This is an updated version of an article published in October/November 2016 issue of Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! (No 253)
‘We need to be heard as one, not individually – there are 88,000 of us.’ (Steve, a single parent with four children, whose housing benefit is to be cut by £70 per week by the benefit cap, talking to FRFI)
From 7 November, according to DWP calculations, 88,000 families, each with three or more children, will start to lose an average £60 per week in housing benefit because of a reduction in the Overall Benefit Cap (OBC). When the OBC was introduced in April 2013 it was set at £26,000pa; it will now be cut to £23,000pa for families living in London, and to £20,000pa for those living outside. 80% of those affected will be single parent families (67% women, 13% men). Some larger families will lose all their housing benefit. Single people or couples without children have their benefit capped at two-thirds the level for families with children: many in temporary accommodation (which can cost £250 per week) will be hit by the reduction.
There are some exemptions: where the parent(s) qualify for working tax credits (ie, work more than 16 hours a week if single, or more than 24 hours a week if a couple); where the family receives carer’s allowance, or where one of the family members is on a disability benefit. However, those in receipt of Employment Support Allowance in the work related activity group are not exempt even though they are incapable of working. Nor are single parents exempt if they have a child aged under five and are therefore not required to seek work.
Anyone already capped at the higher level of £26,000 will be subject to the lower cap on 7 November. This will immediately hit 8,500 London families with an additional benefit cut of £60 per week, and 11,500 families outside London with an even larger £115 cut per week. To manage the adverse publicity that the measure is starting to receive, the government is staging the implementation of the reduction for previously unaffected families, starting with local authorities with the fewest cases. Hence, DWP figures show that just over 5,000 new families will be hit right away on 7 November. The roll-out will conclude in January 2017 when nearly 40% of the families newly hit by the reduction will suffer this vindictive cut. However, as claimants have received letters over the summer telling them the cut will start from 7 November, few know that they may not be affected for another two months. Figures from six London authorities show that the official DWP projection of the number of families facing the huge reduction in their housing benefit is 20% less than the number of families who have received warning letters that they will be subject to the measure.
The effect of the housing benefit cut on these families, the poorest in the country, will be immediate. Half live in private rented accommodation: no private landlord will accept tenants who demonstrably cannot pay their full rent. Families will be subject to court proceedings or summary eviction, and forced into emergency accommodation. The costs of this will fall on local authorities. Families in social housing will not fare much better. A single parent with four children in social housing on Merseyside like Steve, for instance, will lose £70 of £100 weekly housing benefit. In three months he or she will have exceeded the eight weeks’ rent arrears which will trigger court action by the housing association. A single parent with three children in private rented accommodation will lose £30 a week, and eviction may come sooner. 2,500 families on Merseyside will be hit, 3,900 in Birmingham and over 1,000 in many London authorities from January 2017.
The government claims that that the reduction will encourage more parents into work. Yet all it will do is terrorise single parents into accepting casualised, poverty pay conditions at best, and destitution at worst. The 88,000 families include more than 300,000 children: it means that over 400,000 people may face eviction within weeks of the implementation dates, with many children being taken into care. Emergency accommodation, already inadequate, will be swamped. Homelessness will soar. The vast majority of Labour MPs support the OBC because more than two-thirds of the electorate want it. Neither Jeremy Corbyn nor Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Debbie Abrahams mentioned it in their Labour Party conference speeches, let alone opposed it – just six weeks before its introduction. This is one of the most vindictive attacks on the poor to date, and socialists must organise with those families who want to resist its appalling, punitive impact. As Steve says, ‘we need to throw ourselves out there and fight back.’
Robert Clough
