News Shorts and Other Busyness

Single Parent Benefit to Go

Squall 11, Autumn 1995, pg 15.

You can be sure that when John Major says that “[benefit] provision must be designed to help people in the most difficult and stressful circumstances in our society” that he’s about to cut welfare.

And wait for it… “We must look forward to encouraging an increasing element of self provision”.

A cabinet meeting taking place in mid-September is thought to have paid most of its attention to how to go about cutting down the £73 billion social security bill. Not by discussing better provision for employment opportunities of course, but by “our determination to deliver effective and well-managed public services - intensifying our efforts to limit waste and prune unnecessary expenditure as we pursue our continuing objectives of lower taxes.”

Not hard to translate John Major’s words - slash welfare so that tax cuts can be offered as bait to voters in the run up to the next election. One of these cuts is thought to be the complete removal of the miserly £6.50 average, currently paid in single parent child benefit. This manoeuvre is also designed as a financial disincentive for woman with low incomes not to have a child out of stable wedlock.