‘Just about managing’ families £2,500 worse off by 2020 – lift the benefit cap!

Empty pockets broke penniless poor poverty budget, photo Dan Moyle (Creative Commons)

Empty pockets broke penniless poor poverty budget, photo Dan Moyle (Creative Commons)   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Mike Barker, Leicester Socialist Party

As profits for Tory toffs steadily climb, low-income working families will be left £2,543 worse off by 2020. These same families are the so-called “just about managing” households that Theresa May has pledged to help!

But the only people May is interested in helping are her corporate mates. While ordinary people are beaten down with austerity, big business is offered tax breaks. May aims to lower corporation tax, already the lowest in the G20 advanced economies, to 17% by 2020.

The Autumn Statement should be a call to arms for Labour councils across the country. However, the vast majority of councillors are still committed to “just about managing” Tory cuts without fighting back. They are choosing to implement policies they know will only raise poverty and homelessness levels.

Conservative

If anything, estimates that household income will drop by £2,500 are conservative. The consultancy that undertook this shocking report, Policy in Practice, is headed by Deven Ghelani – one of Iain Duncan Smith’s protégés, and the primary architect of the Tories’ hated ‘Universal Credit’ welfare counter-reforms. He can hardly be relied upon for an impartial appraisal.

Either way, Deven’s report concludes: “Working households will lose £48.90 per week due to cuts to Universal Credit, rising private rents and the benefits freeze.”

The government’s response to cutting £381 million from welfare payments to the 190,000 households examined in this study has been to hand back a measly £10 million in discretionary housing payments!

Enough is enough: we demand a cap on rents; the reversal of all welfare cuts; secure, well-paid paid jobs for all; and an end to the scapegoating of society’s most vulnerable.