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Category - benefit cap

  • 4 Jan 2013
    Support for benefit cuts based on ignorance, research shows

    Ministers should not assume that voters will continue to back their attack on benefits if they find out the facts, new opinion research suggests.

  • 2 Jan 2013
    Pay, welfare benefits, fairness and IDS

    It is unfair that jobless benefits have risen far faster than salaries, claimed UK welfare secretary Iain Duncan Smith. But his efforts to justify a further onslaught on the living standards of unemployed people are unconvincing.

  • 5 Feb 2012
    Welfare reform: capping truth, benefiting from spin

    "The problem with the truth is that it’s complicated. Lies are simple, they can be altered to fit any audience, they can be sensational without any boring honest bits to dilute the story. Honesty doesn’t make headlines. That’s the problem with the Welfare Reform Bill..."

  • 1 Feb 2012
    A rethink on welfare is essential
  • 1 Feb 2012
    Government must change direction on welfare, say critics

    The House of Commons debates the Welfare Reform Bill for the last time today, following a record seventh defeat for the government in the House of Lords last night.

  • 31 Jan 2012
    Why the churches disagree with the benefit cap

    The excellent Joint Public Issues Team shared jointly by the Methodist Church, the United Reformed Church and the Baptist Union of Great Britain has produced a very good guide to why a generic benefit cap is a bad idea for people living at the sharp end of austerity.

  • 31 Jan 2012
    Kirk wants MPs to support Welfare Reform Bill amendments

    The Church of Scotland has joined leading charities, faith groups and trade unions in urging Scottish MPs to uphold the Lords amendments to the Welfare Reform Bill.

  • 31 Jan 2012
    Four of Britain's major Free Churches oppose welfare benefit cap

    The Methodist Church, the Baptist Union of Great Britain, the United Reformed Church and the Quakers in Britain have called for Parliament to reject a benefit cap.

  • 30 Jan 2012
    An open letter to Iain Duncan Smith

    Dear Iain

    You once described yourself as “the quiet man”. It didn't quite work for you at the time, which is a pity, because quietness implies a capacity for reflection, listening and, in the words of our Quaker 'Advices and Queries', for finding space to “consider it possible you may be mistaken”. These are not qualities which are much in evidence among our noisier politicians.

  • 23 Jan 2012
    Falsehoods and confusions about the benefit cap

    Since early this morning there has been a furious battle to establish proper fact and true value in the argument over the government's proposed welfare benefit cap. As I write (17:30, 23 January 2012) it has just won the first vote in the House of Lords, but the arguments have been going the other way.