27/05/2010 – Press Release: Welfare Reform - a tax on the poor and disadvantaged
The Department for Work and Pensions has today published details of how it will tackle the huge deficit by making radical changes to welfare benefits including possible cuts to child tax credits, the child trust fund, and housing benefit.
Andy Gregg, CEO of Lasa said: ‘We fear how this will affect the most vulnerable people in our society, especially those already suffering from the effects of the recession. The huge deficit we face needs to be tackled but penalising the poor and disadvantaged is not the way. Cuts might look good on the balance sheet short-term, but will push the genuinely sick and poor deeper into poverty in the long-term creating further costs to the taxpayer.'
New figures from the Office for National Statistics show that unemployment has increased by 0.2% in the three months up to March 2010 with the number of unemployed people up by 53,000 over the quarter reaching a total of 2.51 million.
Citizens Advice national statistics for 2009/2010 show that, whilst debt remained the biggest area of advice, this was closely followed by welfare benefits where enquiries rose by 20% over the year, and of these, the largest increase (40%) was in enquiries related to jobseeker's allowance.
Andy Gregg continued: 'I urge people who need help, especially those on benefits, to seek advice from their local advice workers, for example, from Citizens' Advice Bureau, or other independent advice agencies. The benefits system can be very complex, and often the only way to understand it is to speak to expert advisers.'
-ENDS-
For further information please contact:
- Lindi Maqhubela, Policy and Communications Manager on 0207 426 4484 or email lmaqhubela@lasa.org.uk
Note for editors:
About
London Advice Services Alliance (Lasa)
A leading
strategic provider of ICT and advice services to support the provision of
independent expert advice for the voluntary and charity sector, Lasa helps
thousands of organisations every year.
It helps third sector organisations to get better welfare rights advice
to their clients; use ICT (Information and Communications Technology) to
deliver more effective and efficient services; influence policy for advice and
legal services; and raise awareness of the third sector's ICT needs with
funders and government. For more
information, please visit http://www.lasa.org.uk/