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Benefit cap won’t apply to all
There are reports that George Osborne’s plan to put an upper limit on the amount of benefit that families can claim in a year will not apply to all. When he announced the £26,000 cap, Osborne said it would cover all households “unless they have disabilities to cope with”.
But welfare reform minister Lord Freud told the BBC the government was looking at other “protections” for people in “exceptional circumstances”. No 10, meanwhile, said the policy was unchanged.
There is a debate on the Welfare Reform Bill in the House of Commons this afternoon, so we may hear more then.
Hansard, 13 Jun 2011 : Column 495
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm110613/debtext/110613-0001.htm#1106138000006
Mr Duncan Smith: The position on the benefit cap is very straightforward and simple: those who are on benefit should not receive more money than those who are working and paying their taxes. There are exemptions, of course, such as for those who are making the right efforts to get back to work—those on working tax credit, for instance—and those who are disabled, as well as for widows and war widows. They are exempted from this, but for the rest of them the following simple principle holds: “If you can, you should be helped into trying to work”, and £26,000 a year seems a reasonable sum of money to me.
Note it says widows, not only war widows as previously announced. Never misunderstand the quiet man; his word is his bond.
Other ministers than Lord Freud have said, previously, that the government was looking at ways of easing the transition for families and providing assistance in hard cases, so the swift reaction may be more media than policy related. I suspect that IDS stumbled over ‘war disabled and war widows’ so I wouldn’t raise your hopes.
Our modelling has shown that the cap makes it impossible to afford a four bedroom house, for an appropriate sized family, anywhere in the country, so my guess is that we will see, in the fullness of time and at an appropriate juncture, an adjustment, not an exemption, to the cap for some ‘exceptional circumstances’.