From the Revd Paul
Nicolson
Sir, - Your Question of the Week (
News, 12 October), "Do the Tories champion the poor?", fails to
describe the circumstances of the people who need to be
championed.
Research by the New Policy Institute
shows that many councils will be introducing another poll tax to
meet the ten-per-cent cut in central-government funding of
council-tax benefit. The poll tax took 20 per cent of the tax out
of weekly benefits in the 1990s. That means that the £111.45 a week
Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) or the new Universal Credit (UC), after
rent and council tax, will be taxed by up to £5 a week by some
councils from April 2013. That is just one example of the
inadequacy of benefits.
Many council-tax-benefit claimants
will not be able to pay that £5, because benefits have been reduced
since the move from RPI to CPI in April 2011; they have rent
arrears, owing to the housing-benefit caps; the £500 cap on all
benefits will hit large families with high rents; and the prices of
necessities, such as food, fuel, clothes, and transport, are
increased by the market, while the value of benefits is reduced,
and safety nets such as the social fund have been abolished.
When people cannot pay the council
tax, councils have to apply to the magistrates for liability orders
adding up to £120 to the tax; the bailiffs will be sent in, adding
a further £75 to £210, depending on whether visits are made.
Donald Hirsch, who manages the Joseph
Rowntree Foundation (JRF) research into minimum income standards at
Loughborough University, calculates that a single adult receiving
£71 JSA/UC a week, after rent and council tax, needs the JRF
minimum income standard of £91.58 a week just to pay for food,
fuel, clothes, and transport. So a couple without children are
already about £18 a week short of the minimum that they need; and
the Chancellor proposes to take a further £10 billion out of
benefits.
PAUL NICOLSON
Chair, Zacchaeus 2000 Trust
34 Grosvenor Gardens
London SW1W 0DH