Welfare recipients challenge UK minister
LONDON — A British government minister is being asked to put his money where his mouth is.
Opponents of a raft of welfare changes that took effect this week want Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith to make good on a claim that he could live on 53 pounds ($80) a week — the amount one welfare recipient said he has left after paying for housing and heat.
Asked on national radio Monday whether he could get by on so little, Duncan Smith replied: “If I had to, I would.”
By Tuesday afternoon, some 250,000 people had signed a petition urging him to prove it.
That would mean living on 7.57 pounds ($11.43) a day in London, one of the most expensive cities in the world. It would also reflect a huge comedown — a 97 percent cut in his government salary.
Duncan Smith defended himself, telling a local newspaper that he’d been unemployed twice and knew what it was like “to live on the breadline.”
“This is a complete stunt which distracts attention from the welfare reforms, which are much more important and which I have been working hard to get done,” he was quoted as saying by the Wanstead & Woodford Guardian.
The Conservative-led government’s welfare reforms include changes in disability payments, below-inflation increases to benefits and, eventually, the replacement of a patchwork of housing, unemployment and parental benefits with one payment called the Universal Credit.
Prime Minister David Cameron has argued that the changes are needed to save money and make welfare more fair, but the thousands of signatures garnered within 24 hours of Duncan Smith’s comments underscored the anger over the cuts and worry about their human impact.
The most discussed welfare change is a reduction in subsidies for social housing tenants who have spare bedrooms. Opponents have dubbed the measure a “bedroom tax,” but the government says the change will save money and free up housing for families.
But it was the notion of Duncan Smith counting his coins at a supermarket that captured the public imagination as it illustrated how the poor really struggle to get by.
The 53 pounds a week figure came from David Bennett, a market trader who said he earned about 2,700 pounds last year. He was interviewed by the BBC, describing how his housing benefit was being cut even though his children stayed with him several days a week.
If Bennett were to buy a monthly bus pass to get to work it would cost him the equivalent of about 2.50 pounds a day. Setting aside one pound a day for clothing and emergencies would leave him about 27 pounds a week, for food.
Could a person survive on that? Probably. But he’d be living on pasta and potatoes, with maybe a few eggs and a little bit of ground beef or sausage.