for their entire lives, for nothing?

And lastly, neither you or Jim have answered the really crucial question – how is the burgeoning welfare state to be paid for?

44. Jim

If we want those people who are long termed unemployed to get a job, we need to create jobs for those people who are recently unemployed, jobs for those Eastern European migrants as well as jobs for those long term unemployed as well.

Or, and this may be a little radical, we can not give jobs to those Eastern Europeans. We can ban them entering the country. Then we would have plenty of jobs for all those British people. Those that wanted jobs anyway.

To be honest, Jason, the labour market is a buyers market. Obviously, no employer will willingly employ a British born person with a lower skillset, than his European counterpart.

What skill set do you need to pick fruit Jim? What skills do you need to work in Burger King? Why is it that no British born person ever works behind the till in Inner London any more? Not even any British Caribbean people. Always nice girls from Eastern Europe. What skills do you need to sell me a copy of the Sun?

The only thing I can think of is either a labour shortage (European wide), or a long term work programme that we can make for British people only.

Or we could encourage British companies to employ more people. Or we could make welfare dependent on actually working.

Jim

If ‘Burger King’ open up a branch where I live and thirty people apply for each job, what do we do with the other twenty nine who are unlucky and what if the best candidates for the job are all Polish in the first place?

Gee, why would all the best candidates be Polish Jim?

We could encourage another 29 Burger Kings to open, couldn’t we?