Catch up with the hot topics and discussions on our Message Boards, direct from women at the heart of the debate...
Where's the benefit?
By
No comments
Sounds great doesn't it? Don't have to work, live in a luxury house, have as large a family as you want and on top of that, £26,000 in your pocket. Who wouldn't want some of that?
If you listen to the Government, read the papers or listen to vox pops then you'll know that the problem with this country isn't down to that pesky old world wide recession, nor to excessive borrowing, or greedy banks being bailed out by the taxpayer. No, it's entirely down to this country being riddled with families living in luxury houses in expensive areas, having more children than Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells could afford to have and raking in more than the average hardworking Brit on top of it all.
Well, Mr. and Mrs. Scrounger, the government and that poor old put-upon taxpayer have had enough and want an end to your easy life of lazy luxury. From now on, we want to tell you where you can live and how many children you can have, okay? Oh, but wait a minute, much as we want Something To Be Done, we Brits are a little uncomfortable dictating where people can live. And telling people how many children they can have? Hmm, we don't really like anything that skates around the edge of eugenics, and we are horrified by the Chinese one-child policy and the cruel abandonment of unwanted baby girls.
We are different here in the UK or course, just look how well we treat the sick and disabled. Well, perhaps we won't mention the private company that decides whether someone is sick or disabled enough to get sickness benefits without taking any account of what their own GP and specialist has to say. Nor the plans to restrict claims of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) to 12 months only, meaning that some people recovering from illnesses such as cancer will have to be actively seeking work before they are physically or psychologically ready to do so.
It seems that peers in the House of Lords are uncomfortable with the government's plans to cap benefits at £26,000 a year per household despite the indignant fury that the papers are whipping up against benefit claimants. They have defeated parts of the Welfare Reform Bill that would bring these restrictions into being. It all seems so clear cut doesn't it, how can people be that well off on benefits?
Well, of course, the Government likes scare tactics to get us on side for their ideological objectives. And the papers love a headline they can run with and get a reaction to. But the truth, as always, is rather more mundane.
There are very few families who get benefits of over £26,000 a year (£500 a week). In fact, of those affected only 38% are in receipt of Jobseekers Allowance whereas 22% are on ESA (previously Incapacity Benefit) and 38% are on Income Support, which may mean single parents of very young children, registered carers or those in work but working under 16 hours. Doesn't quite fit the popular image of a luxury lifestyle choice but we won't let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Despite what contributors to news websites seem to believe, we don't have hypothecated taxes in this country. Your hard-earned tax is not collected by the taxman and personally given to the family down the road. Your tax goes on many different things, some of which you may like even less, like bailing out the banks or paying the deficit, a financial hole left ever more gaping by the tax avoidance of the super rich.
We've always kicked up about where our taxes are going, in the 1980s it was nuclear weapons, in the 1990s it was single mothers and when the next target for righteous indignation comes along, we'll leave the unemployed alone while we fight the next cause.
If we really want someone to blame, I suggest we look back to the 1980s and the policy of selling off council houses. Yes, it gave the 'man in the street' and his family the chance to join the home-owning dream and we were high on the easy availability of mortgages and credit in the ‘80s, but what did it leave in its wake for the next two generations? No affordable social housing and a plethora of buy-to-lets owned by get-rich-quick property investors.
We stopped looking at houses as homes and looked at them as investment, ways to make money. Buy to let and make a fortune! Buy a house, move back in with your parents and rent it out for a few years to get a nice little nest egg!
But what has happened is that landlords have pushed the boundaries of housing benefit time and time again. Knowing that the council will have to make up the shortfall in private rents because there is so little social housing available, they have continually put up rents to ridiculous levels.
I don't live in a particularly expensive part of the country, but a three bedroom house here averages £1,000 a month, that's already £250 a week towards that 'generous' benefit payment that merely passes through the hands of the claimant into the wallets of landlords, who up their rents year on year. And even when the rents are paid, very few claimants live on more than a very low income, one which those who are vocal about 'scroungers' would not want to swap with, not even for a day.
Living on benefits has always been difficult and it still is, it's a life defined by constant financial worry, not free of it.
Most of those affected by the proposed cap though, live in London where rents are highest of all. Did you know that even those in full time work are paid Housing Benefit (or Local Housing Allowance as it is now known) because rents are so high in general, and particularly in London, that no-one who needs to rent can afford to pay out their salary alone?
The cap would have seen families forced out of London, away from their friends and family, their schools, their support network if they were sick and their communities that they may have been active in. On this occasion, I think the Lords were seeing things more clearly and fairly.
Prepare for the deluge of headlines condemning them for it!
By teanna
Comments