The government has just published the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill, and everyone’s pointing to polls which underline their own point about whether limiting the rise in benefits payments to 1 per cent is going to play well with voters.
Labour types are brandishing the Independent/ComRes poll, which says ‘a surprising high 43 per cent disagree’ that the government is right to cap the rise at 1 per cent. What they aren’t mentioning, of course, is that 49 per cent think the government is right: so hardly a resounding rejection of the policy.
On the right, there’s a Populus poll for the Conservative party which tests Labour’s argument that support for the Bill drains away when voters hear it includes in-work benefits. Respondents were asked to agree or disagree with a series of statements. The first was ‘Benefits have been rising twice as far as wages since the crisis began, so it’s fair to cap in-work and out-of-work benefit rises at 1 per cent for a temporary period’.
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