The controversal housing benefit cap is to be postponed until January 2012
The official reason given is that councils have not had time to prepare for possible exodus of tenants from high-rent areas such as central London. Councils in London estimate 18,645 households in London will be adversely affected by the caps, of which 14,661 are households with children.
A related housing benefit cut will be brought forward more quickly for new tenants than the planned start date of October.
However the real reason is that the government does not want to be overwhelmed by stories of pensioners being forced to leave their homes unable to pay rent due to cuts in housing benefit in the run up to the May local elections.
And now the June estimate of 490,000 public sector job cuts, following the government's October spending review has now been downgraded to 330,000 job losses
George Osborne seems to think that this is because he has cut welfare bills rather than cutting public services.That's strange as the welfare cuts aren't operative yet. Of course he's gambling, when he also says "private sector job creation will far outweigh the reduction in public sector employment."
It could be of course, as has been widely reported, that ministers are telling him that savage manpower cuts to their ministries are plain impossible.
No comments:
Post a Comment