Today, children are already twice as likely to be poor as pensioners. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, child poverty is set to soar to 5.1 million children by 2022 – a 42 per cent rise over ten years.
This briefing presents some of the analysis to be published in a forthcoming report assessing the impacts of cuts to benefits from 2010 to 2020. This briefing focuses on changes to universal credit since it was first legislated in 2012 and their effects on family incomes, work incentives and poverty rates. It also includes the effect of real-terms cuts to child benefit which took place during the same period.
This report, published on the eve of the second reading of the Welfare Benefits Up-Rating Bill 2012-13, reveals that the government’s welfare benefit uprating legislation is based on bogus claims and is a poverty-producing bill that will further exclude the poorest workers, jobseekers, carers and disabled people from the mainstream of society.
A full media briefing for the Autumn Statement on 5 December 2012, the needs of low income families that the Chancellor must address, and other related background information and resource.
