As Parliament prepares to cut the maximum benefits that can be claimed by the unemployed from £500 a week to £442.31 a week it is important to get behind the rhetoric that tells us it is unfair for the unemployed to receive a higher income that the employed. When the £500 a week cap was introduced in April 2013 I met a single mother with seven young children. Each child is a precious member of the community and a potential asset to the economy.
Her total benefits, including housing benefit which paid all the rent up to April 2013, came to £720. The local authority cut the housing benefit to comply with the £500 limit. She was therefore expected to pay £220 rent out of the £500 limit of which £484 was paid by the Department of Work and Pensions after a letter of entitlement that tells her "The assessment is based on how much the law says you need to live on".
The new £442.31 limit adds nearly £60 to the £220 rent that has to be paid out of the income "the law says you need to live on" for food, utilities, clothes, transport and other necessities for a mother and seven children. But the impact is even harder than that because the benefit limit and the value of other benefits come down while the cost of living and the rents have gone up.
Rev Paul Nicolson, Taxpayers Against Poverty, London
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