Prime Minister Theresa May’s pledge in July 2016 that she would build a ‘fairer Britain’, helping those who had been ‘left behind’ and were ‘just about managing’ was a lie as the Autumn Statement on 23 November showed. Those who are ‘just about managing’ – a euphemism for millions of working class people living in poverty or on the edge of it – received a pittance: a reduction of the taper rate on universal credit from 65p per pound to 62p per pound that is earned above the basic income limit, a marginal tax rate of 74.2%.
Apart from this, all other benefit cuts from the 2016 Budget remain in place:
- Working age benefits remain frozen until 2020. With annual inflation set to rise to at least 2%, this will mean a cut of about 6% over the period from April 2016 costing 11 million households £390 a year;
- 432,000 tenants will continue to pay an average of £15.20 a week in bedroom tax. Two thirds of those affected have a disability;
- There will be no change to the plan to reduce Employment Support Allowance (ESA) for new claimants in the Work-Related Activity Group to the level of Jobseeker’s Allowance from April 2017, a cut of £29 per week;
- For families with two children there will be no child tax credit for a third child born after April 2017, and there will be an equivalent change in entitlement to housing benefit;
- Anyone starting a family after April 2017 will no longer be eligible for the family element in tax credits;
- Local Housing Allowance, paid to nearly 1.5 million privately-renting tenants will remain frozen for four years from April 2016 at a time of soaring rents.
UN report: austerity discriminates against disabled people
The government’s treatment of people with disabilities is so appalling that Britain became the first country to face an inquiry by a United Nations committee for ‘grave or systemic violations’ of their rights. The report, published in November 2016, states that six years of austerity had ‘hindered disabled people’s right to live independently and be included in the community’ and that disabled people were routinely portrayed as being ‘dependent or making a living out of benefits, committing fraud as benefit claimants, being lazy or putting a burden on taxpayers.’ The report found that policies disproportionately affecting the disabled included the bedroom tax, cuts to benefits including ESA, as well as cuts to local authority social care budgets. New figures show that only 73% of disabled people receiving Disability Living Allowance have been deemed eligible for the new Personal Independence Payments.
Overall benefit cap
The Autumn Statement was presented as the reduced Overall Benefit Cap was being rolled out across the country. This will hit 100,000 families, the vast majority with three or more children. Set at £23,000 per annum inside London and £20,000 outside, the reduction on 7 November hit 20,000 families already subject to the original cap of £26,000. Of these, 11,500 families outside London faced a cut of £115 per week in their housing benefit to keep the sum of their benefits within the £20,000 limit. A further 80,000 families will be hit by the reduction as it is phased in during December 2016 and January 2017. 80% of those affected will be single parents; they will find it next to impossible to hold down any 16-hour per week job the DWP crowbars them into in order for them to be exempt. The phasing of the implementation means that most authorities will be able to forestall the inevitable consequences of the cap – widespread eviction and homelessness – through their current Discretionary Housing Payment (DHP) budgets until the end of March 2017. However, DHP budgets from April will be insufficient to meet even half the need of these families, let alone those who require help with the bedroom tax or other emergencies. Socialists must organise with those families who want to resist.
Robert Clough
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 254 December 2016/January 2017
