That this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill because it fails to address the reasons why the cost of benefits is exceeding the Government’s plans; notes that the Resolution Foundation has calculated that 68 per cent of households affected by these measures are in work and that figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies show that all the measures announced in the Autumn Statement, including those in the Bill, will mean a single-earner family with children on average will be £534 worse off by 2015; further notes that the Bill does not include anything to remedy the deficiencies in the Government’s work programme or the slipped timetable for universal credit; believes that a comprehensive plan to reduce the benefits bill must include measures to create economic growth and help the 129,400 adults over the age of 25 out of work for 24 months or more, but that the Bill does not do so; further believes that the Bill should introduce a compulsory jobs guarantee, which would give long-term unemployed adults a job they would have to take up or lose benefits, funded by limiting tax relief on pension contributions for people earning over £150,000 to 20 per cent; and further believes that the proposals in the Bill are unfair when the additional rate of income tax is being reduced, which will result in those earning over a million pounds per year receiving an average tax cut of over £100,000 a year.I'm genuinely confused by this. It reads as if they want to ensure that the cost of benefits doesn't exceed the Government's plans (which included swingeing cuts the last time I looked), want to make sure Universal Credit is delivered on time (rather than calling for it to be kicked into touch in favour of something fairer with real people dealing with claims and administration - which would create jobs, by the way), think it's only wrong to freeze the benefits of claimants who are in work, believe in a 'comprehensive plan to reduce the benefits bill' (when surely demographic change flies in the face of this ever actually being possible) and promotes its own proposals for what is effectively a 'workfare' scheme (see 'Right said Ed' post).
Why couldn't they just call for benefits to be uprated in line with the RPI as they used to be and an end to the stigmatisation of the poor, on the grounds that increasing the income of the poorest puts money straight back into their local ecomony, and therefore encourages economic growth, which creates real jobs?
Or if benefit increases must shadow Public Sector pay, then it is time for this too to be linked to an agreed measure of inflation.
Disgusted, Mugsborough.
