Cuts to welfare spending announced in the Summer Budget this week will have severe consequences for vulnerable people, the Church’s social action arm has warned.
Helen O’Brien, Chief Executive of the Caritas Social Action Networ (CSAN), said that the Chancellor’s plan to lower the benefit cap, from £26,000 to £20,000 and £23,000 in London, would push families deeper into poverty, forcing them to rely on food banks and charities.
Also among the £12bn of cuts that George Osborne announced on Wednesday, in the first Conservative budget for more than 18 years, was a cut in support for larger families, with child tax credits only extending to two children.
Taken together with a freeze in working-age benefits for four years and the lowering of the benefits cap, Ms O’Brien warned: “Larger families are going to feel a triple whammy.”
She also criticised the Government’s decision to scrap the support given to disabled people on the Employment Support Allowance. “In a labour market which has not proved the most accommodating, targeting this group will sadly only leave them further isolated and at risk of poverty,” she said.
CSAN is due to launch next week a report on the impact of existing welfare cuts. Anticipating that report Ms O’Brien said: “These new reforms further exacerbate the fears of CSAN and our member charities that the most vulnerable and poorest people are being put at greater risk.”
The Chancellor also announced the introduction of a compulsory National Living Wage, starting at £7.20 per hour next year and rising to £9 an hour by 2020.
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