So, if the HB cap is to be £400 a week for a 4-bed house, and council and LA rents are to be put up to something like 70% or 80% of market value - how the heck does THAT work? I am not in London, but in Essex. I am TIED to the estate I live in currently by an access Court Order (therefore to move out of my expensive area would mean breaking a Court order and possibly being imprisoned).
MY Council actually has a LOWER limit HB cap already. Which is £865pcm for a 4-bed. So that would be a cap of just under £200 a week, over the year (multiplied by 12, divided by 52).
4-Bed houses in my local area average private rent is £1200pcm. Which for someone like me, would mean having to find £100 a WEEK to top up my rent out of my benefits. A total impossibility. Therefore I am having to wait for a council or HA property.
If the 'basics' were covered by vouchers - would vouchers be ALL that people on benefits got? What about if their dc needed clothing more frequently than they were allowed vouchers for clothing (growth spurt, say). Or if their dc was particularly hard on shoes, and wore them out quicker than they were 'allowed to'? Or if they wanted to buy their dc birthday or christmas presents? Or new bedding? Should the CHILDREN suffer because their parent's CAN'T (or, in a few cases, won't) get a job?
Not everyone can get a job - there is hardly ANY SN childcare, for example - and a LOT of people with dc with SN don't get DLA. I personally have had to give up a paid job because the ONLY available SN Childminder in my town gave me notice for my DD (13yo, with asd) ON MY FIRST DAY. I managed to scrape on for another 3 weeks - but there was NO other childcare available for her. And she is not able to be left at home alone, due to her asd.
AND no-one on NMW is going to be able to afford to PAY to commute into the 'richer' areas in order to work - so moving them out will only result in them either finding NMW jobs closer to where they now live OR them giving up work as they can't afford the travel AND food.
Solution - Pay a LIVING wage as NMW. End of. Until employers are prepared to DO this instead of expecting the government (and by default, taxpayers) to pick up the tab - then people earning more than £6.09 a bloody hour should bloody well stop moaning, unless THEY are willing to try to live for a month on NMW, and pay all their packed lunches for their dc, the vast majority of their rent, all their council tax, AND find the money to pay 30% of their childcare AND find the money to pay all their bills AND their travelling costs to travel the 1hr+ that richer people are assuming they can afford to find from an already over-stretched budget.
£6.09 an hour is NOT a liveable wage. If any of you could live on that after being taxed 20%, and still pay for everything that you need to LIVE rather than just survive, then by all means, feel free to complain about all this.
Why do people that DO earn a more reasonable amount not understand what life is like for people that are only able to earn NMW?
And people on a better wage seem to assume that people working FT for NMW get money thrown at them. I'd like to see how - when my Ex-P was earning £16.8Kpa before tax (at 20%) - we got £4.28 a week WTC. YES, we got quite a bit in CTC - but that is because the Government RECOGNISES that £6.09/hr is NOT enough money to raise a family on, and that not everyone CAN earn more. Also Capitalism itself RELIES on there being a pool of unemployed workers, so that other low-paid workers will put up with worse working conditions and low pay, so as to make the people at the top of the Capitalist tree richer. Without that - Capitalism would FAIL..