Yet another cruel move that widens the gap between richest and poorest (Minister calls benefit cap a ‘real success’ as poorest lose £2,000 a year more, 7 November). Claiming this will better enable those on benefits to find work adds insult to injury, and implies that the main barrier to employment is personal laziness rather than the lack of secure, adequately remunerated employment. Research finds that benefit cuts and sanctions actually make it harder to find work by adding stress and hassle to those already desperately trying to make ends meet. It will save a piffling £100m a year, yet will prove counterproductive as higher costs are put on to local authorities dealing with consequent homelessness, will add to NHS costs in greater sickness rates, and will damage educational prospects for the children affected. Can the government not join the dots when carrying out these moves? Or is personal misery and economic cost unimportant in its ideological drive?
Michael Miller
Sheffield
• Even people who are in work on low pay can claim benefits. According to the government benefits calculator, if I were a single person with two children living in my borough of Haringey and earning the £23,000 a year that is the benefit cap, I could claim over £4,000 in child tax credit and almost £12,000 a year in housing benefit. Admittedly I would be paying about £4,000 a year on tax and national insurance, and £1,300 a year on council tax, but I would still find it hard to make ends meet. Still, I would be considerably better off than a similar family, in similar circumstances, under this inhumane benefit cap. Of course I could always look for work but unfortunately there are not many jobs going in Haringey that pay £23,000 a year. As for the possibility of a three-bedroom flat at £12,000 a year, according to Rightmove they don’t exist.
Louise Lewis
London
• Regarding Larry Elliot’s article on the report by Christina Beatty and Steve Fothergill on welfare, work and austerity (Report, 7 November), we have just completed our own research on Devolution and Disadvantage in the Sheffield City Region, which can be viewed as a case study of a severely deindustrialised area of the north comprising South Yorkshire and north-east Derbyshire, former coal and steel communities.
Our study findings are similar to Fothergill and Beatty, though we focus in more detail on two areas and these need to be fed into this very important debate on the nature and consequences of deindustrialisation in Britain. First, the nature of labour market disadvantage is complex and relates to a variety of groups such as women, young people and BAME people, as well as those on long-term sickness and disability benefits.
The second area we explore is devolution policies and here we argue that the devolution deals and agreements are closely linked to austerity policies and the various cuts (some of these being welfare-rated). While the devolution deal for the Sheffield city region financially involves £900m over 30 years (subject of course to an elected mayor and other milestones), we have found that cuts to welfare and local authority budgets between 2010 and 2014 amounted to £1.1bn. As outlined in the article and report, the welfare cuts in no way actually contribute to raising employment rates. In reality, austerity is contributing to increased personal and family impoverishment and debt. It is also seriously undermining the city-regional growth model trumpeted as the “northern powerhouse”. This is because of the distortions to the labour market through increasing segmentation, which welfare conditionality actually creates.
This means that the actual impact of policies is that a more limited cohort of labour can access skills and apprenticeships, which is deemed as essential to devolution growth strategies. So, we would certainly welcome widening this important debate.
Dr David Etherington Middlesex University
Professor Martin Jones University of Sheffield
• The cuts to social security entitlements that Polly Toynbee describes (May’s ‘just managing’ are the victims of this new benefit cap, 8 November) bring shame on us all for having let our once cherished system of welfare fall into such a sad state while many of us are receiving benefits we don’t want or need – and here I’m thinking specifically of heating allowances for fit baby boomers and free TV licences.
However, even those of us who are advocates of a strong and universal system, in which all citizens have a stake if only by having a bus pass, find difficulty explaining the iniquities of the welfare cap to people living in low wage areas with lower housing costs, where £26,000 per year constitutes riches beyond belief.
It is very sad that the task of reforming and revitalising support for the poorest should be taking place under a Tory government, at a time of austerity, rather than when the public finances were more buoyant in the Blair-Brown years.
Les Bright
Exeter
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