The TUC says its dossier blows apart Tory boasts that welfare “scroungers” and the workshy are the main targets of sweeping tax and benefits changes
Working families and the low paid are being savaged by £15.9billion Government cuts, a new report claims.
The TUC says its dossier blows apart Tory boasts that welfare “scroungers” and the workshy are the main targets of sweeping tax and benefits changes.
Of 43 changes announced by the Coalition in the past three and a half years, 34 have left many of the least well-off households even poorer, says the TUC.
Its report Keeping Up With The Cuts identifies 10 welfare “reforms” that target low-paid workers.
They include a freeze on working tax credits and changes to universal credit that will reduce its value over time.
TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: “The Government claims its welfare changes are hitting so-called scroungers.
“But because it has been wildly exaggerating the number of people who really are workshy, the savings demanded cannot be found. Hard-pressed workers are being hit instead.”
Groups suffering include social housing tenants forced to pay bedroom tax and parents whose child benefit has been frozen for three years.
Working mothers have had Sure Start maternity grants for second and subsequent children abolished, costing low-income mums £500.
The TUC says replacing Disability Living Allowance with Personal Independent Payment for new claimants has left 510,000 worse off and seen 450,000 lose all entitlement.
Benefits are being capped at one per cent for three years, which the TUC says will drive an extra 200,000 into poverty.
Housing benefit is linked to the Consumer Price Index regardless of local rent levels, causing more hardship.
Jobseekers must wait a full week to claim benefits from April 2015.
Middle-class earners are also being hit as the threshold at which 40 per cent tax kicks in is lowered.
