{"id":24439,"date":"2014-03-20T06:55:06","date_gmt":"2014-03-20T06:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=24439"},"modified":"2014-03-20T06:55:06","modified_gmt":"2014-03-20T06:55:06","slug":"the-welfare-cap-an-attack-on-the-young-the-old-new-parents-the-disabled-those-on-law-pay-and-the-safety-net-society-should-provide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2014\/03\/20\/the-welfare-cap-an-attack-on-the-young-the-old-new-parents-the-disabled-those-on-law-pay-and-the-safety-net-society-should-provide\/","title":{"rendered":"The welfare cap: an attack on the young, the old, new parents, the disabled, those on law pay and the safety net society should provide"},"content":{"rendered":"

The welfare cap seems to me one of the biggest policy issues in the budget. Of course it is designed as a bear trap for Labour. In practice I cannot see how any Chancellor thinks they will ever cap the increase in social security \u00a0payments to a limit that may be lower than inflation and which makes no consideration for population change or ageing. \u00a0What struck me though from the budget report <\/a>was just how all embracing the new cap will be:<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a>The Jobseekers Allowance and old-age pension may be excluded, but otherwise just about every benefit is covered.<\/p>\n

The message is a simple one \u00a0and is aimed at the old, \u00a0 children, new parents, \u00a0the disabled, \u00a0those who've suffered accidents at work, \u00a0those on low pay, \u00a0pensioners on low income \u00a0and others for whom the social security safety net was designed. That message is clear. \u00a0It is \" you are going to pay for the mess that bankers made \u00a0of our economy.\"<\/p>\n

I \u00a0 have read a lot about what fairness is of late. I have \u00a0come to the conclusion that there is no objective answer to that. \u00a0Whatever one person thinks is fair is, apparently, acceptable to at least someone, somewhere. \u00a0That is why it comes to fairness \u00a0majority opinions matter. \u00a0On the welfare cap I have no doubt the majority will consider \u00a0what is being proposed \u00a0to be profoundly unfair \u00a0if they realise just who is affected.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I sincerely hope some politicians will have the courage to fight this.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The welfare cap seems to me one of the biggest policy issues in the budget. Of course it is designed as a bear trap for
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148,127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-benefits","category-budget"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24439\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}