Looking back at the party conference season, it's hard to decide which left me fearing most from next election.
I expect to be depressed by the Conservatives' self-righteous parade of prejudice, so George Osborne's miserly pledge to freeze working-age benefits and IDS's plans for a pre-paid card to stop feckless claimants splurging the hard-working taxpayers' largess on booze and fags (or public transport, charity shop clothes and market stall food for that matter) did little more than raise my usually low blood pressure to near-normal levels.
I have also pretty much abandoned hope of hearing anything truly compassionate or inspriring from the red corner when it comes to Social Security. Yes, they will abolish the Bedroom Tax - but we knew that already. We also know - for certain now the rest of the picture starts to take shape - that this is because it is already unpopular and it is hurting the budgets of Labour councils who retain their own housing stock. That it is wrong alone is not enough - other wrongs remain and are not to be righted.
On the contrary, we again had the unedifying spectacle of Labour again trying to look 'trustworthy' and 'tough' on economic issues at the expense of the poor. They would extend the freeze on Child Benefit beyond Osborne's original timescale - despite CB being disregarded for means-tested benefit purposes, making it something that can be increased without the gain being lost elsewhere, but meaning losses aren't compensated for by a corresponding rise anywhere else.
Ed Balls also made a point of stating that a future Labour Government would retain the 'Benefit Cap', limiting the weekly sum any family or individual could receive in certain benefits to no more than the average wage. I pulled apart the Tories' justification for this in an earlier post which showed how benefits payable to someone on the average wage would keep them ahead of their counterpart on benefits only:
http://raggedskirt.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/cloth-caps-benefit-caps-and-northsouth.html
The excellent 'Benefits in the Future' blog did a neater job with more maths and graphs here:
http://blog.cix.co.uk/gmorgan/2014/02/07/the-benefits-cap-and-real-income-levels/
The calculations aren't that difficult - I'm sure Ed Balls is more than capable of working them out for himself or has minions available.
What he isn't apparently willing to do is scrap something 'popular' with voters, because they wrongly believe it is dealing with the stereotypical - yet mythical - single parent choosing to have children solely as an alternative to working for a living, despite the fact that even very 'average' out-of-work families with two or three kids can no longer afford to live in most London Boroughs, even in supposedly affordable Social Housing.
In areas with lower rents the Benefit Cap is, to borrow an expression coined by the Chief Executive of our CAB, a 'Children Tax', as singles, childless couples and small families aren't affected. In this low-rent region of the north Midlands, you're allowed the equivalent of four-and-a-half children before the current cap kicks in. More than that and you'll lose a chunk of Housing Benefit, putting you in immediate danger of Court procedings (with costs) and ultimately eviction. If you receive no more than 'the amount the Government says you need to live on' in other benefits, it's inevitably going to be a struggle to make up the difference.
The maximum Child Tax Credit for one child is £2750 per annum, so trimming another £3,000 off of the cap as proposed this week - thus breaking any possible justification based on average wages - is the equivalent of telling families they are allowed one less child and for four and a half weeks of the year they are allowed two fewer children.
It's not as if affected families can retrospectively do anything about this policy. Even if it puts someone off having another child, what about the 'surplus' children they already have? Should they put them up for adoption? Leave them in baskets outside the door of the local Workhouse or Foundlings Hospital? Expose them on a hillside to await the fate appointed for them by the Gods? You could move away from the south, but £3000 per year less means you're going a couple of shires further up country this coming year for an insecure private tenancy - unless you're lucky enough to get a house on a northern Council estate full of voids left by the Bedroom Tax.
Don't be ridiculous, the Tories will say - the feckless poor simply have to find more affordable places to live, get jobs and in the meanwhile cut back on the booze and fags. Which completely disregards the fact that there are generally more and better-paid jobs where property prices are highest, that finding and moving to a new address isn't something that happens overnight and that unemployed people are less, not more, likely than their working counterparts to spend money they haven't got on cigarettes and alcohol.
I cannot stress enough that the real losers in all of this are children. Uprooted from the schools, friends and communities they know or going short because their parents are having to keep three of them on the money for two, education disrupted, family strife increased, living in cheaper, smaller and less safe or secure accommodation 'because we are too many'. As rents continue to rise and this cap stays in place, increasing numbers of families will literally have insufficient money to cover their rent anywhere in the country and landlords - including social landlords - will become wary of letting to large families, even those in work, in case unemployment or separation leaves them unable to pay their way. They will be forced to share or squat, borrow to cover debts with no chance of repayment or put children into care.
In short, this policy is so utterly morally bankrupt that it is frightening how little debate it now raises, let alone condemnation. But Ed says it stays, and George says it's going to be cut by £3000 per annum. I'm not holding my breath waiting for Ed to argue that it needs to go back up. The social ideals of 'Cathy Come Home' have turned into 'Cathy - f**k off to a slum up north, and take your kids with you.'
