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benefits

  • 31 Dec 2012
    No (tax) credit for Iain Duncan Smith

    It's New Year's Eve, newsrooms are quiet and casual comments by ministers are enough to make top headlines. Today, Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, has made the news with some vaguely worded attacks on the system of tax credits.

  • 30 Dec 2012
    Christmas present to Osborne warns against return to Dickens' Britain

    The Chancellor has received a copy of Charles Dickens' classic A Christmas Carol from Christians who say he risks returning Britain to Victorian times.

  • 27 Dec 2012
    A serious threat to the mobility of disabled and sick people

    Many thousands of disabled people with serious musculo-skeletal conditions, serious heart conditions or respiratory difficulties, cerebral palsy, neurological conditions such as MS and ME and many more will no longer benefit from the Motability vehicle scheme under new government proposals, writes Jane Young. Their car will simply be taken away before they have a chance to appeal. In this article she explains what is happening under proposals for the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and how concerned individuals and organisations can respond.

  • 21 Dec 2012
    Snooping on job seekers is risky and unfair

    British state plans to force unemployed people to look for work online and monitor them while they do so have been widely condemned. Privacy will be invaded, crime boosted and poor and disabled people victimised.

  • 21 Dec 2012
    Plaid Cymru 'alarmed' at council tax benefit cuts hitting Wales' poorest

    Plaid Cymru has attacked Westminster's cuts to council tax benefits and has accused the Welsh Government of failing to protect Wales’ poorest households.

  • 13 Dec 2012
    Cutting benefits is unfair and does not make economic sense

    Ruth Lister, who is a peer, emeritus professor of social policy at Loughborough University and chair of the Compass management committee, has written a fine, short piece for the Guardian on benefits and uprating.

  • 9 Dec 2012
    Church Urban Fund chair condemns cuts and backs Beveridge principle

    The chair of the Church Urban Fund has criticised punitive government welfare cuts and the emaciation of the social contract behind the welfare state.

  • 5 Dec 2012
    Autumn Spending Review: we're not all in this together

    The poorest will have to shoulder the biggest burden as a result of today’s Spending Review by George Osborne.

  • 5 Dec 2012
    Government set to cash in on anti-welfare propaganda

    Further slashing of welfare is on the cards for Chancellor George Osborne's Autumn statement on the economy today. What is being portrayed as growing public hostility towards benefit claimants is being used as the justification for further measures that will hit the poorest and most vulnerable in society.

  • 26 Nov 2012
    Poor? Take more risks, says former banker Lord Freud

    It has long been apparent that demeaning and demonising benefit recipients to provide a rationale for deep welfare cuts is part of the government's strategy. Given the distribution curve of human behaviours, it is inevitable that some who receive benefits will be feckless, lazy and scrounging, just as these defects will also be found in the more prosperous strata of society. Now, Lord Freud – the Welfare Reform Minister – has found a new slur to cast on poor people.