£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

HB is not an investment. Mortgage is.

A working family who has £200 pw left after paying mortgage is not the same with a family who has £200 pw benefits and the rent paid by hb.

The first family will pay off their house one day (and if they downsize or move out of the city will have a nice profit).

The second family will have nothing and will be vulnerable forever. How is this more desirable?

wages even, oh kerrist on bike, I do need more sleep....

For nobodyisasomebody.
Err you claim to not have a computer, so how did you post on here then?

libraries, some sure start centres, a friend's house???

annie, think it's a fair question about why taxpayers should support someone who has resources. Clearly the taxpayer has to support people who have nothing, that's obvious in a civilised society (and we are still one of the world's largest economies).

Having savings gives you more options and more flexibility than someone on benefits. Just as owning a house gives you advantages over someone who is renting and on HB.

(I used to be in a similar position of having savings that would have disqualified us from benefits had we been unfortunate enough to lose our jobs, btw. Sadly the past year means I don't have that cushion any more but I will be building it back up. Although ruddy Bank of England interest rate levels make it extremely hard.)

edam - it's not that I think the taxpayer should support someone with resources, it just seems very unfair that people with financial foresight often seem to get screwed over!

OK so have we now got all teh info?

Becuase otherwise there are some wrong thinsg ehre.

Is this going to cover just unemployed famillies (in their many permutations) or low [paid working?

becuase as low paid working we get a little HB (mainly becuase of the disabled boys) but no free school meals, for example.

DLA isn;t counted but it seems carers will be (that's another £56 a week gone for MC carers then) and who knows about the disability tax premium?

So, without a lot more info I reserve judgemnet, except to say that if its just for those on JSA or IS, the carer premium part of IS can be retained and there is a weighting for those in the SE (not me but housing there so expensive) then I'd be for it.

I woudln't sign up to anything where a carer was treated as if they were simply jobless and on IS through choice. And I hate the thought of what seems likely to ahppen in the SE where people are likely to be dispalced wrt housing (according to boris, who is hardly red).

I think the benefit scroungers KNOW who they are, if you don?t work because you have good reason to no work then so be it, but there are some people out there that have never done a days work in there lives and still have the cheek to say they don?t get enough benefits that?s what takes the piss.

I will have to go back to work, we live in London as that?s where work is, my husband earns around 35k per year which may sound like a lot but after you've taken off our Rent £1200.00 then bills then travel in to work, baby stuff, pension (wouldn?t want to be accused of not provided for ourselves later) there aint much more than pennies left in the pot, so who's going to feed us? The state? HA! that?s a joke we earn too much.

Our child care costs will be 3 quarters of my wages if I go back full time and who wants to work all ours to pay 3rd party to bring up there child, because we exceed the 'rich' margin we get nothing, yet we have less money than most others, how is it fair?

YES, Put a cap on it. Encourage people to work and then give them benefits for it.

I know of sooooo many people who have never worked a day, OK they don't own their own houses but they never go without either.....

WRt to life of riley- ime whether you have an intolerable existence on benefits or an OK one depends largely on how much debt you had when you went on them.

That's not about blame- debt can happen through many things and I an assure yopu I learned the very hard way!

But if we reduce them so that debts cannot be reapid we make a further state burden- people who cannot access private housing, struggle to get the basics to keep them in work (clothing, a car if they need one(and saying catch the bus is well and good but my last 3 jobs required a car, and plenty of us live rurally).

And of course the basic effect on the economy that a ++ rise in bad debts brings.

I know we are happier on a low working famillies / carers income with no debt (cleared when we lost the home we owned through illness so no luxury there) than when we were on £50k a year joint pre-tax income with family childcare.

Kbarns - that's already happens - as I said if I were to earn 10k a year (before tax) I would get nearly £24k back/support from the government

I currently get lot less than that for not working.

They say this is the only way to do it, as it would be too expensive and complex to work out a family's income. As a single parent I get a council tax rebate- that involves signing one letter a year. What's so complicated about that? I'm quite happy to sign another letter every year to say that I'm a single parent to keep getting the CB!

'out there that have never done a days work in there lives and still have the cheek to say they don?t get enough benefits that?s what takes the piss.

• I know I harp on but heck, someone has to. If you exempt carers and the sick / disabled from that then I think I would agree.

I don't want a subsistence level: I want children to eb able to be raised in an environment where there is a possibioity of them getting a nutritious meal and a coat. But equally it does seem wrong that those who shout 'not enough' are often those who haven't contributed.

I know it would never happen as it would make jobless figures rise but there is an argument surely for extending teh contributions based rate of JSA and popping that up a little? To reward those who have contributed?

I agree with having a good work ethic. A lot of people who claim benefits do. Take for example the person on miminum wage who claims CTC and WTC and childcare costs:

A lot of low paid jobs seem to be those that actually require people to put something back into the community. Working with the elderly, the disabled, children, then there's support workers, charity workers, to name but a few. Yet we've lost sight of what is important by diminishing the status of caring and helping roles to the bottom-end of the payscale. It's the people who do these poorly paid but necessary jobs that should have financial support by way of benefits, because we couldn't do without people like this.
But then there's those benefit bashers who believe that if you don't earn it all in your job then you should be worse off than they are, that if you e.g only earn 15K but are topped up by benefits to 25K then that's unfair to them.
There's a moral argument here.

i agree selling off the council house started the cause of all this misery.

it should never have been allowed.

since then all thats happened is the cost of buying or renting has gone through the roof.

making life worse for all of us.

MaMoTTaT - So that wouldn't be affected by the cap as it's less than £26k in benefits. What is the 23k made up of btw?

Something similar to this has already been done in the US but it only hurt the children.

'I agree with having a good work ethic. A lot of people who claim benefits do. Take for example the person on miminum wage who claims CTC and WTC and childcare costs'

Yep, or Dh who studies full time (and his course actually is full time) then comes home to do his hours trying to make a business for himself.

I reckon he does about 60 - 80 hours per week, as well as helping a lot with the caring for the boys (we have 4, 2 with SN)

Damn his lack of work ethic eh?

i am well pleased with this result... we are an average family 2.4....and we have an income of just over 17k.... (not inc benefits) yet those who dont even work seem to have more money than us ??? it makes no sense !!! no wonder those that dont work, dont want to go out and earn it !!! there is no insentive. I am desperate to go back to work for insanity reasons, so am now a volunteer to say "hey !! i'm not lazy" lol :o

No - it wouldn't - - but as I said where I live is very cheap really to rent (3 bedroom Victorian terrace, 2 double bedrooms - £500 a month).

I have no idea of childcare costs (haven't quite got that far in the getting ready to go back to work thing) so I used a random figure of £120 a week (for 3 children??)

It's made up of WTC and CTC (including childcare based on the above figure) of £15k a year

Housing benefit - £4800 a year

and child benefit £2450 a year

So they'd take away my IS (obviously) and a little bit of my housing benefit, and add on more in tax credits. I already get CTC and housing benefit.

So basically they'd say was no longer on benefits but working and contributing - but in actual fact giving me more money just under a different name.

Obviously we want people to be economincally active, but to say that they're cutting the deficit by getting people off benefits into work is a little misleading as many of those on benefits will end up in low paid working and getting the extra help. So in terms of cutting budgets it will reduced the DWP's housing and JSA/IS budgets, but increase the HMRC's budget.

(can I just add that despit the fact I'll be costing the government a lot more and getting more in the way of handouts for what I'll probably end up paying in tax and NI I am looking forward to when I start work again).

They need to stop paying all the families who have never worked a day in their life. They would soon find some sort of work if they had no money coming in. I am sick to death of hearing about all those scroungers and sick of the fact people work and earn very little in comparism to what others get in benefit.
I have no problem with people losing jobs/disabilities etc but those who have never worked need a good haarad kick in the backside, not money. Give them vouchers. Or let me do an online shop for them.!!

Bring back the work house!!!!

HERE HERE scottie04 !!

really what sort of work would that be?

A search of our job centre website and local papers show very few job really that are over 16hrs a week.

Right now it's completely financial stupidity to work less than 16hrs as you lose most of your benefits, but don't get any help with childcare or WTC

MiasmaTue 05-Oct-10 08:21:58
It ought to be no more than 2 people working full time can earn if they are paid minimum wage.

So that is roughly £14,000 a year, hardly liveable if that is all you have coming in. What about dependants how can you raisee a family on that amount. £4,000 would go straight on rent and council tax then if kids are involved you are looking at childcare costs, school meals and clothes, several thousand there.
Our heating and electric bill is 1,000 a year so you would be left with very little which is why you have WTC and CTC and HB.

My total benefits add up to the £25,000 cap they are suggesting and for a family of 6 with a disabled child it is just liveable, as if you are on benefits it should be. If we were to then lose £11,000 we wouldn't be able to manage

I don't suppose any of the Tory toffs have considered the fact that adding caps on benefits is going affect those that are working as well - i mean it's surely only the non working who claim anything back from the state isn't it