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Lib Dems say no more cuts to welfare needed
Telegraph report that chief secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander has told them: “In the autumn statement, we made some difficult decisions on welfare, absolutely the right decisions. What remains is departmental spending.
“We’ve got no plans at all to go back to the welfare budget as part of that process. What I’m focused on is finding that £10 billion or so from within the spending the government departments do.
“I’ve got no plans to reopen the welfare issue. We agreed significant measures in the autumn and we’re legislating for those at the moment. The balance has to be found from departmental budgets. Everyone’s got to play their part.”
For the whole piece, see We don’t need more cuts to the welfare budget, says Danny Alexander
Guardian carried a report at the end of last week that claims the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, is forming a common front with the Treasury chief secretary, Danny Alexander, to oppose further welfare cuts in a spending review this summer due to set out departmental spending limits in 2015-16, the first year after the election.
They say there is a growing mood in parts of Whitehall that George Osborne will not be able to complete the spending review before June as planned, and will be forced to delay it owing to the scale of objections to further cuts coming from the Home Office, the Ministry of Defence, the business department and now the work and pensions department.
It is understood that Duncan Smith is adamantly opposed to any further welfare cuts, saying there are no more easy options. He has pointed out that Osborne had not been able to secure the cuts he had wanted, and the current focus should be on implementing the very complex measures already agreed including universal credit, the personal independence payment and squeeze on benefits for people in work.
For the whole article, see Senior ministers to oppose more welfare cuts
Interestingly, a ComRes survey for ITV News has found that, when asked whether spending should be increased or decreased in a number of areas of government policy, there is higher support under “Welfare” for increases (43%), than for keeping the same (29%), or decreasing (27%), which represents a +15% compared to previous survey data.
This is higher than the answers for transport, public sector pensions, and defence, amongst others.