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Tory cuts

Quotes from here

Who can get tax credits?
Nine out of ten families with children qualify for tax credits, but you don't need to have children to claim. You may also qualify if you are working and on a low income.
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I presume the 90% of people with kids getting tax credits are the ones who will be unaffected by the change to child benefit. Combining them seems so much easier.

Example 1
Mr and Mrs Khan both work full-time. Between them, they earn about £25,000 a year. They have three children. They get about £92 a week in tax credits.
If their income was higher, and they earned about £50,000 a year, they’d get about £10 a week instead.
Example 2
Jon Barry is aged 30, not married and lives alone. He works full-time and earns £10,000 a year. He gets about £25 a week in tax credits.

The Tax Credit Office will pay tax credits directly into your bank, building society
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Why can't people on the dole get the same

Example 3
Mr Bloggs doesn't work he earns £0 a year. He has three children. He gets about £150 a week in tax credits.
 
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Lothian said:
Quotes from here

I presume the 90% of people with kids getting tax credits are the ones who will be unaffected by the change to child benefit. Combining them seems so much easier.

Why can't people on the dole get the same

Example 3
Mr Bloggs doesn't work he earns £0 a year. He has three children. He gets about £150 a week in tax credits.
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Would that not just be changing the name?
 
Fiona said:
Would that not just be changing the name?
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If you mean child benefit. Yes but Child tax credits is means tested (per couple) so none of the nonsense this has suffered from.

If you are referring to my second example No, I mean a single allowance to replace:

* Bereavement Allowance (see EIM76173), replaced Widow's Pension from 9 April 2001
* Certain payments of Incapacity Benefit, see EIM76180
* Contributions based Employment and Support Allowance, see EIM76186
* Certain payments of Income Support, see EIM76190
* Pensions payable under the Industrial Death Benefit scheme, see EIM76200
* Carer’s Allowance (formerly Invalid Care Allowance before 1 April 2003), see EIM76210
* Jobseeker's Allowance, see EIM76220
* the State pension, see EIM76160
* Graduated retirement benefit, see EIM74602
* Statutory Sick Pay, see EIM76350
* Statutory Maternity Pay, see EIM76360
* Statutory Paternity Pay, see EIM76370
* Statutory Adoption Pay, see EIM76380
* Widowed Parent's Allowance (see EIM76172), replaced Widowed Mother's Allowance from 9 April 2001, although WMA is still paid to widows whose entitlement arose before 9 April 2001(see EIM76177)
* Widow’s pension paid to widows whose entitlement arose before 9 April 2001, see EIM76178.
* Attendance Allowance
* Back to Work Bonus (see EIM76223)
* Bereavement Payment (see EIM76171), replaced Widow's Payment from 9 April 2001
* Child Benefit
* Child's Special Allowance
* Child Tax Credit
* Cold Weather Payments, see also Winter Fuel payment
* Council Tax Benefit, administered by local authorities
* Constant Attendance Allowance, see industrial disablement benefit below
* Disability Living Allowance
* Income related Employment and Support Allowance (see EIM76186)
* Exceptionally Severe Disablement Allowance, see industrial disablement benefit below
* Guardian's Allowance
* Housing Benefit, administered by local authorities
* Incapacity Benefit for first 28 weeks of entitlement, taxable thereafter (see EIM76180)
* Income Support, certain payments (see EIM76190)
* Industrial Injuries Benefit, a general term covering industrial injuries pension, reduced earnings allowance, retirement allowance, constant attendance allowance and exceptionally severe disablement allowance
* Invalidity Benefit, replaced by Incapacity benefit from April 1995 but still payable where invalidity commenced before April 1995.
* In-work credit
* In-work emergency discretion fund payment
* In-work emergency fund payment
* Maternity Allowance, see EIM76361
* Payments out of the Social Fund to people on a low income to help with maternity expenses, funeral costs, financial crises and as community care grants. The fund also makes interest-free loans.
* Pensioner's Christmas Bonus
* State Pension credit
* Reduced Earnings Allowance, see industrial disablement benefit above
* Retirement Allowance, see industrial disablement benefit above
* Return to work credit, including the self-employment credit
* Severe Disablement Allowance
* War Widow's pension, see EIM76103
* Winter Fuel payment
* Working Tax Credit.
 
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To do this you have to acknowledge that the "insurance" element of benefits is not only, now, nugatory, but that that is how it should be. As I said above, I would be in favour of unifying the system if done for the right reasons: but I think you would have trouble selling this to a population which has been busily adopting the notion of an "underclass" for quite a long time now.


The political problem is it breaks the carefully constructed division between the "deserving" poor: and the "sturdy beggars". That distinction goes back a long way: post war, in a different climate shared by much of europe. we blurred or minimised that distinction (though it never went away): after Thatcher came to power we re-established it with a vengeance: a lot of effort went into that.

Looking at the benefits you list, the vast majority of them pertain to the "deserving": in that category you can place widows, orphans, the elderly, the sick and disabled. those who are injured at work, children (but not if their parents are feckless), those who care for others. and, at a stretch, the short term unemployed.

Because we have established that notion of the "underclass" many people who see themselves, and are seen by others, as the "deserving" will not wish to have their benefits absorbed into a system which also covers that group. There is an increasingly punitive element in the benefits system and it is very interesting to see how those who previously were included in the "deserving" group have been gradually removed from it: for example the attitude to the sick and disabled has shifted markedly: that is not an accident. The attack on them has been absolutely disgraceful and the means used to make that attack and to humiliate the claimants has enriched some very very dishonest people. That continues apace. Similarly the young single parent regularly have their turn at being demonised: as if caring for children were nothing at all but a ruse to avoid work (and get a house).

In this climate any move to "unify" benefits is unlikely to be seen as a practical approach to meeting our obligation to care for each other. If it done it will be done to save money: but it is difficult to see how it can be achieved without pushing all claimants into the demonised group: or abolishing that stupid distinction altogether. The right needs that demonisation, however: how else will they keep their supporters in a state of spluttering moral superiority and thereby allow the poor to become poorer?

Tis politics and not pragmatism that we need to address here: I do not see how they can sell this while at the same time saving money. You may find a way, though: I will be interested in your thoughts as to how this could be sold
 
Fiona said:
In this climate any move to "unify" benefits is unlikely to be seen as a practical approach to meeting our obligation to care for each other. If it done it will be done to save money: but it is difficult to see how it can be achieved without pushing all claimants into the demonised group: or abolishing that stupid distinction altogether. The right needs that demonisation, however: how else will they keep their supporters in a state of spluttering moral superiority and thereby allow the poor to become poorer?
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Except if you look at what is being cut and what isn't it's not rich vs poor (have you any idea how much it will cost to find away around the capital gains increase? Might have to settle for only the two bentleys). It's more like baby boomers vs everyone else.

For example cutting child benefit won't impact them one way or another (kids are over 18) but they are getting to the point where cuts to the NHS, cuts to winter fuel, cuts to free bus passes and cuts to pensions would. Guess what isn't being cut.
 
geni said:
Except if you look at what is being cut and what isn't it's not rich vs poor (have you any idea how much it will cost to find away around the capital gains increase? Might have to settle for only the two bentleys). It's more like baby boomers vs everyone else.

For example cutting child benefit won't impact them one way or another (kids are over 18) but they are getting to the point where cuts to the NHS, cuts to winter fuel, cuts to free bus passes and cuts to pensions would. Guess what isn't being cut.
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We do not yet know what is being cut, geni: there are overt cuts and covert cuts and a spending review to come. But the poor have been paying a great deal of the price for a long time and the pretence that this is not true is increasingly hard to sustain.

It is interesting that you mention the winter fuel payment: if the CB cut goes through such universal benefits are likely to follow, I think. Travel is not a central government provision so far as I am aware: and pensions are certainly being cut: they are not to be paid till later: what is that but a cut? And so far as I know they are included in the change to the indexing introduced in the budget: that, too, is a cut, if I am correct about it.
 
Fiona said:
We do not yet know what is being cut, geni: there are overt cuts and covert cuts and a spending review to come. But the poor have been paying a great deal of the price for a long time and the pretence that this is not true is increasingly hard to sustain.

It is interesting that you mention the winter fuel payment: if the CB cut goes through such universal benefits are likely to follow, I think. Travel is not a central government provision so far as I am aware: and pensions are certainly being cut: they are not to be paid till later: what is that but a cut? And so far as I know they are included in the change to the indexing introduced in the budget: that, too, is a cut, if I am correct about it.
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Err NHS is ringfenced. Free bus passes are centeral goverment backed. Camron can't cut the the winter fuel allowance without a U-turn and there was no sign of that when the issue was raised in the interviews of the last couple of days.

The state pension raise isn't going up until 2016 at shortest by which time 5 years worth of of baby boomers will have retired. Rise to 68 doesn't appear to be comming in untill 2038 by which time all the baby boomers will have reached retirement age.

The change to how state pension is increased as announced in the emergency budget will result in an equal to or higher than rate of increase in state pensions year on year than the current system.
 
That is interesting about the uprating to pensions and I missed it: can you explain?

ETA: as to the raising the age at which one becomes eligible, for women that has already happened
 
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In principle, one would think it should be possible to have a database record of an individual which has information as to their employment, disability, marital, dependents', housing status and anything else from Lothian's list above which could then be used to calculate benefits due. Being a long-standing reader of Private Eye which has catalogued government IT project failings over many years, I'm not terribly hopeful it'll be that easy.
 
Not to mention the civil liberties aspects of such an enterprise (the importance of which also seems to have been lost somewhere along the way).

I agree it is not practical and I am profoundly grateful for that. I see nothing to stop them doing that if they could: certainly not a committment to "it's none of your damn business" if CCTV is anything to go by.

But consider: do you really want that? Think of what would be required, especially if we are talking about a unified tax/benefit system. It would be tremendous fun just following the money of the self employed :D
 
Fiona said:
That is interesting about the uprating to pensions and I missed it: can you explain?
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Basicaly it is now indexed to earnings, RPI or 2.5% increase whichever is greater.
 
Darat said:
It doesn't augur well for the spending review if they get themselves so muddled up with what should have been a rather simple policy/cut announcement.
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Questionable. I expect the spending review to result in apocalyptic cuts in so many areas it won't be practical to worry about people complaining about specific cuts.
 
No I am not, I don't think

http://www.parliament.uk/briefingpapers/commons/lib/research/briefings/snbt-05649.pdf

The Conservative Liberal Democrat Coalition Government announced in its June 2010 Budget that it would switch to using the CPI for the price indexation of benefits and tax credits from April 2011. The basic State Pension would be uprated according to a“triple guarantee”, i.e. it would increase by the higher of earnings, prices or 2.5%. This policy would not apply to the additional State Pension (SERPS/S2P) which would increase in line with prices.39 The June 2010 Budget said...
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The breaking of the link with earnings was one of the nastiest things done by the Tory government: the failure to restore it was a disgrace to the Labour government: towards the end of this decade that could no longer be hidden and all three of main uk parties had pledged to restore it. This is a way to mitigate the effects of that pledge: in other words in time of recession and inflation, when prices rise faster than wages, pensions will rise less than they would have done without this measure.
 
Fiona said:
Areas where there is no work. That will work out well, I am sure.
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From a very cynical POV in the current economy moving the longest term unemployed is actualy a good idea.

After all we currently have an excess of employable people. On average the longer someone is unemployed the less employable they are likely to be. Thus by moving the longest term unemployed away from areas with jobs (to areas with very few jobs that we will call say Bransholme) and the shorter term unemployed towards such areas we provide companies with more employable people.
 
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