The Guardian view on benefit cuts: Cameron’s menu of pain
|
Version 0 of 1. The cellars will be scouted for gunpowder, the Queen will rock up in a gilded coach, and then Black Rod will tap. The high ritual of parliament’s state opening seems out of kilter with the usual list of bills on public services and crime, but this time there is high politics to match. The sovereign’s scroll will touch on Britain’s place in the world, via the EU referendum, on fundamental human rights, and, through Scotland’s post-referendum reforms, the integrity of the kingdom itself. For a few hours, the bread and butter questions might almost be forgotten. And yet the need for citizens to keep themselves in bread and butter will certainly not go away. With petrol cheaper than it was, and with Labour still mistrusted with money, David Cameron’s pitch that he could lead the voters back to prosperity proved to be just persuasive enough. But had his win been more widely expected, his promise of a “recovery [that] benefits every one of our citizens, at every stage of their lives” might have been more widely interrogated. Stagnant nominal wages are one reason to doubt such sunny predictions, and for very many families – and the poor especially – the Conservative vow to lop £12bn annually off “welfare” in just two years will be just as important. The pre-election sense here was of an incomprehensibly large sum somehow being wrung out of a vast and vague tract of spending. Leaked memos suggested that Whitehall was discreetly considering grisly specifics, such as arbitrarily cutting some disabled adults’ stipend, simply because they happened to be young. But for as long as the assumption was that the Conservative manifesto represented the opening bid in coalition talks, it was not difficult to bat the most controversial speculation away. Mr Cameron silenced whispers about child benefit simply by denying plans to change this “key part of families’ budgets”. But now, with Mr Cameron’s surprise slim majority won, easy pre-election words are weighing more heavily. George Osborne talked endlessly about “a long-term economic plan”, and yet the plan he set out as recently as March is suddenly to be rewritten in a second July budget. Why? There has been no change to speak of in the economy, and, after five years in post, Mr Osborne can hardly plead that he was aghast when he opened the books. No, the only intelligible explanation is that a Conservative administration now wishes to get on with things that the Lib Dems would have blocked, above all setting in train all those benefit cuts which Mr Cameron declined to spell out for the voters. If these cuts are necessary at all, that is only because of other manifesto undertakings, such as to cut inheritance tax and move beyond budget balance to an outright surplus. Above all, the benefit cuts flow from the PM’s commitment to rebalance the books through “spending cuts alone”, a lopsided approach now set to be written into a time-wasting and purely symbolic law which will (until it’s repealed) prevent any of the big taxes going up. The Institute for Fiscal Studies today produced for the public the same sort of menu of pain that civil servants are now dropping on to Iain Duncan Smith’s desk at the Department for Work and Pensions. Express protection for the elderly doubles the proportional cut for everyone else, to about 10%. The main action will have to come in some mix of four welfare fields: children, housing, disability and tax credits. Under the children heading, Mr Duncan Smith has signalled sympathy for capping support to just two children, to encourage parents to think twice about having kids they can’t afford. That’s too bad for children who didn’t ask to be born into big families, and won’t help with the immediate arithmetic unless it is retrospectively imposed on existing big families, which are hardly going to shrink. Besides, if Mr Cameron’s reassurances are worth anything, child benefit is safe, which only leaves means-tested payments, where cuts are guaranteed to increase child poverty. Cutting in-work tax credits would sink the supposed pro-work welfare reforms, which leaves support for housing and disabled people looking like the principal targets. Even if the Queen’s speech rustles up something on the minimum wage, Mr Cameron can hardly talk of “one nation” until he can reassure the poor and the frail that there is a place for them in his land. |