The Staggers

The New Statesman’s rolling politics blog

Cameron considers a further £25bn in welfare cuts

Such a move would be unfair and unsustainable.

By Samira Shackle Published 16 May 2012 9:09

Does David Cameron any idea of how many young people in the UK are looking for employment? Miss Dynamite (5th L) does. October 10, 2011

David Cameron barely makes a speech without referring to hardworking people who “do the right thing” and don’t claim benefits. This language implies that claimants are, by default, doing the wrong thing – a convenient position given unprecedented cuts to the welfare budget.

While the government has already indicated an £18bn reduction in welfare spending by 2014, it is being reported that the Prime Minister is looking at plans that would see a further £25bn in cuts.

The proposals have been drawn up in a policy paper for David Cameron and are understood to have come from Steve Hilton, No 10’s outgoing policy chief. Hilton, who has just departed Downing Street to take up an academic post at an American university, has suggested that a further £25bn can be cut. The Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith – who told the Times last month that the government had a duty “to support people in difficulty” – reportedly thinks that this level of extra savings is unfeasible.

Where exactly would these extra savings come from? The suggestions on the table are even further cuts to housing benefit and a tougher system for the universal credit to push people into full-time rather than part-time work.

Let’s take these one by one. The housing benefit cap is already having a devastating effect, in what Boris Johnson termed “social cleansing”. The BBC reported last month that Newham council was trying to evict 500 families to Stoke – 135 miles north – as it could no longer afford to house them in private accommodation. As rents rise unfettered but wages are frozen across the board, 93 per cent of new housing benefit claimants are in employment - doing Cameron’s feted “right thing”. There is no denying that housing benefit has ballooned and rents are too high, and that this is in part due to successive governments choosing to subsidise private landlords rather than build more social housing. But slashing housing benefit without attempting to provide alternatives unfairly penalises tenants. The Chartered Institute of Housing has estimated that 800,000 homes will already be put out of the reach of poor families, and that many may be forced to move to areas where there is less employment (ie. out of big cities), thus compounding the problem. The housing issue is already one of the most radical and inhumane of the governments’ policies; it is difficult to see how further cuts could be sustained or justified.

Secondly, it is all very well to encourage people into full time work, but only if there are full time jobs for people to do. A system which helps people to end benefit dependency is a good thing – but it is disingenuous to pretend that unemployment is a choice. There are 5.7 people for every job vacancy in the UK. You do not need to be a mathematician to understand that you cannot squeeze five people into one job. Most people are unemployed or working part-time because that is their only option.

The fact remains that cuts to welfare are popular with the public. The British Social Attitudes survey in December showed that half of Britons believe that unemployment benefits are too high and discourage people from finding work. The benefit cap – for all its cruelty in practice – was broadly supported. With Liberal Democrats saying there is no way they would support these £25bn extra cuts, and Duncan Smith saying that this level of saving is “absolute nonsense”, let’s hope that Cameron “does the right thing” and throws these plans out.

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Tags: Welfare Iain Duncan Smith housing

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28 comments

Thu, 2012-10-25 01:42 — seo optimization (not verified)

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Wed, 2012-07-11 22:09 — ahmadnasr89

Fri, 2012-05-18 11:02 — Earthling,unfortunately (not verified)

What we need to do is to stop bickering amongst ourselves. This is what they want to see happening, anything to deflect the flak from themselves. We need to stand united as a people who want to work and support those who can't, because we are a humane race. But we've been taken advantage of. We're not stupid, it's just that they own the media and we've been drip-fed their propaganda for decades. Our taxes would be enough to support the country, able and disabled alike, if the greed of the few hadn't been syphoning it off for themselves. Isn't it time for us to stop looking in admiration at the super-rich and realise they are our enemy, living off our hard work and taxes? When our money goes into the banks coffers that's in effect what happens to it, and there's less and less to go round. That's why they're not lending. It's time to nationalise the banks, starting with the Bank of England. Give us back our tax money, Mervyn, you evil swine or whoever is pulling your strings! David Cameron or any PM in office is at the mercy of the banks and their private owners. The same people own the media, and print or announce exactly what they want us to believe. We've got to stop being gullible and reclaim control of our taxes and monetary system. Kick the b--tards out of office, out of the country, better still, lock them up, so they can't do to other countries what they're doing to Britain. Wait a minute, they ARE doing to other countries what they're doing here! They're probably related to one another, or are probably just a few families in the world. Let's start with Murdmuck and his evil regime.

Thu, 2012-05-17 21:33 — martybee (not verified)

Double Dip Dave's Devilish Design..is it possible to have a triple dip??...place your bets now please.

Thu, 2012-05-17 18:58 — Tony montana (not verified)

The labour leader is not perfect but he is right David cameron and his party are out of touch.He dont have to stand at a bustop at 4am in the morning to please the employer who has the power to higher and fire at will no come backs for a crumy minimum wage.
Nowdays you have to kiss there a....... for that not me i had 40 years of it im not suprised people dont want to work for s ..... pay give up your benefit for temp job and give yourself in a more vulnerable position than you would be if you were unemployed
His hatred of the working class and unemployed disabled pensioners is evident by there comments and also his hatred of the poor its our slavery and your grandfarthers thats puts diesal in the emploers 4by 4 I Think rather than introduce a minimum wage it should be a LIVING WAGE RATHER CLASS WAR COMING SOON BE READY.

Thu, 2012-05-17 16:18 — brian walmsley (not verified)

The country, is broken, it was broken by the blaire/brown cabal making promises it could not keep, and could not finance.

Brown's gang borrowed £158,000,000,000 (158 billions) in his last year.

Camerons first year, borrowed aprox £135 billions, second year aprox £126 billions.

note 'borrowed, over what we earned as a country',

what gripes me, is that Camerons gang are taking from the 'deserving-disabled' and allowing 200,000 thousand 'freeloaders' from all the world to come and live, on the money that the English disabled, have worked and been taxed on earnings, paid their 'National Insurance stamps all their working lives

lets stop these free-loading scroungers collecting money they have never earned, and help our own disabled and poor people.

Fri, 2012-05-18 02:38 — Amergin

Can we now in a decent newspaper put to rest the rather biased viewing of the affairs of recent years that Brown was responsible for the economic mess we are in. Brown was not reponsible for Greece, Spain , Portugal. Italy, Iceland the USA, Ireland and the looming collapse of the Euro, it was all down to the unfettered greed of capitalism who whined about too much regulation, too many rules. De-regulation began with Thatcher and Howe, continued under Major and left unchecked by Blair and brown but please do not pile it all the hapless Brown who is the victim of a brutal character assassination by the media, particularly the press.
Look! A farmer has a flock of sheep which he guards, tends to their welfare and good health often under very difficult conditions. At the right time he shears the sheep and sells the wool. The money he gets has been created by his hard workand diligence. The man who bought the wool will wash it, comb it, draw it, spin it, dye it( there are in fact many involved in all these processes but for simplicity let us suppose one man. He sells the spun wool to a weaver. The diffference between the cost of the raw wool and the spun thread is his profit and it's wealth that he has created by applying his work to a raw commodity and changing it. The man who bought the wool wove it into cloth which he sold to a tailor. His profit was created by his labour. The tailor makes a suit and sells it. His profit comes from applicationof his labour and skills. All involved in this process are the real wealth creators.In no way can bankers claim to be wealth creators, the man who applies his labour and skills to change a raw product into something needed/wanted by others are the real wealth creators. I was the member of an extended family that nubered 25 at one time we all worked, only one was a wealth creator as I have defined one. That is what is wrong with this country we have too few real wealth creators ,again down to Thatcher for allowing our great Industrial base to be moved out of the country and insisting the service industries would replace them. It was her and then Major who privatised everything under the arguement that private was more efficient and cheaper. If this was true we have to ask why she chose to sell off the most profitable first. They were already making money for the people not for private pockets. My Grandad paid his rates and worked to build reservoirs himself as a stone mason. The town paid for the reservoir it was ours. So too did we generate our own Electricity and gas. Later Mrs Thatcher took them and sold them back to us, we were allowed to buy shares in what we had made!
The Tories are rip off artists and whenthey say 'all in it together' they mean they are with their mates all eating from the same trough.

Thu, 2012-05-17 16:18 — brian walmsley (not verified)

The country, is broken, it was broken by the blaire/brown cabal making promises it could not keep, and could not finance.

Brown's gang borrowed £158,000,000,000 (158 billions) in his last year.

Camerons first year, borrowed aprox £135 billions, second year aprox £126 billions.

note 'borrowed, over what we earned as a country',

lets stop these free-loading scroungers collecting money they have never earned, and help our own disabled and poor people.

Thu, 2012-05-17 14:23 — Carer (not verified)

Being the husband of someone in a wheelchair... can I suggest that the person who said - 'surly they can find their way to a place of work, and throw themselves behind a specially-designed desk' - actually goes to his local shopmobility scheme and borrows an unpowered wheelchair, ties his legs together, sits in the wheelchair and puts his hands in oven mitts. Then he can try to get around his local town centre. Or onto a bus or into a taxi never mind get into a victorian designed office building.

The able bodied take the 'able' bit for granted...

As for benefits... I work full time and care for my seriously disabled wife, my doing so SAVES the state close on £4000 per month in care home fee's.

Yes she gets benefits, however the increased cost of utilities and assorted other requirements due to her illness far outway the benefits accrued.

My wife would gladly swap her benefits for good health.....

Thu, 2012-05-17 14:16 — Fraziel1

@david Edwards, you obviously do not understand that many families receive a lot of money on benefits. I do not mean most single people or couples without children, but families.

A couple with 4 kids would receive at the bare minumum, the following ,£111 p/week JSA, £200 p/week child tax credit,approx £60 p/week child benefit plus council tax and housing benefit which would likely be a minimum of £500 per month.It would likely be more and in london it would be far far higher. That comes to approx 25000 pounds per year, equating to a job earning approx 33k a year. If they receive any disability benefits you could add another 4-5k a year to that figure.Are you seriously going to tell me that someone on 33k a year is in poverty?

What incentive is there to work if you get more on benefits than you could get in a job? Why should you get more than people who do go to work and have to cut their cloth accordingly while those on benefits can get bigger houses and extra benefit for every child they have? It is an outrage and thankfully the British people agree and think the left is utterly out of touch on this issue.

Thu, 2012-05-17 12:42 — David edwards (not verified)

I live in benefits from south wales .Who are these people living life to the full on benefits people cant heat their homes going with out meals getting rid of their pets staying at home depressed and worried about the future.
You tories picking on the poorest should feel ashamed but you will not.Young people where i live want to work but therte isnt any to be had.
Taking more money off people on benefits to make the low wage workers feel like they are working for some thing is just plain cruel.I hope cameron and his cronies are out next election because they are now baordering on cruelty to its own people.
Why dont mps take a pay cut or pay freeze to show how comiitted they are to austerity.All just greedy how can you justify taking more money off the poor?beggers belief

Thu, 2012-05-17 06:59 — rain (not verified)

The overwhelming majority support a cap on benefits: most feel that cap is far too generous. If a disabled person can find their way to a demonstration and throw themselves from their wheelchairs, in protest: surly they can find their way to a place of work, and throw themselves behind a specially-designed desk? The previous few decades has seen an explosion of state dependency, even in times of plenty. We have seen our much cherished welfare system exploited and abused, seen it change from a safety-net to a fishing net catching and keeping many able-bodied individuals on long term state dependency. This simply can’t continue. Labour really does need to embrace welfare reform, the overwhelming majority support reform. That includes most of our own [hardworking supporters] that rise families and get-by each year on a lot less than £27.000.

Thu, 2012-05-17 12:31 — oswald (not verified)

throw themselves off a wheelchair? what a callous remark, being disabled is not an option people take lightly you know1

Thu, 2012-05-17 18:18 — rain (not verified)

The genuinely disabled will not see their benefit cut. Those abusing the title 'disabled' do need to fear these reforms. This gravy train needs to stop because we simply cannot afford it. Money that is taken by those assessed as ineligible to work, is money that can be spent on those genuinely in greatest need, including that of the real disabled. Indeed, of the more than 1.3 million people assessed, just 88,700 people were found to be completely unfit for work! Interestingly, one in three of those due for assessment dropped out of the application process.

Sat, 2012-05-19 17:04 — Carer (not verified)

Rain how wrong you are saying that the genuinely disabled will not see their benefit cut, my partner has MS she is registered blind has severe fatigue, doubly incontinent, has no feeling in her hands and has severe mobility issues and suffers from chronic pain and yet the government has introduced a new assessment method and she is worse than the last assessment. She is critical in care needs in five out of seven categories yet her benefit to pay for help has been cut by 66% as a result we have to get rid of her careers as we can not afford to pay them, I work full time long hours to make ends meet and have to leave my partner at home with hardly any help. We have appealed the decision twice and got a very small token rise which is still unmanageable, how is this not effecting the genuinely disabled? I should add that they also tried to take her DLA off her and we had to fight to get that reinstated. This government is a disgrace.

Sat, 2012-05-19 17:04 — Career (not verified)

Thu, 2012-05-17 10:21 — Mary Bolton (not verified)

Another spurious spokesperson for the 'overwhelming majority'. Sadly (for your analysis), a recent poll in the Telegraph contradicts what you are saying: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9268411/David-Cameron-considers...

41% is very far from an 'overwhelming majority' when the next figure is 39%, representing people who believed the cuts have gone far enough --and this was the Torygraph, not exactly the rallying point for 'bleeding hearts' and compassionate folk.

If we're going to talk critically about 'something for nothing' exchanges, I suggest we start with inherited wealth and tax avoidance. As Michael Meacher MP recently wrote:

'[D]espite the biggest slump for nearly a century, the 1000 richest are now sitting on wealth greater than at the height of the boom just before the crash. Their wealth now amounts to £414bn, equivalent to more than third of Britain's entire GDP [...] The increase in wealth of the richest 100 individuals has been £315bn over the last 15 years. If they were charged capital gains tax on this at the current 28% rate, it would yield £88bn, enough to pay off 70% of the entire deficit. It seems however that Osborne takes the notorious view of the New York heiress, Leonara Helmsley: "Only the little people pay taxes."'

It's also strange that the government, strapped for cash though it claims to be, is still managing to indulge in several costly and pointless wars. If you really think scraping back peanuts from the worst-off in society (the 26K-in-benefits figure bandied about by papers as if it were the norm is a complete outlier) is any way to balance the economy then you need to look at the bigger picture again. Balancing the book means looking at them first.

Fri, 2012-05-18 12:48 — rain (not verified)

"It's also strange that the government, strapped for cash though it claims to be, is still managing to indulge in several costly and pointless wars". The several costly and pointless wars were bequeathed by the previous Labour government, along with a financial black-hole. The 'overwhelming majority' do support a cap on benefits. But let’s talk about Disability Living Allowance that was introduced, by the Conservatives, in 1992. At that time, around 1.1 million people were eligible for the allowance. At May 2011, 3.2 million people were claiming the allowance. An almost 200% increase. Perhaps some of that increase, you may decide, is due to an aging population (the pensioner population has increased by 10% or just over a million, in the last ten years) and some to an increasing population (it grew by around 4.5 million or 8% in the period). My suspicion though, is that the very significant part of this increase can be traced to the fact that until very recently, claimants for this allowance were not independently medically tested. For some people, there has just been a paper based assessment - Maybe you say on the claim form that you have a certain condition and the government takes your word for it! Balancing the book means looking at wast and overspend. Those in need will receive help and support those that don't wont.

Wed, 2012-05-16 22:34 — Fraziel1

Ordinary people supported the benefit cap because they could understand something that intellectual lefties and liberals in their ivory towers of comfort could not, and that is that enormous numbers of people are receiving huge sums in benefits, far more than they could ever get in work and far more often than their neighbours get who do work, and they were disgusted and angered by it. The benefits cap almost restored my faith in politicians to actually do the right thing. Almost. If anything though it is too high as 26k a year is the average salary before tax.

Only when these idiots who now seem to be the sole driving force of the left realise that what was happening with benefits was a bloody outrage and that benefits are there to support people not allow some of them a comfy life with all mod cons ,will they again be electable. For what its worth i do not think there is any more to be cut and the government have done enough. The left are living in cloud cuckoo land though if they think that Ed M is ever going to win an overall majority.

Wed, 2012-05-16 18:02 — Mrs.Josephine Hyde-Hartley (not verified)

Dear Vanessa ( not verified) WED, 2012-05-16 11:50,

Please don't despair. Your oxygen is I understand a type of medicine..albeit a highly inflammable and horribly expensive element. Oxygen, which can be highly toxic as you will know is prescribed and administered by doctors in hospitals on the medicine charts , as I remember. It's not an aid to walking, like a stick or a false leg or even a wheelchair. So oxygen itself isn't really a medical device.. even though it can only be safely contained in a medical device or tank. That extra oxygen is the necessary gaseous element to enable somebody with COPD to stay alive.

This might be important to point out under the 'new improved' benefit rules. One wonders if the new improved forms will allow this concern to be raised?

Wed, 2012-05-16 13:22 — Mary Bolton (not verified)

The right wing has been highly successful in its deployment of the scrounging 'workshy' stereotype. Telegraph and Daily Mail readers alike have picked up on this term with little or no thought whatsoever as regards its history---used by the NSDAP (in German, Arbeitssheu is literally 'workshy') to systematically stigmatise not only Slavic, Jewish and Roma but all disabled people in the German popular perception of itself. On this basis, having a populist backing, it became possible to advance a legal framework for Auschwitz. I'm not suggesting our Government has such an end in mind, I'm suggesting that they are using exactly the same means: propaganda, ideology, politically-strategic exaggeration, lies and inane cartoon-like imagery. Old fashioned BS, in a word. And the great tragedy is that the smaller-minded people of the UK, those who read the mainstream news, are the truly lazy ones: intellectually lazy. This is because they won't think. They won't do the thinking required to recognise what blinkered depths we have sunk to when a newspaper can characterise the disabled as 'bullies'. This is no different to calling the victim of an assault 'the perpetrator', and then blaming them for it. It is cowardly behaviour, it is pathological, and it is wrong. People are commiting suicide out there because of the effects of the government's crazy austerity politics, that have never yet worked in the history of economics. The Tory's can only pretend for so long that they are legitimated in what they are doing by the closed loop of a kowtowing neoliberal media merely reporting the reflected effects of its own scapegoating. As the Leveson inquiry is proving, the whole machinery by which government and populace interact, police and regulate each other is deeply corrupted to the core, and there will be a reckoning soon the Tories will never recover from.

Wed, 2012-05-16 15:27 — G Hancocks (not verified)

".... the whole machinery by which government and populace interact, police and regulate each other is deeply corrupted to the core, and there will be a reckoning soon the Tories will never recover from". I totally agree with you and do hope you are right that the reckoning this awful government are due will duly follow.

Wed, 2012-05-16 12:02 — november (not verified)

"With Liberal Democrats saying there is no way they would support these £25bn extra cuts,"

So basically this is gonna happen cause the lib dems will all turn up and vote for it

Wed, 2012-05-16 15:24 — G Hancocks (not verified)

Quite. Depressing isnt it how the great liberal party have become a right wing governments poodle.

Wed, 2012-05-16 11:50 — Vanessa Smith (not verified)

Over the past couple of years I have become 'the enemy' in my own country. I am the fox running scared from the pack of hounds. I hear my fellow countrymen baying for my blood. I am like a rabbit frozen in the full glare of the headlights.

It's not just the daily news attacks, telling stories of unworthy 'scroungers on DLA', living like kings, fit enough to be the next olympian etc. It's the way this government has fed and fostered the ignorant, harshest and cruelest aspects of British public opinion. The way it has practised it's divide and rule tactics. The way it has turned the 'have little' against the 'have not's'. The way they have turned the healthy against the sick.

Big Society. Don't you dare utter those two words ever again Mr. Cameron. Your Big Society requires a nation united, where neighbour helps neighbour, where people have respect for one another. Where there are common goals and a vision of something better. You have crushed all hope of that.

So I lay awake at night, alone except for the sound of my oxygen concentrator - the quiet 'click' sound accompanying my every in breath. If its a good day tomorrow I may have a shower - but only if its an exceptionally good day. Otherwise a 'lick and a promise' will do. I have to ration my exertion in order to pursue my one remaining pleasure in life - a walk outdoors. This is done daily if there is any way I can manage it. It is done, quite literally, three or four steps at a time with short rests in between. The portable oxygen tank on my back weighs over 5 lbs, but could well be a stone or two for the way it weighs me down. In my pocket is a mobile phone and the price of a taxi fare home. The local cabbies know me now, know to put me to the top of their queue and hurry to my aid when I am exhausted, to drive me the quarter mile or less back to my front door. A trooper they call me. An incredible lady. "You go girl!" they say.

Under the 'new improved' benefit rules I am officially now a scrounger. I can walk with an 'aid' - my oxygen. Some time over the coming months I will be called in for my 'reassessment' and the lifetime award I currently hold will be taken from me. And as I now have, thanks to the new retirement rules, ten years before I reach 'retirement' age, I will be told I can manage on Job seekers allowance or its ESA equivalent and look for suitable employment. (not that I am likely to reach retirement you understand, I will probably have ceased to exist by then).

So I lay awake at night and worry, alone except for the sound of my oxygen concentrator, click, pause, click ,pause, click ...... Vanessa

PS. I have very severe COPD - Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. I also have Alpha 1 anti trypsin deficiency. In England and Wales someone dies from COPD every twenty minutes.

Wed, 2012-05-16 11:47 — Stuart Eels (not verified)

"The Cuts" what cuts? So far Call me Dave and his cronies have cut everything except that which should be cut, the Civil Service in all it's bloated forms. When Civil Servents can "work" from home for seven weeks while the Olympics are being held says it all THEY ARE ON A GRAVY TRAIN HEADING NOWHERE FAST. Call me Dave will always look after his own!

Wed, 2012-05-16 10:34 — Meg Taylor (not verified)

i am also concerned for people with disabilities who are going to lose benefits on the false assumption that they are going successfully compete with the able bodied for these non existant jobs. Some have already committed suicide because they are anxious that their already limited quality of life will be reduced further. It is my opinion that this government is perpetrating hate crime on the disabled.

Wed, 2012-05-16 09:39 — Briar (not verified)

The current cuts are already unfair and unsustainable. What we should be examining is the propaganda campaign that has succeeded in selling the lie that people on benefits are "scroungers" to half of England's voters.