Working families will be the big losers from welfare cuts, the TUC warns
Neil Puffett
Friday, October 29, 2010
Child poverty within working households is set to increase as a result of welfare and benefit cuts announced in the emergency Budget and spending review, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has claimed.
It argues that policies such as housing benefit cuts hit low-income households hardest and that with more than half of all poor children living in working households, child poverty is likely to increase among working families.
The research follows a TUC study last week that found departmental spending cuts will hit the poorest households 15 times harder than the richest 10 per cent.
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "Ministers say their welfare and benefit cuts are fair and justified because they will make work pay.
"Polls show they have already lost the fairness argument. Now we show that it is working families – both the poor and the squeezed middle – that are the big losers from welfare cuts, not the alleged work-shy scroungers that the government claims to target.
"These deep, rapid cuts – concentrated on families with children – weren’t in any election manifestos."
He added: "The government needs to reconsider its spending plans before it causes any more economic damage and pain to working families."
