Quote:
Originally Posted by DanaC
They should look at removing the proposed hard cap to benefits as well.
By having an absolute limit on the total benefits package, with nothing in place to limit rents, they place people wholly at the mercy of landlords.
£500 per week cap for a household sounds fine, until you take into account the soaring cost of rents. There's only so much economising a family can do. And the biggest cost to any family is something they have very little control over.
They sell it to the public on the grounds of 'fairness'. Why should people in work, possibly earning less than £500 per week, pay for families to live in houses they themselves could not afford. But the cost of implementing these changes is so much greater than any savings gained. Not to mention that many of those affected are in fact working.
Instead of ensuring that people on benefits remain poorer than people in work, they should be concentrating on ensuring that people in work are richer than people on benefits.
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I agree, I don't disagree with the hard cap in principle because of how benefits for children work... I.e. a static increase "per child" that doesnt reflect the true financial situation. The financial hit of going from zero children to one child is massive... But the impact of adding a second child is much smaller, and a 3rd even less.
Also the hard cap is, at least, only on benefits and not on money earned on top of that (e.g. a family with someone earning 6k, the hard cap is 32k total not 26k).
HOWEVER, my problem with it is that it doesn't factor regional differences into it AT ALL. I lived in small-town Lancashire for a few years and the rent prices were pretty low... You could get a decent house for 450 pcm. Where I am now you can't really rent a family home for under 550... And in the south of England that'll barely get you a bedsit.
And yet... The cap is the same everywhere? How does that make sense? I personally think 26k after tax is ample to support even a larger family on... In areas where housing is reasonable. We were in a situation where people with 7, 8+ children were getting the equivalent of 50,000 or more which is genuinely ridiculous and unsustainable.
But if you're pumping out 1000 pounds a month on rent because of the area you live in, it must be nearly impossible on 26k? Not to mention that the cost of living in general is higher in London. The hard cap should take local housing averages into the equation. It's the only thing that makes sense.