The Times
August 28, 2009







Gordon Brown is facing a Labour revolt over plans to cut the benefits of the poorest families by up to £15 a week, The Times can reveal.

Proposals to be implemented next April, a month before a general election, could mean some people losing a fifth of their income. The move, which has provoked anger among Labour backbenchers, was compared last night with the fiasco over the abolition of the 10p rate of income tax. At the moment 300,000 people on low incomes are allowed to keep up to £780 a year of their housing allowance if they find accommodation that costs less than the maximum benefit.

The Treasury says that the policy costs too much and that the ability to pocket any surplus should be scrapped from April 1. The change would take place three months after the rate of VAT is increased to 17.5 per cent.

Crisis, the housing charity, said that it could mean that people on £65-a-week jobseeker’s allowance losing 20 per cent of their income.


Frank Field, the former Labour welfare minister who led the revolt over the abolition of the 10p rate of income tax, said that he would try to stop the measure being pushed through Parliament.

Karen Buck, a Labour MP who campaigns on housing, said: “We should not under any circumstances be taking money from the poorest and making them choose between reasonable housing bills and meeting day-to-day expenses. I don’t know how many that applies to. Either way, either the savings aren’t there or poor people will suffer.”

The reform was introduced to give tenants greater control over their housing arrangements by paying the rent themselves, and the option to trade quality for extra cash.

The Government believes that abolishing the policy will save £160 million, but Labour MPs point out that the removal of competition means that landlords will raise rents to the allowance maximum. Landlords have been pressing for the change because they want rent to go directly to them.

Sarah Teather, the Liberal Democrat housing spokeswoman who discovered the change, said: “£15 a week may be small change to ministers, but for families struggling to make ends meet it is incredibly important. Gordon Brown has once again abandoned the people who need the most help.”

The change was announced in the small print of the Budget. The Government said that 600,000 people received the housing allowance, which replaced the old housing benefit in April 2007, and it has estimated that 300,000 claim a surplus.

Mr Field said that it was a retrograde step that destroyed the whole purpose of the allowance. “At one stroke, they get rid of a reform aimed at getting flexibility into a fairly inflexible market by giving people incentives to shop around. The timing for this could have been decided in Conservative headquarters.”

He plans to table amendments opposing the new policy.

Leslie Morphy, of Crisis, said: “This proposal is ill considered and potentially counterproductive. It beggars belief that the Government intends to introduce this when, by its own admission, it has no idea what the impact on claimants will be. We urge the Government to reconsider.”

A spokeswoman for the Department for Work and Pensions said: “Local housing allowance is aimed at providing the people who need it most with decent accommodation. This small change will not affect our customers’ ability to pay their rent and further support is available to those on a low income to help with other expenses.”


Fluff......

Corporatocracy at its finest! I'm no great fan of the wealth divide in this country and the welfare state is the prime example of policy failure, Gordon Browns plans to reduce income support is an out cry of epic proportions of the burden of expenditure it has created bailing out the wealthy.

A society labeled the underclass will always get a hard time as the rut they are in just gets hard to get out. The increase of unemployment and the modernised terms of labor is ever growing, the wage structure is shrinking whilst tax and costs of living is increasing.

The results are the welfare state is a trap and what they don't tell you is that it needs to exist in order for the Government's to tax you some more, no questions asked.

I shall be looking into the tax on income as in America their are already movements into its legality... here's their definitions for now

Income definition "income is the sum of all the wages, salaries, profits, interests payments, rents and other forms of earnings received... in a given period of time.

Tax definition "Taxes consist of direct tax or indirect tax, and may be paid in money or as its labour equivalent (often but not always unpaid). A tax may be defined as a "pecuniary burden laid upon individuals or property to support the government