With rising prices on one side and falling benefits on the other, have single parents been disproportionately hit by welfare reforms? Gingerbread, the charity supporting lone parents, believes so.
Their online survey ‘Paying the price:single parents in the age of austerity (pdf)’ asked a number of questions about meeting rising living costs, with 591 single parents replying between July and September 2013.
Benefit sanctions hitting homeless people hardest. Homeless Link has commissioned a report called A High Cost to Pay (pdf) that highlights the difficulties of the most vulnerable people in attending benefit dependant interviews. There is a call for Jobcentre Plus advisors to better understand the predicament of homeless people. Homeless Link found that the sanctions are punishing vulnerable people for making mistakes.
Free school meals: we are all socialists now. Guardian, Patrick Butler’s cutsblog. The decision to give 1.4m children free meals is a universal socialist policy rather than the haunt of the Lib Dems, who proposed it.
These are some welfare links we found interesting during the second two weeks of August.
Food bank Britain: life below the line: Guardian. The Trussell Trust opens three new food banks a week, finding not only those facing benefit cuts but also working families, are queuing up.
Living standards crisis is a housing crisis. Channel 4. Faisal Islam; The daytrippers take in the sun on the south Devon coast. It’s the height of the summer holidays in Teignmouth. No one’s talking economics, but here in the district of Teignbridge, the squeeze is everywhere.
The spare bedroom tax: a mess of contradiction and impossibility | John Harris – And what of the chronic shortage of smaller properties in such places as Hartlepool? In response to this question, I get a remarkable reply: despite the fact that the same statement bemoans people living "in homes that are too large for their needs", it also acknowledges that "most people will not move" and claims that "there are other options available such as taking up employment, increasing hours worked or taking in a lodger".
These are the welfare-related links we’ve been looking at between December 21st and January 25th:
Management in Practice – GPs could help save £190m in sick pay – Launching in 2014, the advisory service will allow GPs to identify employees who need support as well as issuing 'fit notes'. Lord Freud, Minister for Welfare Reform said: "Long-term sickness absence is a burden to business, to the taxpayer and to the thousands of people who get trapped on benefits when they could actually work.
The cost of government: what does the new transactions data really tell us? | News | guardian.co.uk – And the worst offender? The massive Department for Work and Pensions, which is Britain's biggest spending government department and administers benefits. So, for instance we have no idea how much it costs to process each of the 40m Jobseeker's allowance signing ons or to administer the benefit's 3.4m claims. The Department is responsible for 48,704,000 transactions in the high volume list alone – and we don't know the cost of any of them.
All assistance for unemployed people to find work provided by private/charitable providers
Time-limiting unemployment benefits
Cutting regional pay to fund infrastructure spending – thereby penalising those who are already disadvantaged in order to fund growth-measures, rather than taxing the wealthiest
Selling public housing in expensive areas to private owners, forcing social tenants out of ‘desirable’ areas
Claiming benefits leads to criminality
Re-distributing income to low-paid people is a bad idea, because it ‘does nothing to encourage progression and self-sufficiency‘.
What is George Osborne doing to benefits? | Society | guardian.co.uk – Let's imagine someone receives £100 a month, all of which is spent on goods and services (domestic heating, food, bills, etc). The current inflation rate is 2.7%, which means in a year's time buying the exact same things would cost £102.70. Under the previous system, this is what benefits would've risen to. But with the changes, they would now only rise to £101 – leaving the recipient £1.70 worse off. Given the changes will last for at least three years, this represents a cut in income of between 3% to 6%, depending what happens with inflation. In reality, the impact could be even worse, as research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggests low-income households experience a higher inflation rate than richer ones.