Unlock free Digest editor
Roula Khalaf, editor of FT, chooses her favorite story in this weekly newsletter.
The British Social Security Network is one of the weakest in the rich world, and its poorest households are worse than colleagues in Slovenia, according to an analysis that shows that they have been using without work covered the costs of basic things in just two of the past 14 years.
The report of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research comes as Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer seeks to convince Labor MPs to return Well -being reforms This will reduce the financial support of patients and disabled people to report public finances.
Consumption on health benefits has grown sharply as pandemic and ministers are preparing to reduce around £ 5 billion with the estimated £ 41 billion costs of paying personal independence, the main disability benefits, by 2029-30.
The reform package could also include a reduction on separate compensation compensation – paid to people who are too sick to work – to finance the rise at the basic support rate without a job, which amounts to £ 393.45 per month for one applicant between the ages of 25 or more.
Think-tank analysis, which will be published on Thursday, shows that Britain is third from DNA in OECD for generosity to support unemployed, where they use less than 40 percent of average salaries. Only the US and Australia are less generous.
The UK also slipped from 14th to 21th place in a group of advanced economies for the amount spent on well -being as a percentage of GDP between 2010 and 2019,
Fall – which came as if the then conservative government set new caps and conditions and freezes in a number of advantages, and at the same time freezing of housing – was the largest of any country and left the total welfare consumption just below the OECD average.
Niesr said it was only two years since 2010 – during the pandemic, when the Government increased its basic rate for £ 20 per week – where the value of well -being payment was sufficient to cover the costs of basic things.
In the meantime, slow growth growth, reflecting poor productivity performance in the UK, left the poorest British households worse than his colleagues in Malta and Slovenia, even when other parts of the country prosper, Think-Tank said.
“We do not deliver the prosperity of high salary or certainty through well -being,” said Max Mosley, a senior economist in Niesr -in the main author of the report, pointing to the corrosive effect on the life standards of poor productivity and the reduction of benefits.
Speaking on the Prime Minister’s issues on Wednesday, Starmer said that the current system was “independent, economically and morally”.
The ministers have repeatedly said that the goal of reforms is to give people stuck in the advantages of “capture” the incentives and the support they need to re -enter work.
But charity and campaign group organizations represented by people with disabilities say that priority priority for short -term treasury savings, not investment in better health and employment, will hit vulnerable people without increasing labor or long -term reduction in the compensation laws.
And the campaign and ministers recognize one reason why consumption on health benefits has grown so much, because it is so difficult to survive at the basic rate of benefit without work.
