Welfare Reform: Silencing the Unemployed

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

¹ Housing Benefit to be reduced to 90 per cent after 12 months of getting Jobseekers Allowance, and benefits and tax credits will be worked out using the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) instead of the Retail Prices Index (RPI) from April 2011. New analysis also shows that over the past decade, the cost of a minimum household budget for a single person has risen by 38 per cent, compared with rises of the CPI and RPI of 23 and 31 per cent, see http://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/files/jrf/MIS-2010-findings.pdf

² Changes to Child Tax Credit and Working Tax Credit, see http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Nl1/Newsroom/Budget/Budget2010/DG_188501

³ Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University (2010) A minimum income standard for the UK. JRF's annual update, based on what members of the public think people need to achieve a socially acceptable standard of living showed that in 2010 a single person in the UK needs to earn at least £14,400 a year before tax in 2010, to afford a basic but acceptable standard of living. A couple with two children needs £29,200. http://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/files/jrf/MIS-2010-findings.pdf

⁴ Despite the fact that before the recession it could have been affordable (Kenway, 2009) Labour administrations made a clear political choice to allow the real value to decline.

⁵ Those who refuse to participate in their welfare programmes or accept reasonable job offers will initially lose one month's out of work benefits. ‘If they refuse a second reasonable offer, they will lose three months’ out of work benefits. If they refuse a third reasonable offer, they will be excluded from receiving further out of work benefits for a period of three years’ (Conservative Party, 2009).

⁶ About one third related to failing to attend an interview or appointment, and around another third related to losing a job through misconduct or leaving a job voluntarily and 43,000 to refusal of employment (Gregg, 2009, p. 14).

⁷ See Heap et al. (2005) and Office for National Statistics, http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=1292