The attacks launched on the welfare system over the past several months will see massive reductions in budgets upon which the most vulnerable sections of British society depend. It is a component of a broader assault being launched by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition to claw back the billions handed over to the banks through cuts to public spending.
In its emergency budget in June, the Conservative-Liberal coalition announced cuts in benefits amounting to £11 billion over the coming four-year period. Earlier this month, Chancellor George Osborne announced that a further £4 billion of cuts to the welfare budget would be outlined in next month’s comprehensive spending review.
Much more is to come. As the Guardian noted in a recent article, the cuts outlined so far represent approximately 6 percent of the total welfare budget. Since taking power, however, the coalition has consistently made clear its plans to seek savings of between 25 and 40 percent across all departments in the lifetime of the current parliament.
The cuts already announced will have a devastating impact. The emergency budget stated that future benefit increases would be in line with the consumer price index (CPI) rather than the retail price index (RPI) as had been the case previously. This single decision will slash benefit increases by at least 2 percent and mean that they will fall behind the rate of inflation.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/sep2010/welf-s18.shtml
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