George Osborne’s autumn statement seems to have left out a great deal about where cuts are likely to fall if the conservatives win the next election. What is certain is that times will be a great deal harder for working age benefits claimants.{jcomments on}
There was actually very little about welfare benefits in the autumn statement.
One of the few areas covered was universal credit. Whilst there are still considerable doubts about whether universal credit will ever be genuinely rolled-out, if it is there are increases in the autumn statement for childcare costs from April 2016 but a freeze in work allowances – further undermining the claim that people will always be better off in work.
For carers allowance, the earnings limit will rise from £102 to £110 a week in April 2015.
But what Osborne was not prepared to explain was how exactly his proposed massive public spending cuts were going to be implemented.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) have warned that to meet the Coalition’s targets there will have to be cuts on a ‘colossal’ scale which would require a ‘fundamental re-imagining of the state’, whilst the Office for Budget Responsibility has said the proposed cuts would take public spending back to a level so low it has not been seen since the dark days of the 1930s
The Daily Mail has already begun the task of reimagining Britain by calling for ‘savage cuts’ in the ‘monster’ that is welfare benefits, bemoaning the fact that IDS has managed only a small dent in the benefits budget as yet.
Over the coming weeks Benefits and Work will also be imagining in more detail where Conservative cuts are likely to fall on our readers, in the hope that they can still be averted.
