£25,000 benefits cap

[Xenia]

Average family has £26,000 to live on including housing. So from 2013 the most benefits available for one family will be £26,000 including housing benefit. Sounds like a sensible plan. Well done George Osborne. How did we ever get to a contrary position in the first place?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11463435

My sister worked for 34 years in a crappy job, lost it during the recession and could only claim job seekers allowance for 6 months as she had been careful and saved up. This seems unfair and really p* me off!

you see that wouldn't bother me HereinMyHead.

If I'd been working and saved up and had money in the bank I wouldn't expect the government to be paying me benefits when I had cash in the bnak!

And lets face it - I think it's £16k or more means you don't get anything at all. Then as the amount goes down you start to get a little more. £3k and under in savings and you still get full benefits.

Which I think is quite fair £3k is still a lot of money. It's nearly a years worth of JSA.

It bothers me that for nearly 40 years she's paid into the system and it won't support her while she looks for another job. The money she saved is for her pension, as she'll get precious little from the one she paid into all those years...

don't forget though (whether you agree with it or not) - even if she'd not lost her job - if after retirement she'd fallen ill and needed care they would have made her use that money as well.

I don't know - I just can't imagine claiming benefits with a fat wash of cash sat in my account grinning at me. It would just feel so wrong. It's bad enough claiming them as it is, without the thought of claiming them when i've actually got money in the bank that I could support myself on.

For 27 years she never had a day off!

While I i agree with the aim of the policy to ensure there is not a culture of living off benefit as an alternative to work I think this is a minority of claimants.

We need to ensure there is an adequate safety net for the majority who im sure want to work.

In particular families need some breathing space to get back on their feet if teh main earner suddenly loses their job, dies or is unable to work. I would like to see a period of say 6 months with uncapped benefits to give them a chance to sort themselves out without losing the home and uprooting kids from school etc .

If after 6 months they arent getting anywhere then they need to accept capped benefit levels even if this means a changed standard of living and possible relocations.

Ok this is probably stupid

If so just gently explain please lol

Would it not be easier and cheaper in the long run to pay people a living wage rather than topping up inadequate wages with this or that credit which if nothing else must be expensive to administer

And to build more houses/force people with longstanding vacant properties (I mean like years vacan not a month between tenants) shit or get off the pot as it were to free up more living space and bring rents down

My suggestion is so simple it must be rubbish lol

Sorry wrong thread I think, this is benefits for unemployed people, I meant to post on one for employed people

Ignore ignore ignore

hehe chibi - probably relevant here too - as many low income familes will be claiming just as much (if not more) than the unemployed.

Ok, here I will doubtless be putting my head in the gas jet, but why is there housing benefit? In Australia there is none. Rent comes out of benefits, and they are no higher than they are here. Somehow house prices still soar there and somehow there are fewer people living in cardboard cities than you see in London.

Another mystery to me is why there are Family Tax Credits for people who have jobs. From the figures in the Guardian these two are where most of the social security spend goes. I think maybe the idea is to help people whose wages are low to have better lives, but how then can anyone expect them to be motivated? Clearly I don't get it, so I'd be happy to listen while somebody explains to me why this is money well spent. Please don't yell at me for not being able to guess the right answer. :)

siieg - I'll give you an example.

(I'm currently on benefits for the record),

My rent here is £495 a month for a 3 bedroom house (which is really rather cheap, not only for the country - but even in my area).

I have 3 children (all concieved while married to my husband - who worked - again just to set the record staright )

If I were to work a 40hr a week job at minimum wage I would take home £882 a month. Plus my £188 child benefit.

Out of that I would need to pay my rent, bills, food and childcare................

Because it is not possible to look after a family on £16K pa. If employers paid their staff a living wage (no thanks to minimum wage that they don't). Then Tax credits would be unecessary. Minimum wage was brought in ostensibly to protect piece-workers, but in reality it was big business fat cats wanting to lower their spend on staffing costs, persuading the labour government to bring it in. THis has held down wages to the extent that the vast majority of people I know can work FT for not much more than £12K pa.

A managers job in a small retail outlet was advertised in my local paper this week. THe Salary? £16K. The fact that my DP earns £16K rather than £12K is something to be thankful for, But you still cannot support a family on that and that alone. THe only other option to DP working FT for £16K and our family being in receipt of TC's is for him NOT to work, and be in receipt of far more money than we are now...

Totally agree about the sh** wages and the evils of grasping big businesses and the high cost of living, but how then can they the guvverment up the minimum wage in a recession without forcing small businesses into bankruptcy? Which wouldn't help anyone much.

Average family has £26,000 to live on including housing.....is this figure based on before or after tax?

Right. When my DH looks to see what he's earnt in a year, after tax and NI its certainly not £26,000.

If benefits are being cut to £26,000 a year then technically my DH could give up work and stay at home all day and we'd be no worse off....which is precisely what the govt do not want us to do.

Maybe the government can't raise minimum wage to a liveable amount...and that's why they are paying so much out in Tax credits, because the alternatives are families leaving low-paid work in their droves and claiming JSA/ IS, or families being left to starve/ become homeless as £16K can't cover bugger all very much.

It's being done for 2 reasons - 1) to fidle the unemployment figures, because in reality, what people like my DP are doing is working for peanuts and receiving some form of benefits (TC's) in order to not show up in unemployment figures, and 2) so that big business (who fund most politics) can pay bugger all to their staff, thus increasing their profits.

And if they bring in workfare for the unemployed, all that will happen is that people like my DP in low-paid jobs will be made redundant, and then have to do the same job for 'free' in order to claim benefits, thus benefitting busines owners even more...

Why can't the govt lower the benefits to the minimum wage? £500 a week, based on a full-time week, is not the minimum wage. 40hrs a week, £5.93 per hour = £237.20 per week.

Why are those on benefits able to claim up to £500 per week?

Someone who is on the minimum wage and works 40hrs a week not only has to pay all their rent/mortgage, prescriptions, council tax etc etc...but they also have to live with just £237.20 (before tax, I must add) coming in.

Someone who is on benefits gets a lot of charges for free and doesn't go out to work to have an income of up to £500 (no tax involved) a week.

Something is seriously wrong here.

"omeone who is on the minimum wage and works 40hrs a week not only has to pay all their rent/mortgage, prescriptions, council tax etc etc...but they also have to live with just £237.20 (before tax, I must add) coming in. "

no - they don't have to live with just 237,

If I were to start earning £10k a year as from tomorrow then I would recieve approx £450 in tax credits, housing benefit, child benefit.

(that's per week btw)

elehluap thats all very well but that would not even cover my rent as La can not house us due to ds3 needs and told me there rather help with my ren private as alternative means there going to need to build us one

indeed roundthebend - I have a very cheap rent really at £495 a month.

If I were to live where Loudlass lives it wouldn't cover my rent either.

So DH earns 37k plus with extra for overtime he goes just into the 40% tax bracket and we'll lose CB.

So he earns after tax just above 26k.

So he could give up work and get nearly the same money plus we'd keep CB. I mean why should he have to work 50 hour weeks when he can stay at home all day, plus we'd save £300+ a month travelling expenses. That seems quite good to me!

As I see it the crux of the problem is this:

our tax system is independent ie it is personal and bears no relation to household income

but

our benefits system is based on the whole around household income

So as far as I can see any changes to benefit or taxation system can't be fair until both systems work on the same principles

Viva - whether you'd get that much would depend on your rent, your council tax and how many children you have.

If I got 26k a year on benefits believe me I would be going on foreign holidays and buying a plasma TV

imo very few people would ever get 26 grand, I think the goverment have said that figure as they know that there will be an uproar that anyone could get that much, that way when they really set to work on bringing the poor to their knee's , no one will care.
and it has worked, we even have people saying, cut the disabled peoples benefits(ok one loon, and one troll) but still you only have to look at mn to realise that kicking the poor is a well used pass time