Welfare Bill - Benefit Capping

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

So often, not least on MN, I see posts that give the lie to the myth that benefit claimants are somehow rolling in cash. It is clearly a tough existence that you wouldn't wish on anyone. And yet the proposal to cap benefits at £25k take-home (about £35k before tax) is being opposed on grounds such as affecting 'millions', plunging people into poverty, homelessness etc. I'm finding it very difficult to square the two... they can't both be right.

I've just commented on the thread which has just been started "In the News".

A household on benefits also has various other things (like FSM, prescriptions etc), which the waged one does not, as well as the tax/NI being left out of the equation.

It says a great deal about the plight of the worker, when the average household waged income is lower than that (potentially) provided on benefits. I assume that not every claimant household will receive as much as the cap. But setting the cap higher than the average wage seems on the generous side.

Yeah, I think it's a pretty edge case, 26k. We don't get anything like that amount. After HB we're on about 12k, with HB it's about 17k, that's working tax credits, HR DLA, CA, HB, CTB, no kids.

Two HR DLA receivers, with one child, caring for each other and starting up a new businesss, living in a 3 bed flat, could conceivably reach that. Say, a family in a car crash and both parents break their necks and they need to put the toddler in a nursery for a part of each day.

Or a family with six children whose business fails and the mum has a nervous breakdown and then they split up. They could hit that.

I can't see how it will affect millions of people in most benefits. Working single parent HB claimants in the South East, most likely, because £400/w is twenty grand.

Yeah, I think it's another HB cap. I don't disagree that HB is out of control, and citing these high rents, it's very easy to get sympathy from the 90% of the population who don't live in London. My rent, frex, is £90/w for a house, so £400 seems like an unbelievable amount. Like a palace. But then the ire is always directed at the claimants, who don't actually keep that money! Landlords do. No one calls them benefit claimants. So the argument is, imo, suspect. It's directing the punishment at the people with the least power in the situation.

I think the answer is council housing, not homelessness, really. And rent control, possibly, but council housing.

People on DLA are not included in the capping proposal and neither are people on Working Tax Credits, which is interesting. There also appears to be a 'grace' period of 6+ months in the mix to allow people who are out of work to get back into work before the cap starts to apply. Seems to be mostly directed at the long-term unemployed in other words. And, I was surprised to hear in the IDS interview on the radio this morning, the parliamentary definition of 'homelessness' includes things like children sharing a bedroom.... which I'd have thought is pretty normal.

Ok, so, as far as I know, overcrowding does count in a technical sense as homelessness for the purposes of rehousing. In general when you're talking about children sharing a bedroom it means two or more teenagers of opposite sexes (and often unrelated). The only rooms not counted as bedrooms for overcrowding are kitchen and bathroom, so if you're sleeping on the sofa you're not overcrowded.

In practice overcrowding only gives you a bump on the housing list, unless it's severe. Like, ten or more people in a 2 up 2 down. I know a family of nine on our street that were just rehoused on that basis to a three bed. They had been waiting seven years.

Overcrowding rules were set in the thirties based on slum clearance, again only afaik! I will never see the inside of a council house, haha, been on the list since 2001.

Google told me the specific rules of overcrowding .

You could describe that as "children sharing a bedroom". Just like you could describe people born severely disabled as lifelong benefit claimants who have never paid in to the system. And so IDS does.

I have explained it here on the frothers blog toomanycuts.blogspot.com/

Look for the hidden housing crisis an impending disaster and under six and homeless.

Also if benefits are capped at 500pw and you are in temporary accommodation that costs £400 pw with no cooking facilities and a long way from my kids school you will not have enough to feed yourself and get to school.

Also if benefits are capped at 500pw and you are in temporary accommodation that costs £400 pw with no cooking facilities and a long way from my kids school you will not have enough to feed yourself and get to school.
Then move....everyone else has to get on with it. One of my good friends lives in a 2 up 2 down, they claim no benefits, they have 4 children and her husband earns less than £20k per annum, she stays at home so there are no childcare costs....and they are REALLY happy!

Good explanation here

The actual breakdown of how much hardship this could cause here

If capping benefits at £26k net (£35k gross) causes hardship then that means everyone on the median wage can't manage. And that's clearly not the case. People on salaries of £35k gross may not be rolling in cash but they own homes, raise families, take a occasional holidays and live reasonably comfortable, normal lives.

Isn't the real problem here that £35k gross doesn't go far in central London rather than it is 'causes hardship' as an absolute?

I don't disagree. The result must be to move most unemployed private renters from the SE to cheaper areas. I don't know what effect this will have, tbh.

Yes it does seem to be a London and other expensive areas problem that the level of benefit received needs to be what seems an astronomical amount to many.

But - people have to live somewhere, and better so if they live where there is a possibility of jobs, and where they might have family support etc and not be forced to move. They may have lived and worked in that area for years and find themselves claiming after redundancy - the vast majority of claimants are not lifestyle claimants, and even less so the ones who live in very expensive areas.

A breakdown example of a family receiving weekly benefits at the capped level from the huffpost article:

"£392.31 for rent (the allowable rent for Tolworth, typical of a cheaper property)
£39.06 for council tax (Kingston Council, Band E)
£28.18 for gas and electricity (DECC English average + 20% for large family, in 2011 £s
£7.21 for water (OfWAT UK average + 20% for large family)
£6.00 for telephone/broadband - the cheapest BT anytime package

Starting from £500 means that you have £26.23 per week left over for the family, which is 62p per person per day to the nearest penny.

We can argue over these exact figures. Clearly the family could choose to be cold, or to shower infrequently to save money. But against that, private rented housing is typically less well insulated, the family are at home every day, so energy bills may be larger still. I have not included a mobile phone, or any calls to mobile phones, or to 08 numbers not included in the basic package.

In any case, even after rent and council tax, the family has only £1.64 per person per day to live on. No alternative figures will make any difference: this is simply not a living income for a family with four children in private rented accommodation in a cheap part of outer London"

This example family could easily be a family affected by the constant redundancies that are ongoing, ergo they had their children back when they could afford to.

The problem is cheaper areas often have less jobs.

They need to build affordable housing in areas with jobs IMO

" better so if they live where there is a possibility of jobs"

But if someone is London born and bred and they are long-term unemployed, clearly there is not the possibility of jobs that everyone is claiming. Short-term unemployed or those on low incomes are not included in the capping measures. As a general point, I think this insistance that people are somehow entitled to stay within a few miles radius of their home town at all costs is very odd. I speak as someone who, twenty-five years ago, left the North West which was struggling at the time, to make a living elsewhere. And look at all the people who leave their country to come here and make a better life. If someone had said to me.... stay in Manchester, stay on the dole... I'd have thought they were trying to keep me down.

It's a myth that cheaper areas 'have no jobs'. Cheaper than central London is basically anywhere else in the UK outside of the M25. There is a vibrant country out there where people can make a good living, even beyond the end of the underground line.....

The thing about London is, there are lots of jobs here. If you live in London, especially inner London, it's relatively easy to find work. However, most of this is minimum wage at best. So you are caught in a dilemma. Do you live in inner city London, work as a barman/shop worker/waiter/cleaner/courier etc and accept that you will be priced out of living in close proximity to your job (and by close proximity I mean, generally and hour's commute) Or do you move out to the cheaper places and lose any savings you gained in housing to the god of London Transport? You can't quit your job because you are then intentially jobless and JSA won't kick in for months.

Dammed if you do and dammed if you don't.

People with low-paid jobs and receiving WTC are exempt from the capping anyway. Anyone in employment wouldn't just quit and move speculatively to a different town. They'd make sure they had something to go to. If someone unemployed was being offered accommodation in a different town they'd start looking for jobs once they got there.

Interestingly, I know a landlord who hires Manc and Scouse builders to go down on the train and work on his London properties. It is cheaper to pay their train and board than to pay London prices, and the commute is not bad at all, only about 2.5 hours. The builders are happy to do it.

I guess one solution is better transport links.

You mean better transport links like HS2?

People on WTC are NOT going to be permanantly protected. That is just a spin-doctor produced soundbite to make the cuts seem more palatable. "It's not going to hurt those that are working, so we shouldn't worry".

WTC is going to be absorbed into the Universal Credit system in April 2013. At which point, any protection that those people employed on low wages had will vanish. They will be told that they HAVE to earn a prescribed amount. For most lone parents, with children under 12yo, that will be the equivalent of 24 hours a week at NMW. For a couple with children under 12yo, one member of the couple will be expected to earn the equivalent of 35 hours a week at NMW, and the OTHER member of the couple will be expected to earn the equivalent of 24 hrs a week at NMW. If either of these families fail to meet the expectations put on them (Maybe they are in a 16/20/23 hour a week job, and can't get ANY more hours from their employer), then they face being put on Workfare, having their Universal Credit stopped for between 3 months and 3 years if they do not take a job up to 90 minutes travel away (paying the travel costs, which may be unaffordable) that they may be unable to get the childcare for.

Short-term unemployed or those on low incomes are not included in the capping measures. They ARE and they will be. Currently the Welfare reform bill allows someone with 'professional' qualifications to have up to 13 weeks to find a job in their previous sector, and then after that time, they will be treated like anyone else claiming. So you could be trained and have experience in finance, yet just 13 weeks after a redundancy, you could be FORCED to work for your JSA for Poundland or Tescos.

Between October 2013 and April 2014 - If you are making a new claim you will receive universal credit in place of jobseekers allowance, employment support allowance, housing benefit, working tax credit or child tax credit. You will also be moved onto UC if you are already receiving one of these benefits and your circumstances change significantly, such as if you find work or if you have a baby.

From April 2014 - You may be moved onto UC if it is considered that you will benefit from this - For example if you are on working tax credit and work a small number of hours a week but could work more hours with support from UC.

From the end of 2015 to the end of 2017- If you have not been moved onto UC already you will be moved during this time.

Full conditionality requirements

You will be required to look for and be available immediately for any full time work regardless of type and salary, as long as it pays at least the National Minimum Wage and is within 90 minutes of your home.

There will exceptions to the immediate requirement to take up full time work if you are a volunteer, need to arrange childcare, are sick or are serving out the notice period of a contract of employment.

If you have a good work history, you may be allowed, for a maximum of 13 weeks, to limit your work search and availability to jobs that are similar in nature and carry a similar level of pay to your previous occupation. After this time you will be expected to look for and be available for any job.

You will also be expected to spend as much time searching for work as the number of hours you are actually available for work. For example, if you are expected to be available for work for 40 hours that is how much time you will be expected to spend searching for a job.

There will be exceptions to this rule if your personal adviser decides that you have undertaken all the work related activity that can reasonably be expected or if you are engaged in voluntary work (so long as your work search remains your primary focus).

This rule will also be relaxed if you are temporarily sick (this must be supported by medical evidence) or in certain other circumstances such as a domestic emergency or the death of a relative or close friend.

If you are a lone parent with responsibility for a child between the ages of 5 and 12, or an older child who has exceptional care needs, you will be able to restrict your work search and availability to work

which fits with the hours your child is in school and
allows reasonable time to take and collect your child from school and
takes into account your child?s care needs, including whether child care is available and affordable, in particular during the child?s school holidays.
If you are a member of a couple and have a child under 13 you will be able to nominate one member of the couple who will be treated in the same way as a lone parent for conditionality purposes (i.e. who will be able to place limitations on their work availability and work search as above).

If as a couple you choose to share the caring responsibilities you can do so as long as collectively you are both looking for work at least equivalent to one person working full-time and one person working as many hours as a lone parent would be expected to. In addition, you both must continue to have reasonable prospects of finding work within this limitation.

If you care for a disabled person, but do not satisfy the rules for the no conditionality group you may have your work search and work availability requirements limited to jobs that would not interfere with your caring responsibilities.

If you are in the full conditionality group but have a health condition or are undergoing regular treatment to manage your health condition you will be required to provide evidence of any limitations on what work (hours, nature of work, and location) you are capable of doing. This will be taken into account when setting work search and availability requirements.

If you disagree with your work availability and work search requirements, these will be reconsidered by the adviser. If the adviser does not agree to change your requirements you will be able to ask for your work search and availability requirement to be reviewed by another employment officer.

Heee, yes, I think HS2 is a good plan. In general I am in favour of large infrastructure projects, especially in a recession. I think it's a great approach. I would rather have a State Job and a Citizen's Income (I was initially in favour of the Universal Credit and still think it could be an improvement if only they would drop the ideology) option than benefits, either Labour or Tory style, and I do think it is important and worthwhile to invest in public transport, housing, and large research projects.

I'm in a party of one on all this, I'm aware.

The evidence they will take into account for illness, Porto? Being in receipt of ESA and passing the WCA. Considering that 70% of those turned down for ESA have their ESA reinstated on appeal, I wouldn't say that the assessment used is going to protect EVERYONE that should be protected.

The Work availability and work search criteria being reviewed - they are trying to overturn that amendment. To make it purely down to the DWP member of staff that you see on the day. Who will have TARGETS to meet.

How can work NOT interfere with caring responsibilities? People who are caring for someone currently on MRC DLA, who needs constant supervision durin the day, but has low care needs at night because they sleep between the hours of 11pm and 6am, won't be protected. Only those people who are carin for someone who is currently in receipt of HRC will be protected in this way. Any other carer will have to make themselves available for 24 hrs a week work. Which will be 24 hours a week that they cannot carry out their caring duties. Who is oing to fill that gap? Are the government goin to send someone who is QUALIFIED to look after someone with the disability that person has? If not, then just WHO is going to be doing the CARING while that CARER is at work?