Benefits

“You only get cut through when there’s a row,” one Tory observed to me on Friday as we discussed the anger that had followed George Osborne’s announcement on child benefit. So in one way, the Tories are not unhappy with the fact that this story is still rumbling on. It is imprinting on the public mind that the Tories have hit the well-off. This is in advance of a spending review that is bound to hit hardest those people and regions that are most dependent on the state. Following the media coverage of the child benefit row, it will be much harder for Labour to make the charge that the

Today we are releasing a brand new picture of the nation’s welfare ghettos. Our research gives a disheartening insight into the extent of dependency in England and Wales. The top line: things are getting worse. This is much more detailed and useful information that the statistics often bandied about by politicians. It is well known, for example, that nearly 2 million people have been claiming out-of-work benefits for more than five years. But what does that look like? We’ve examined the smallest measurable units recorded by the Department for Work and Pensions (the technical term is ‘Lower Super Output Areas’) which are smaller even than council wards – they contain

Daniel Finkelstein and Philip Collins’ email exchanges are always enlightening. This week, they discussed child benefit. Both think it has altered the markings on the playing field of politics. Ed Miliband is yet to respond: how should he? ‘From: Daniel Finkelstein To: Philip Collins If you were Ed Miliband, where would you go now on child benefit? First option: total opposition to the Government’s plan. You get to hoover up discontent but you don’t look much like a governing force, do you? And it seems hypocritical. Plus, you said you were going to support the Government on many cuts. If not this, then what? Second: you go with it. You

One of the most intriguing questions about the decision to take child benefit away from households with a higher rate taxpayer in them is whether it marks the beginning of the end for universal benefits. The quotes today from Michael Fallon, the Tory vice-chairman, certainly suggest that it does. Fallon ridicules Ed Miliband with the line: “He wants to tax the poor to give benefits to the better off.” Now, if you accept that the poor are currently being taxed to provide child benefits for the rich (a slight exaggeration given that higher rate taxpayers contribute far more than they take out in services) then this argument applies with equal

We have a new facts and figures column in the magazine, Barometer, and I thought CoffeeHousers might like a preview of one of the data series we have dug up for tomorrow’s edition. George Osborne has this week pledged that, from 2013, no family on benefits should receive more than the average family does through work. But how many will it affect? Those living in expensive areas, for example, but also those with large families. CoffeeHousers may remember Karen Matthews, who lived on benefits with seven children. She was demonised, understandably, but I was left thinking: we paid her to do that. The more kids she has, the more money

There was a quiet momentousness about Iain Duncan Smith’s speech in Birmingham today – even before he started speaking. When IDS resigned the Tory leadership in 2003, he could barely have imagined that he would one day address his party as a leading member of the government. Even a few weeks ago, he couldn’t have been sure that the coalition would implement the policy agenda that he developed during his time at the Centre for Social Justice. Yet here IDS was, receiving a standing ovation for his efforts. What a difference seven years make. And then to the speech itself. Much of it reverberated to the same reforming drumbeat that

In the last few weeks, there has been much speculation that child benefit would be stopped when a child reaches 16. Today’s announcement suggests that this is not going to happen, although the Tories are refusing to rule it out. If there are to be changes to child benefit — and given the financial situation there need to be — then removing it from households with a higher rate taxpayer is a better move than stopping it at 16. Child benefit ending at 16 would send out a message that at 16 a child should start earning its way in the world. This would, for obvious reasons, have a negative

I have found out a little more about the Universal Credit – and how the arguments over the summer were resolved. First, the backdrop. Money was always going to be a problem. This policy is about saving lives, not money. Right now, we pave the road to welfare dependency, creating a vacuum in the labour market that sucks in workers from overseas. Under Brown, the Treasury accepted this: cheap workers pay tax too, and as do companies who profit from them. Result: tax receipts up, but never fewer than 5 million on out-of-work benefits throught the boom years. The IDS plan was not sprung on Osborne. As I blogged a