Tag Archives: £23000

‘I said this, but I meant that’ – Osborne admits lying to electorate in TV interview

 

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George Osborne has admitted that the Conservatives lied to the electorate in their pre-election manifesto, claiming that they would reduce the Benefit Cap to £23,000 per year, when in fact this only applies in Greater London.

The rest of the UK will lose £6,000 from the current cap limit, meaning their income will be capped at £20,000 per year.

Of course, Osborne didn’t actually say he had been lying, when he spelt out his latest piece of oppression to Andrew Marr on television yesterday (Sunday). Politicians never admit lies, even when they’re blatant. Instead, they’re happy to present themselves as fools.

If the government had any imagination, it would eliminate the deficit by stimulating the economy, but economic output has dropped by something like eight per cent since Conservatives took office in 2010 – because austerity has choked off the money supply to businesses.

George Osborne will be quite happy with that. He doesn’t think anybody deserves to have money – other than the Conservative Party’s big business friends and donors.

Benefit payments to families living outside Greater London are to be capped at £20,000 a year.

In the first Conservative budget for 19 years, George Osborne will say that the previously announced figure of £23,000 will only apply to families living in the capital in a further cut to the welfare budget.

Disclosure of the additional cut came during the chancellor’s appearance on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, in which he claimed to have found the £12bn of welfare savings promised by the Conservatives as part of their plan to eliminate the deficit in the public finances.

Source: Osborne announces cut in benefits cap to £20,000 a year outside London | Politics | The Guardian

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Labour’s descent into madness: Supporting a benefit cap that will drop children into poverty

Can anything demonstrate the Labour Party’s crisis of identity more graphically than the party’s statement of support for a drop in the benefit cap to £23,000 – despite warnings that the current cap of £26K is already causing homelessness and “putting children on the breadline”?

A Labour Party with its heart in the right place would never countenance an Act of Parliament that intentionally throws children into poverty.

Ms Harman outlined several caveats to Labour’s support, arguing that the lower cap should not put children into poverty or increase homelessness. She said discretionary housing payments and other measures could prevent the problems seen so far.

That simply isn’t good enough. The Tories have already hidden behind discretionary housing payments when criticised over the Bedroom Tax, and they have proven pitifully inadequate with regard to that issue. Why should anybody believe they’ll be able to take any further strain?

As for the other measures she mentions – what other measures? It’s nonsense waffle to hide the fact that Labour has badly lost its way.

The Party of the People needs to take hold of itself and clear out the dead weight – now.

Source: Labour moves to support Tories’ lower benefit cap despite ‘children on breadline’ warnings – UK Politics – UK – The Independent

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David Cameron churns out another Benefit Cap lie

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Cameron’s heart really isn’t in this election campaign, is it?

Today he’s been rehashing an old lie about the Coalition’s Benefit Cap – that it encourages people into work.

The Cap – for those who have been out of the country or incapacitated in some way since 2012 – limits benefits to £26,000 per family. When it was first put in place, the Tories claimed that this was equal to the average income of British families, and people on benefits should not earn more.

That might seem fair – but the average income of British families – taking everything into account, rather than just wages as the Tories did – is in fact around £31,000. And that was just the first lie!

It wasn’t long before Work and Pensions ghoul Iain Duncan Smith was implicated in another untruth, when he claimed that the mere mention of the Cap sent around 8,000 benefit claimants scurrying into employment. It was another lie; he was reprimanded by Andrew Dilnot of the UK Statistics Authority for that one!

Now Cameron has repeated his assertion that the Tories will reduce the capped figure to £23,000 if elected into office in May – because £26,000 clearly isn’t humiliating enough for unemployed familes and he wants to make them suffer (his words may have varied from this).

According to the BBC, “He said he was responding to public concerns the cap, which sets a maximum limit for state support for individual households, was set at too low a level.” Too low – so he wants to make it lower? The man is demented.

He also rejected calls for Child Benefit to be exempted from the Cap – showing his true colours on the matter of child poverty. Cameron is all for increasing it!

Cameron claimed on Radio 4’s Today programme that the Cap was having the desired effect and that about 40 per cent of households which were no longer subject to the cap had found work. Tory figures are notoriously untrustworthy, though.

Also, when he says a policy is having “the desired effect”, what effect is that, exactly?

“The evidence is that the cap set at £26,000 has worked. Many thousands of households that were subject to that cap have gone out and found work.

“It shows that many who have been subject to the cap have been more successful in finding work than those who have not.”

Does it really? If so many people have found work, then perhaps Mr Cameron can explain why Income Tax receipts have fallen under his leadership?