IFS Warns Of ‘Significant Cuts’ To Non-Protected Benefits | Welfare Weekly

Last Updated: June 5, 2015By

The Government’s pledge to find £12bn in savings from the welfare budget will require ‘significant cuts’ to non-protected benefits, says the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

Outside of protecting spending on state pension and universal pensioner benefits, the Conservatives would need to find savings on the a scale amounting to almost 10% of unprotected benefits, just to meet their 2015 manifesto pledge.

The IFS says, “finding the sought after £12 billion of cuts in just two years will not be easy”.

“Finding such a reduction without cutting child benefit, which has been pledged this week, would mean that even more significant cuts would likely be required to spending on one or more of tax credits, housing benefit and disability & incapacity benefits”.

Chancellor George Osborne has been accused of “misleading” the public on the extent of planned cuts.

To meet its overall spending target, even after slashing £12bn from welfare expenditure, the government would still need to accelerate cuts to other unprotected government departments.

Other than the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), unprotected departments include the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills, and the Department for Transport.

According to the IFS, “cuts would need to increase from the 2.0% a year seen over the five years from 2010–11 to 2015–16, to 2.2% a year over the three years from 2015–16 to 2018–19″.

“This would give a total cut of £23.8 billion across all departments between 2015–16 and 2018–19. That’s on top of the £2.2 billion of cuts taking place in 2015–16 and the £49.2 billion of cuts delivered between 2009–10 and 2014–15.

Source: IFS Warns Of ‘Significant Cuts’ To Non-Protected Benefits | Welfare Weekly

6 Comments

  1. Steve Grant June 5, 2015 at 11:37 am - Reply

    Well,the people voted the vile reptiles in DIDNT they?.so no good complaining about it when he starts taking away Tax Credits because that is the benefit which is the easiest benefit to attack…..child and working tax credit….Lets see how popular they become afterwards when low paid workers,middle class workers and this’d even earning £40 k or more have tax credits chopped down…?

  2. paulrutherford8 June 5, 2015 at 11:50 am - Reply

    Funny how people at the IMF think this could be a tad silly. But then Osborne has a mission ;(

    Worth a quick read… http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2015/sdn1510.pdf

  3. chriskitcher June 5, 2015 at 11:53 am - Reply

    And all this is in the name of satiating the greed of their paymasters and controllers. No need to worry any more about immigration only a fool would want to come to the UK after 5 more years of this rotten shower.

  4. Michael Broadhurst June 5, 2015 at 5:21 pm - Reply

    wont be long before there are people on the streets again,like in thatchers era.
    then they’ll expect the police and the army to do their dirty work for them,well its about
    time they WOKE up to the fact that this govt is stabbing THEM in the back by cutting
    THEIR jobs.
    WAKE UP BRITONS FOR F***’S SAKE !!

  5. Pete B June 5, 2015 at 8:25 pm - Reply

    If the past five years have learned us anything.We know this lot do not give a damn about the poor,rickets are making a come back.No doubt the rich will be buying smelling salts again for when they pass the unwashed poor.

    Because when you have been sanctioned by the DWP soap will be the last thing on your shopping list.Uncleanliness leads to diseases like the plague.Their steel gates will not stop that.

  6. wildswimmerpete June 6, 2015 at 4:41 pm - Reply

    @PeteB
    Thatcher at first allowed the newly privatised water companies to completely cut off water to addresses who didn’t pay, as well as stopping up their drains (yes, unbelievable). It’s only when Thatcher realised that the resulting epidemics wouldn’t be stopped by the walls of yuppie gated communities she grudgingly relented.

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