SCRAP UNFAIR BENEFITS CAP
Nats appeal for a lifeline to struggling Scots households
The SNP has urged the Tories to scrap the “unfair” benefit cap and increase payments in line with cost of living rises.
Ahead of Wednesday’s Budget statement by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, the Nats warned that families are being left to languish in poverty under the Tories’ welfare policies.
They said the Government’s approach created “an unnecessary burden” on households.
Benefits in Scotland are capped at £384.62 a week, or £1666.67 a month for couples or single parents whose children live with them. They are capped at £257.69 a month or £1116.67 a month for single people.
It affects people who receive Universal Credit, Child Benefit, Housing Benefit and several other welfare payments.
Recent analysis from the Child Poverty Action Group found it was a “fallacy” that the benefit cap encouraged people to work.
The research revealed that more than half of those seeing their benefits restricted are exempt from having to find work due to a number of reasons such as child care responsibilities.
The SNP said this means that tens of thousands of households are seeing their benefits capped at a rate that doesn’t meet rising costs. Energy bills, mortgage rates and food prices have all risen in the last 12 months.
SNP social justice spokesperson David Linden said: “This Budget comes at a time of real difficulty for families, made even harder by the unfair benefit cap and restrictively low benefits.
“The Tories must scrap the cap and uprate benefits to meet the cost of living.
“UK Government policies have failed completely and serve only now to add an unnecessary additional burden on families already struggling through the Tory-made cost of living crisis.
“For too long households have been made to suffer as the Tories’ ideological austerity obsession has trapped them in severe poverty and deprivation.
“The welfare system should be a safety net that exists only to support vulnerable people and empower those able to work back into meaningful, well-paid employment. At present it does nothing but keep impoverished households in a vicious cycle of destitution.
“The question the UK Government must answer is whether they will take stock of the evidence pointing to their failures, scrap the cap and uprate benefits, or whether their policies only exist as some callous form of punishment.
“We already know the answer – under the Tories in the broken Westminster system we’ll never see real meaningful support for those who need it most.”
In his first Budget since becoming Chancellor in October, Hunt will announce tax plans.
It has been suggested the Government will continue to help with energy costs and also seek to help reduce childcare costs and continue to freeze fuel duty. In addition, the state pension age may rise.