George Osborne's Autumn Statement - your reactions please!

[CatherineHMumsnet]

The Chancellor George Osborne will begin making his Autumn Statement in Parliament today at 12.30. Thought we should start up a thread so Mumsnetters can comment as it happens.

Private landlords should rent their houses out for whatever people are prepared to pay for them. But that doesn't include the state in my opinion. It isn't the state's problem if landlord investment goes wrong. I don't agree with people occupying council houses if they can afford to buy their own property. I certainly don't think the answer is to build more council houses for rent.

Yes, many of us started working on the basis we would draw a state pension at 60 and now it will be 67. They keep changing the rules.
Many pensioners live in poverty but the press does not often seem to want to write about that. They like to pretend most pensioners are on high private pensions. The old are less fit. Many fought in WWII for us and most do not complain and often do not even claim benefits they are entitled to. I think it's right they do not bear the brunt of the current situation.

As for landlords plenty would never go near a housing benefit tenant and they just want to operate in the free market with those whose salaries can afford the rent. One of my children is about to buy to let and will not make a profit but hopefully will eventually have a place in which they might in due course afford to live. It is not a gravy train buying to let and you take on the risk of property prices dropping so much you lose all the savings you put into it.

It's quite a feat for a chancellor to turn up, have to admit his policies have failed and that he's strangled the economy, and then to claim with a straight face that we are on track and 'turning back' would be a disaster.

I love the many and varied excuses Osborne and the Office for Budget Spin come up with for the entirely predictable failure of his self-defeating addition to austerity. It's the Europeans' fault. It's China's fault. It's America's fault. It's everyone's fault apart from George, apparently.

And he appears to think no-one can see through his pretend plugging of the most glaring gap by fudging the figures on what he imagines he might make out of selling the 4G mobile phone network.

It means building council houses basically. And then renting them out, rather than selling them.

I hear this all the time as though it is some sort of magic bullet. But where would the money come from the build the numbers needed? Not to mention the billions which would be needed to keep them in a good state of repair afterwards.

Contrary to popular belief, private landlords aren't all raking it in. Maybe some are. Most are not. There's a BIG difference between the rent paid and the PROFIT made. Often landlords make next to nothing on the monthly rents and are banking on house price rises in the future to pay for their retirement. That may have worked pretty well in the past....not too sure how reliable a plan that is now.

I agree with those who say the whole tax credits thing is a load of nonsense. Many working family get it because of the cost of their childcare. Adding a complex means tested payment system to deal with that is just a sticking plaster. Other countries manage to have low cost but good quality childcare, look at France.

"I don't agree with people occupying council houses if they can afford to buy their own property."

The average cost of a property in the SE is about £250K. Most people on an average wage have NO HOPE of ever owning a property. What do you suggest is the answer for these people? Carry on paying hugely high private rents for the rest of their lives? How is this good for the country or for the exchequer, in times of high unemployment?

There are other places in the country to live rather than the SE although you wouldn't think so if you read some of those threads. People who can't afford property in London move out of London. Don't expect tax payers struggling on poor wages in other parts of the country to subsidise extortianate rents and prices in the south east. Sorry but I really do think this attitude has got us in the mess we are in.

They can start at the bottom on the grottiest tiny bed sit they can like most of us have had to do in the nether reaches of the worst bit of town and work their way up.. but no... they need to have that designer 4 bed whether rented or not.

A move to higher personal allowances and many fewer tax credits and less housing benefit is a much cleaner better route to go. It might also hvae the advantage of getting more women into work so they cease to be at the ecnoomic mercy of a man and have no escape route if things go wrong because they maintain full time careers which give them a chance over a 40 year career span to do better and better.

They must live in Chelsea and Kensington on housing benefit whilst other people in the north east struggle on run down council estates. Talk about entitlement!

"There are other places in the country to live rather than the SE although you wouldn't think so if you read some of those threads."

So, if it was me having to claim housing benefit (it's not, but anyway), it'd be better for me to take my children out of their outstanding OFSTED rated school, and move to an area where there are very few jobs and where wages are massively lower. Because it's these areas where housing costs tend to be lowest. It'd also be reasonable to expect me to leave behind both mine and DH's elderly and infirm parents who currently live nearby and tell them to shift for themselves?

You really think it's reasonable to remove people from their communities, take them away from their support systems and family networks, uproot their children from school, make it more difficult for them to find permanent, well-paid work, to save money on housing benefits?

"They can start at the bottom on the grottiest tiny bed sit they can like most of us have had to do in the nether reaches of the worst bit of town and work their way up.. but no... they need to have that designer 4 bed whether rented or not."

What are you talking about? Whole families in a tiny bedsit? Who gets a 'designer 4 bed home' on housing benefit? Round here £800 would pay for a small 2 bed flat in one of the grimmer parts of outer London.

Anyway, you're going to get your wish about poor people claiming housing benefit being removed from central London. Apparently some schools are losing up to a third of their pupils as the hard up families are uprooted from their communities and sent to live in cheaper areas. Hey ho, I know if it was me and my children I'd be utterly devastated, but if it means we can carry on paying rich pensioners their fuel allowance then it's got to be worth the distress and upheaval it'll cause to some of the most disadvantaged families in the country.

Rock on Thatcher's children!

This is total entitlement. Please don't expect the taxpayer to pay so you can send your children to a good school. Poor people can't afford to live in central London. I am not poor and I can't afford to live in central London. If people can't afford to live in expensive houses then they simply cannot expect other people to subsidise them. I am so glad that at last this dreadful unfair system is coming to an end.

Yermina there is a middle ground between living in London with extortionate housing costs and moving to the cheapest part of the country (probably parts of the North East) which has high levels of unemployment. How about Leeds or Nottingham or hundreds of other towns and cities. Why should we subsidise you?

I asked on a similar thread recently what these jobs are that people have to be in London for because that's a common theme. The best anyone could come up with is that some publishing is still based in London. No lawyers in Newcastle? No accountants in Sheffield?

Schools are losing a third of their pupils? Really? So why is there a forecast 90,000 shortfall of primary school places in London in the next couple of years?

I can't afford to live in central London either, or in the catchment area of ANY good school near my place of work. And if you can't afford to live somewhere nice, you can't.

But my point is that all this should anyway come from WAGES, not benefits. Take away the benefits and massively hike up the tax thresholds. Why does this victimise anyone in work? It does the opposite. It gives them power over their own wages.

I found an article on the Guardian website about somebody getting £800 a week housing benefit. She has no job. So that's £3,200 a month. So 32 people earning a measley £12,000 per year paying tax at approximately £100 per month to support this one woman to live in central London. It's insanity.

I'd like to see them scrap benefits and raise the personal tax allowance considerably. Hardly any fraud, people only working part time if they can afford to do so and the luxury of having an adut in the household being just that - a luxury afforded due to another adult working rather than the state paying for that choice.

Tax credits was one of the worse things ever introduced and the sooner its scrapped the better.

Haing no child related benefits may mean a return to personal responsibility and people financially planning for their choices.

I totally agree with the abolition of tax credits. I hope they are completely scrapped eventually. They are totally distorting people's view of what they can afford on their salaries. And raise the personal tax allowance again. And if there are two people in a household and one doesn't work then let that person's tax free allowance be claimed by the other partner. That would help SAHM's considerably.

You really think it's reasonable to remove people from their communities, take them away from their support systems and family networks, uproot their children from school, make it more difficult for them to find permanent, well-paid work, to save money on housing benefits?

The other side of the coin is do you think it's reasonable for others to pay higher taxes to allow a family to live in an area which the tax paying families can't afford on an indefinite basis?

For me there is a middle ground. I'd be happy with a system which paid the prevailing rate for x amount of time before tapering off.

So what i mean is say a family live in Chelsea cos they had great job(s) and could afford the £3k a month (for example) rent. They then lose their jobs. Shit happens. As a taxpayer I'd be happy to contribute towards the full cost of their rent for a period of time whilst they try to get back on their feet. But I'm not happy to subsidise their housing forever. If they then get a lower paid job and can't afford to live in Chelsea.....sorry but it's time to move!

If people fall on hard times then they should be helped for a limited period. But is living in Chelsea an option for everyone. Why can't people from the North East move to Chelsea in search of work and claim housing benefit to live there. If it's open to one it should be open to all. It's called equal opportunity. But of course it isn't. It's some entitled folk who think they should be subisidised by tax paying people who could never dream of affording the houses they are subisidised to live in.

What is the fixation with Chelsea?

ANY private sector home big enough to accommodate a family will cost £800+ a month ANYWHERE in the South East but particularly within the M25.

You are suggesting moving possibly 10s of thousands of the poorest people in the SE hundreds of miles away from their communities into areas of usually high unemployment to access cheaper housing.

Good suggestions: www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/budget/9727144/Autumn-Statement-Young-lives-are-being-ruined-because-of-Britains-timid-Treasury.html

Thanks, Xenia. I agree with all of that. Why doesn't anyone see that the low-waged are the key? I am tired of hearing about the people who live in London, wail wail. I was in Warsaw a few months ago; that city was rubble after WW2, and then they had really brutal communist rule, and are they sitting around asking to be on benefits in Krakov? Nope, they are out there hustling, setting up businesses and working from 6 am.

Presumably state benefits in Poland are so low that people instead work even if that means moving to London to find that work (although Poles currently are leaving London as work has dried up).

On the UK regions the Government has tried. There are grants for industry moving to poor areas. There are areas with lots of business - the Chemiicals companies ICI etc up wherever they are ELlesmere Port etc. The met office I think moved down to Devon or somewhere. The bBC has just moved up teo Salford. Huge numbers of companies have moved out of Central London to the regions although plenty have preferred a move from Central London to places like Slough, Reading, Woking.

This thread seems to have taken a worryingly harsh direction against supporting those on low wages - though agree employers should pay more and not rely on people getting child tax credits as they do in my sector (early years and child-care)

Do agree though that people on benefits should have to consider moving just as many of us do to find work. Personally I've been happy to settle in many different parts of the UK for study, mine or partner's work, lower cost housing, pleasant environment for raising a family. We wouldn't be asking people to live on the moon !