- Housing benefit cuts will ‘push poor out of south’, experts warn, By Randeep Ramesh and Andrew Sparrow, November 8, 2010, The Guardian: “Large swaths of southern England will become off limits to housing benefit recipients in a little more than a decade because of the government’s proposed plans to cut welfare bills – triggering a huge migration of the poor to the north – according to a study by housing experts. The work, by the Chartered Institute of Housing, shows that before 2025 rents on most two-bedroom properties in the south will become unaffordable to those claiming local housing allowance…”
- How Britain’s new welfare state was born in the USA, By Anushka Asthana, Toby Helm, and Paul Harris, November 7, 2010, The Observer: “The gathering was small and discreet and made no headlines at the time – but its significance for the future of our welfare state and for David Cameron’s vision of a ‘big society’ will become clear this week. It was on a warm day in June that Professor Lawrence Mead, who inspired many of the US welfare reforms of the 1990s, strode into 10 Downing Street. The American guru had been invited by Steve Hilton, Cameron’s chief strategist. Also present were senior Whitehall officials from the Treasury and other government departments. They were joined by Neil O’Brien, director of the rightwing thinktank Policy Exchange. Mead was immediately struck by how eager the assembled team was to hear his ideas. ‘I was surprised how interested they were,’ he said. Under detailed questioning, he told his inquisitors that attitudes to welfare in Britain had been characterised by a culture of ‘entitlement’ for too long…”
- Unemployed told: do four weeks of unpaid work or lose your benefits, By Toby Helm and Anushka Asthana, November 7, 2010, The Observer: “The unemployed will be ordered to do periods of compulsory full-time work in the community or be stripped of their benefits under controversial American-style plans to slash the number of people without jobs. The proposals, in a white paper on welfare reform to be unveiled this week, are part of a radical government agenda aimed at cutting the £190bn-a-year welfare bill and breaking what the coalition now calls the ‘habit of worklessness’. The measures will be announced to parliament by the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, as part of what he will describe as a new ‘contract’ with the 1.4 million people on jobseekers’ allowance. The government’s side of the bargain will be the promise of a new ‘universal credit’, to replace all existing benefits, that will ensure it always pays to work rather than stay on welfare…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty