It is horrifying to see such deep benefit cuts announced by the chancellor. The cuts will affect around 11 million families, including 5 million of the struggling families that the prime minister stated she would focus on.
The cuts of £12 billion from the welfare budget is huge. Under the Universal Credit for the first time tax credits and family benefits will be limited to the first two children. This will have a devastating on 870,000 families with more than two children.
Most working age benefits have been frozen for four years from 2016. The benefit cap will be reduced from £26,000 a year to £23,000 a year in London, and £20,000 in the rest of the country.
Those aged 18 and 21 will no longer necessarily receive housing benefit. Such severe austerity measures will be hurting the poor and low paid, the very ones that need to be given more support to save them from falling below the poverty line.
We are already seeing numbers of homeless people increasing rapidly all over the country.
The 2016 benefit cap limits most payments to £26,000 a year, across the UK. From April 2017 were cut to £23,000 in London, and £20,000 elsewhere. Up to now 45% of households affected by the cap have been in London.
Those who exceed the cap receive a cut to Housing Benefit. The benefits excluded from the cap include: Working Tax Credit, Disability Living Allowance, Personal Independence Payments and the WRAG element of ESA.
This state of affair will have debilitating effect on struggling families in UK and deserved to be looked into as a matter of urgency.
UK being the fifth richest economy in the world and can easily provide relief to its hardest hit citizens.
Baldev Sharma
Rayners lane, Harrow
