Wednesday 8th January

The Chancellor has just put us all in a an even worse mood than the weather was doing by announcing huge cuts on top of the already announced and not yet implemented cuts (oh and also on top of yet more un-detailed cuts he has penciled in for the year after the election).  Talk about permanent austerity; for ever and ever.  And he has also said that 12 billion a year will come from the benefits bill, while assuring us oldies that the state pension will continue to increase year on year.  If you think the sums don’t add up you are quite right.  At present the state pension is over half the benefits bill.  So if the benefits budget is decreasing but pensions are increasing they will become an ever larger proportion of that ever reducing cake.  Which means what exactly?  Well no-one knows.

The trouble with benefits is that they are paid out as required; they are a legal entitlement as long as certain conditions are met.  In other words the Government cannot say that there is a finite sum available because if there are more legally entitled claims they are legally committed to paying up.  The only way the circle can be squared is if each year they reduce the legal entitlement for benefits.  In other words turning the screw yet again on the poor.

The real solution to the ever burgeoning benefits bill is to change the economic pressures forcing people to claim benefits in the first place.  Housing benefit is simply a subsidy to landlords, encouraging the rental market ever higher.  We need to bring in fair rents, or threaten to tax landlords who charge above what is considered a fair rent.  Family credit is a subsidy for employers to pay low wages.  We need to raise and enforce the national minimum wage and reduce employer national insurance on these lower paid wages and raise the tax threshold yet higher to raise the income of the poor so that they don’t need to claim benefits but can actually survive on the wages they are paid.

This government trumpets time and again the number of extra jobs ‘they’ have created, but in fact many are part-time, and people are doing two jobs just to get by.   It is crazy that the Government through benefits should in effect make up peoples wages to a livable level.  Work must be made to pay, but also wages need to be high enough to stop working people ever having to claim benefits.