Tory welfare cuts would hit poorest third of UK families, research shows | Politics | The Guardian

Last Updated: June 14, 2015By

The schoolboy on the left has a better idea of how to run the UK’s economy than the grinning loon on the right, who actually does it.

The government’s reported package of welfare cuts in next month’s budget, including a £5bn cut to child tax credit, would overwhelmingly hit the poorest third of families in the UK, new research shows.

The research, by the Resolution Foundation thinktank that specialises in living standards, puts a question mark over the political feasibility of the government pressing ahead with £12bn in welfare cuts on its 2017-18 planned timetable.

David Cameron has ruled out cuts to child benefit and to the £85bn pensions bill, leaving Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, to look at cuts to tax credits, housing benefit (where a 10% cut would save £2.5bn) and some disability benefits.

David Gauke, the financial secretary to the Treasury, last week reiterated that the new fiscal mandate proposed by the chancellor, George Osborne, did not mean the timetable of cuts proposed at the election, including a £12bn cut to welfare, was slipping.

Osborne, who is due to take prime minister’s questions for the first time this Wednesday in the absence of Cameron, refused throughout the election campaign to spell out details of the cuts.

Source: Tory welfare cuts would hit poorest third of UK families, research shows | Politics | The Guardian

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5 Comments

  1. Jim Round June 15, 2015 at 12:52 am - Reply

    They really are illiterate aren’t they, they think that reducing the amount of money you get for having kids will make people think twice about having them.
    They really don’t understand actual human feelings and emotions, obviously because they appear not to be human themselves.
    Social engineering at its worst.

  2. Timro June 15, 2015 at 8:50 am - Reply

    The Tories did originally want to cut housing benefit by 10% for everybody who had been unemployed for one year or more. The Liberal Democrats blocked it knowing that such an across the board cut could be fatal, especially for those already hit by the Bedroom Tax but allowed the Tories to drop the maximum amount of LHA/housing benefit to the bottom 30 percentile. Any cut of this magnitude in housing benefit, particularly for those living in more expensive areas, would be absolutely disastrous. It’s difficult to imagine even the Tories being quite this cruel and unenlightened. The consequences of a cut like this would convulse the lives of innocent millions.

  3. wildswimmerpete June 15, 2015 at 10:30 am - Reply

    “David Cameron has ruled out cuts to child benefit and to the £85bn pensions bill,” ………..just like he vowed in ’10 there would be no increase in VAT?

  4. crazytrucker1951 June 15, 2015 at 11:54 am - Reply

    The kid’s thinking “if he comes just a little closer I can punch him right in the gob!”

  5. bob thomas (@bobthom94965788) June 15, 2015 at 2:33 pm - Reply

    I feel depressed.

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