Churches speak out on benefit cuts
Benefit cuts to change behaviour are unpopular, ineffective and immoral, say Churches. Quakers in Britain, along with Church Action on Poverty, the Church of Scotland, the Baptist Union of Great Britain, the Methodist Church, the Scottish Episcopal Church, and the United Reformed Church are warning that the Welfare Reform and Work Bill marks a dangerous shift away from a core principle of the welfare state and will make poor people even poorer.
Pressing play on the video below will set a third-party cookie. Please see our cookies page to find out more.
[QUOTE-START]
61% of adults believe welfare benefits should allow families with children to cover basic costs
- YouGov survey
[QUOTE-END]
A YouGov survey commissioned by the Churches has also revealed that 61% of UK adults believe that welfare benefits should be set at a level that allows families with children to cover their basic costs. In contrast, only 25% of those polled said they thought that benefits should be set deliberately low to encourage families to find work or get more work.
Enough: Our responsibility to meet families' needs
[QUOTE-START]
No child should be left without enough in order to motivate their parents. If children live in a family which doesn't have enough money they are more likely to die young, do worse at school, and experience worse health. Many of these families are already in work and working very hard. Any policy that claims that taking £1,000 from a family will enhance the life-chances of its children, as the Bill does, is not only supremely questionable but morally flawed.
- Paul Morrison, Public Issues Policy Adviser for the Methodist Church and author of the report
[QUOTE-END]
The report Enough: Our responsibility to meet families' needs reveals that the Benefit Cap, which reduces families' benefits by an average of over £3,500 per year, has only resulted in a further 4.7% of families finding work.
However, 46% of families affected by the cap experienced increasing problems with rent arrears. This is despite the Government's claims that reducing the amount of benefits people are entitled to is an effective way of moving people into work.
The report highlights how the Bill threatens to undermine a founding principle of the welfare state: namely, that the amount families receive in benefits should be sufficient to meet their basic needs. We say the Bill will break the link between what people need and the amount of support they can receive. Families with children will be hardest hit by this change.
"Fairness to the taxpayer should not be achieved at the expense of unfairness to children," said Paul Morrison, Public Issues Policy Adviser for the Methodist Church and author of the report. "As Christians we believe all people are made in God's image. We do not believe that we should ever deliberately deprive a person, a family, a child of enough to thrive or to fulfill their God-given potential. We are asking that the welfare state holds to its founding principles, and seeks to provide enough so that every child can have the best chance in life."
People will soon be able to find out
how different groups will be affected by the Welfare Reform and Work Bill. Together we are asking people to pray, to read and share the report, and write to their MPs to raise their concerns.