Mr Tristram Hunt - an unlikely name for a
Labour MP, writes in today's Ft on the iniquities of the coalition’s plans for
welfare cuts. He invokes the ghosts Betty Higden, in Charles Dickens’s Our
Mutual Friend and William Beveridge to pad out his arguments.
And whilst I completely agree that the
abandonment of universal benefits is a dangerous step towards a more divided
and intolerant society. What dear old Trisram doesn't get is that society is also
at risk from the overly lax regime of targeted benefits that is increasingly
funded by the few. Over a 30 year period in productive work a middle income
earner (60k p.a.) will contribute £180k to the welfare pot, gaining only a
fraction of this in return as a pension. This is unsustainable and the
coalition is right to redress the balance.
The main problem is the awful mess that Brown
created with his ridiculous splurge on tax credits.
The latest
statistics show that 4.7 million families, containing 7.8 million children,
were tax credit recipients or were receiving the equivalent child support
through benefits. These families comprised:
4.1 million
families with children receiving CTC, or the equivalent via benefits:
1.5 million in
which no adult was in-work
1.8 million
in-work receiving the maximum CTC, and also receiving WTC
0.8 million
in-work receiving CTC only
0.5 million
families in-work without children, receiving only WTC.
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/statistics/prov-main-stats/cwtc-dec12.pdf
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/statistics/prov-main-stats/cwtc-dec12.pdf
Tax benefits for the working poor paid by the better off sounds democratic but in fact it was / is just an electoral bribe
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