The reluctance of both the Chancellor and the Prime Minister to confirm that benefits (notably Universal Credit) will be uprated next year in line with inflation has fed speculation that the Government is considering a real-terms cut. My advice would be to squash this idea as soon as possible – mainly because it is bad economics. But it would be bad politics too, undoing any good done by the U-turn on the 45p rate of income tax.
To recap, benefits are usually uprated in April in line with the CPI measure of inflation recorded in the previous September. This meant that benefits rose by just 3.1% in April this year (the inflation rate in September 2021), well below actual inflation of 9.0% in April itself.
The row about this at the time was partly defused by additional one-off payments to low-income households. But ministers also argued that benefit claimants could…
View original post 827 more words
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments