Making work pay was meant to be a key motivation for the shift to universal credit, a radical redesign of the benefits system spearheaded by Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary.
But Johnson said these latest changes would blunt the incentive for its recipients to take up employment. “Significant allowances were an integral part of the design of universal credit, intended to give claimants an incentive to move into work. This reform will cost about 3 million families an average of £1,000 a year each. It will reduce the incentive for the first earner in the family to enter work.”
The IFS also said Osborne’s biggest welfare cut – freezing working-age benefits, tax credits and local housing allowance until 2020 - would affect 13 million households, who will lose out by an average of £260 a year.
[source : George Osborne took 'much more from the poor' in budget, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/10/george-osborne-took-much-more-from-poor-budget-2015-ifs, 10th July 2015]
But we still find in this a gross injustice of transfer of wealth: Queen Liz (whose family engineered WW1 and WW2) gets £ 4 million more; but 3 million poor families (whose ancestors fought and died in WW1 and WW2) lose £ 1000 each.
It's gud 'ere, innit?
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