{"id":1745,"date":"2025-03-14T11:34:17","date_gmt":"2025-03-14T11:34:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jpit.uk\/?p=24126"},"modified":"2025-03-14T11:34:17","modified_gmt":"2025-03-14T11:34:17","slug":"repeatedly-taking-the-easy-choice-on-welfare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/standrewsurcrustington.org.uk\/?p=1745","title":{"rendered":"Repeatedly taking the easy choice on welfare"},"content":{"rendered":"
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JPIT\u2019s Paul Morrison responds to potential disability benefit cuts.<\/h3>\n

In the November 2024 budget the Chancellor decided to keep the last government\u2019s \u00a33bn of disability benefit cuts which were pencilled in for the next three years. This was called a \u201cdifficult decision<\/a>\u201d. Over the past week, the government was busily spinning that because \u201cthe world has changed<\/a>\u201d there are to be more difficult choices in the March 2025 financial statement. The world may have changed, but the difficult choice offered is remarkably similar \u2013 additional reductions in the living standards of the disabled. This time with cuts of between \u00a32Bn and \u00a37Bn.<\/p>\n

From an uncertain economy to certain hunger via \u201ca difficult decision\u201d<\/h3>\n

The UK economy has not been healthy for some time and is not recovering as hoped. However, it is the problem of a \u201cchanging world\u201d and global economic uncertainty that the government says it is responding to. Specifically, the Trump administration\u2019s aggressively erratic trade and foreign policies have shaken the world\u2019s economic outlook.<\/p>\n

The Office for Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) must predict the major variables in the economy, such as inflation, interest rates, and house prices, alongside non-monetary variables including the levels of sickness and unemployment out to 2030. In normal times is a herculean task of skill, luck and faith \u2013 and these aren\u2019t normal times. Their best guess seems to be that the \u00a310Bn planned room in the government budget in 2030 has gone \u2013 for context this is against a planned overall budget in excess of \u00a31,420Bn[1]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Widespread uncertainty leads to negative but uncertain economic forecasts, which leads to \u201cdifficult choices\u201d, which in turn leads to the certainty of cuts to the overall welfare budget, which will definitely result in some disabled people having lower incomes. As disabled people already have high rates of poverty, foodbank use and destitution, it is near certain that the proposed cuts will lead to more hunger. In the UK the number of people who are food insecure \u2013 or hungry \u2013 was at the last count 7.2m<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You are right if you think it is profoundly unjust that the costs of the increased risks in the world are borne not by those who are gaining the most, or even those who actively profit from these risks<\/a>, but by the weakest in our society and across the globe<\/a>. A just political economy[2]<\/a> could and should distribute these risks more equitably.<\/p>\n

Christians have an unashamed \u201cpreferential option for the poor<\/a>\u201d, but the series of beliefs and choices described above show a deeply embedded preferential option for the rich.<\/p>\n

Is it more difficult to take from the weak or the powerful?<\/h3>\n

The unnamed government source briefed the BBC that further cuts to disability benefit were \u201cpolitically painful\u201d. Maybe. Rising global uncertainly has a price-tag and there is no politically painless way of dealing with it. However, placing the cost at the feet of the least well off, whose friends don\u2019t own newspapers, who don\u2019t provide enormous funds to think-tanks or political parties and are easily dismissed as \u201ctaking the mickey<\/a>\u201d looks a lot like the least painful option.<\/p>\n

Sensitive to cash, numb to people<\/h3>\n

Indeed, it seems that our economy and institutions are set up in a way designed to numb us to the \u201cpainful decision\u201d of placing burdens on the poorest.<\/p>\n

For example, spending implications of policy decisions are rigorously and publicly checked by the independent OBR before they ever see the light of day. They are then tested against \u201cfiscal rules\u201d which are designed to give the financial markets confidence in the management of the economy.<\/p>\n

The OBR was created because it was believed that without independent checks, government often chose to solve financial problems with \u201coptimistic\u201d predictions about the positive impacts of their policies. Today such \u201coptimistic\u201d predictions are looked at by the OBR, and we get to see their opinion.<\/p>\n

Typically cuts to social security are sold with the line \u201cwe will spend less money on supporting the poorest and we will then get less poverty\u201d. Universal Credit<\/a>, benefit sanctions<\/a> and cuts to the main benefit supporting the sick and disabled<\/a> were all sold on this premise. Usually, a story is told that cuts to benefits will \u201cincentivise\u201d work and thus reduce poverty, or that less people will need expensive benefit payments because of the introduction of cheap support programmes or by even cheaper threats and punishments.<\/p>\n

You won\u2019t be surprised that none of these ways of taking money from the poorest have reduced poverty \u2013 indeed most didn\u2019t even make their predicted financial savings, because the needs that went unmet reappeared as expensive problems elsewhere in government budgets.<\/p>\n

How could this happen? To quote a sermon<\/a> by John Wesley, \u201cone part of the world does not know what the other suffers. Many of them do not know, because they do not care to know: they keep out of the way of knowing it\u201d.<\/p>\n

Take money from the poorest and they will become less poor?<\/h3>\n

Perhaps the next time disability benefits are cut, government spokespeople will be up-front and say \u201cwe are cutting the budgets of disabled people, with the obvious consequences of increased poverty, hunger and worsening health and life chances\u201d. However, I doubt it.<\/p>\n

What I expect is some version of the magical story which goes \u201ctake money away from the poorest and they will become less poor\u201d. While there are undoubtedly some reforms that could have a positive impact, and there are definitely changes that could cut \u00a32-7Bn, reforms that do both seem less plausible.<\/p>\n

This time such claims might be justified \u2013 maybe \u2013 but wouldn\u2019t it be fantastic if before such claims could be made, the government had to run their \u201coptimistic\u201d predictions past an independent body, an equivalent of the OBR? Wouldn\u2019t it be even better if that body included both the learned experience of policy professionals, social scientists and mathematical modellers, alongside people with lived experience of poverty, who are experts in how polices actually impact on people\u2019s day to day lives?<\/p>\n

Forecasting poverty and hunger rates is a great deal easier and more reliable than predicting house prices in 2030, which the OBR is legally obliged to do before the March 2025 financial statement. So, it could be done \u2013 but our institutions have been set up with different priorities.<\/p>\n

A preference for the poor means ensuring that policies that harm the poor become the \u201cpolitically difficult\u201d choice<\/h3>\n

Polices that make the lives of the poorest harder are often called \u201cdifficult decisions\u201d. The reality is they are usually the politically expedient choice, because currently the human consequences of polices on the poorest are ignored or only shown through rose tinted glasses. The bad news is we chose to make it like this, the good news is that we can choose differently. The way things are is not inevitable; with different choices, different institutions, different regulations, working alongside experts with lived and learned experience, we can change it.<\/p>\n

If you want to ask your MP to oppose cutting support for disabled people, our friends at Trussell Trust have an email your MP webpage here: https:\/\/action.trussell.org.uk\/disability-cuts<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

[1]<\/a> This is the 2028\/29 figure, the latest published by the OBR.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> The term political economy predates modern economics and recognises the fact that politics and economics have always been intertwined, and that economics is not a natural science.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JPIT\u2019s Paul Morrison responds to potential disability benefit cuts. In the November 2024 budget the Chancellor decided to keep the last government\u2019s \u00a33bn of disability benefit cuts which were pencilled in for the next three years. This was called a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-urc-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t