‘CUTTING social security even further and plunging more families into poverty is simply cruel, punishing the poorest in our society for the Tories’ economic failure,’ Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) general secretary Mark Serwotka said yesterday.
He was responding to a lowering in the cap on the amount of benefits a family can receive, a cap that came into force yesterday. The cap has been reduced from £26,000 a year to £20,000 a year in the UK – except in Greater London where the limit is £23,000 a year. This means that the UK’s poorest families will be as much as £6,000 a year worse off, and up to £3,000 worse of living in London.
Serwotka added: ‘Instead of cutting benefits, the government should tackle the double injustice of endemic low pay and soaring rents that swallow up housing benefit payments.’ The GMB union described the lower cap as ‘a monstrous new assault on 40,000 single mothers, which risks shattering the life chances of children up and down our country.’
Tory Work and Pensions Secretary Damian Green said the government’s benefit cap is a ‘real success’. He said on Monday: ‘By making sure that those people who are out of work are faced with the same choices as those who are in work, the benefit cap has been a real success.’
He cynically added: ‘By lowering the cap today, we are ensuring the values of this government continue to chime with those of ordinary working people and delivering on our commitment to make sure work pays more than welfare.’
Matthew Reed, chief executive of The Children’s Society, said: ‘Given the Prime Minister’s aspiration of making Britain a country that works for everyone, it is deeply disappointing that the government is pushing ahead with an ongoing agenda of cuts to financial support for children in low-income families.
‘Making savings by cutting help for the poorest children is unnecessary and unfair.’
Meanwhile household debts have risen to as much as £1.5 trillion in the UK for the first time, new statistics show. The Money Charity, which compiled the statistics, says UK adults owe an average of nearly £30,000 each, mostly in mortgages, but also in loans and credit cards.
Some 87% of this debt is in the form of mortgages, secured by property. But UK adults also now owe an average of £3,737 in loans and credit cards. The warning from the charity, comes days after the governor of the Bank of England warned inflation rates are likely to rise to 2.7% in 2017.
