Ian Duncan-Smith calls it 'bonkers' to pay benefits to those earning £50,000 plus. It sounds great to take these benefits away from the rich doesn't it? Some people will go away (helped by the media) into thinking the Tories are doing something progressive for a change.
But instead of headlines like 'Tories withdraw benefits from middle England', lets rephrase this to something more descriptive - 'Tories hire huge army of new bureacrats to administer intrusive complicated forms to claim anything from a bus pass to child benefit' or 'Administrators cost more than 5% saving of withdrawing benefits from middle class'.
Not only is this not progressive, it is actually regressive. To save money the Tories will have to take benefits from people earning far less than £50,000. Either IDS is a complete idiot or his real aim is to do away with these benefits altogether. In which case the coalition should be honest and campaign on that, rather than wasting money on even more bureaucracy and creating a new stigma and new obstacles for those people who now have to waste their time filling in forms about their income for benefits they use to receive automatically. Inevitably the most in need will suffer most, while the rich might think they are doing a good deed in losing what to them is a small amount.
Agreed.
ReplyDeleteThe Citizen's Income Trust was especially miffed about this. PS, apparently the cost of all the form filling required to withdraw Child Benefit from higher earners would wipe out the potential saving anyway.