AROUND 10,000 people in Wales will be hit by the Government’s housing benefits cap, it was revealed yesterday.The figures were released as the coalition survived the first of a series of challenges to its welfare reforms in the House of Lords.
The Government’s impact assessment said 67,000 households across Britain will be affected by capping benefits at £26,000 a year, losing on average £83 a week. The cap would be £500 a week – the equivalent to a salary of £35,000 earned by working households before tax.
Almost two-thirds of those affected will be in London and the South East, where rents are higher, and fewer than 3% of the households are in Wales, or just under 2,000.
While every council area in Wales has affected families, none has more than 200, and most have fewer than 100.
There are around 7,000 children living in the affected households in Wales, and 3,000 adults.
Plaid Cymru peer Lord Wigley warned the cap will have a damaging impact on the lives of already vulnerable people, as he voted against the measure.
He argued that the cap would force benefit claimants to move to areas of lower rent, where there are already problems of housing shortage and unemployment.
“The Government’s policy is, by use of the cap, to force up to 67,000 families and 200,000 children on benefits to move from south east England to places in Wales and north east England where rents are lower,” he said.
It would transplant vulnerable people to areas where they had no chance of finding work.
Lord Wigley added: “It is also outrageous that workers who have suffered injuries or disease as a result of their work – such as slate quarrymen – and have been awarded benefit as compensation, should lose that benefit if other factors – such as rent levels – are outside their control.”
Stephen Doughty of Oxfam Cymru said that another crucial issue was how the future benefits will be paid to couples.
The charity wants benefits to children to go to the main carer – usually the mother – rather than roll them into a single joint payment for one person in the household.
Victoria Winckler, director of the Bevan Foundation, part of Cuts Watch Cymru, said the cap related only to 1% of all benefit claimants, but would disproportionately harm children.
Prime Minister David Cameron said the £35,000 equivalent wage was a “good healthy salary”.
He added: “It’s a basic issue of fairness. Should people really be able to earn more than £26,000 just through benefits alone?”
http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/2012/01/24/benefits-cap-will-hit-10-000-in-wales-55578-30185837/I find the idea that anyone would be receiving even £500 a week in benefits astonishing, when most people I know in Llandudno don't earn anywhere near that for working full time. Why should these people enjoy a better lifestyle than the taxpayers whose hard work funds their benefits?
