NEW DRIVE TO SLASH BENEFITS
The family limit will be cut to £ 20,000 a year
BENEFIT claimants were last night given a stark warning to find jobs or see their handouts slashed.
Work and Pensions Secretary Stephen Crabb said they must start looking for work immediately to avoid a cut of up to £ 6,000 a year in welfare payments.
The benefi ts cap will be reduced from £ 26,000 to £ 20,000 per family this autumn. “Now is the time to take action,” Mr Crabb said.
His warning came as his department published evidence that the Tory drive to cut the welfare bill is working. New fi gures show that
22,000 claimants have started work and stopped taking benefits since the cap was introduced in April 2013. A further 11,500 have reduced their claims.
In total, 73,000 households have seen their benefits capped.
That figure is expected to rise dramatically when the maximum benefit claim per household is cut from £ 26,000 to £ 23,000 in London and £ 20,000 in the rest of the country.
Mr Crabb said: “The original benefit cap put an end to sky- high benefit claims and provided a clear incentive to move into work.
“Now we are going further to ensure the amount that out- of- work people can claim better reflects the circumstances of many hard- working families.
“With a near record number of vacancies in the economy, people who can work need to take up the help on offer and do everything they can to find a job. With the new cap coming into force in the autumn, now is the time for people to take action.”
His warning is a clear signal that he intends to continue the campaign to encourage claimants off welfare and into work championed by his predecessor Iain Duncan Smith. The drive to reduce the cap was promised in the Tory general election manifesto and announced in Chancellor George Osborne’s Autumn Statement.
The cap was designed to ensure households on benefit cannot get more than the net income of the average working family.
Around four in 10 working households have net incomes lower than £ 23,000 a year. Households where at least one adult is working are exempt from the cap to give claimants’ relatives the incentive to keep working. Households where someone receives a disability-related benefit are also exempt.
Claimants whose income from benefits is above the cap see the excess sum deducted from their housing benefit or Universal Credit payments.
The Department for Work and Pensions figures show that people hit by the cap are 41 per cent more likely to find work than those who fall below the maximum benefit level.
Two out of five claimants who said they had looked for work because of the cap in February were in jobs by the following August.
The TaxPayers’ Alliance last night welcomed Mr Crabb’s warning to claimants but urged the Government to do more to cut the benefits bill.
Campaign manager Harry Davis said: “The Secretary of State is right to encourage people who are able to work to look for it, but one has to question the merits of a system which doesn’t motivate people to do so anyway.”
Labour has repeatedly attacked the benefit cap and party leader Jeremy Corbyn has vowed to scrap it.
NEW figures show that 22,000 people affected by the benefit cap have moved into work. As work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith was passionate about helping and encouraging those stuck on welfare to find employment and become self- reliant. He understood that it is in everybody’s interest for all those who are able to work to do so. And he recognised that it is unfair for hardworking taxpayers to pay for jobless claimants to live luxury lifestyles.
How reassuring it is to see that his successor Stephen Crabb is committed to the same principles. Indeed he is already building on the progress that has been made during the last six years. From the autumn the benefit cap will be lowered again, saving money and encouraging greater numbers of people to stop relying on state handouts.
The champagne socialists on the Labour benches will no doubt condemn this change as they have every welfare reform proposed by the Conservatives. But Mr Crabb’s own humble background is evidence of the vital difference that getting a job can make and the dangers of becoming mired in long- term unemployment.
The Conservatives’ welfare reforms will improve the lives of so many relying on handouts. In Mr Crabb the Prime Minister has picked the perfect person to deliver them.