Press Eye – SDLP Conference 2016 – St Columb’s Hall, Derry 12th March 2016.
Photograph by Declan Roughan
SDLP Foyle MP Mark Durkan has said the resignation of former Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith (IDS) does not relieve him from his responsibility for so many negative aspects of Welfare Reform and his previous attempts to justify the ‘Welfare Cap’.
Mr Durkan has also said the parking of cuts to new Personal Independence Payments (PIP) does not remove the underlying syndrome of a Tory ‘benefit-cuts-R-us’ framework which the Welfare Cap reflects.
Speaking extensively in the wake of Friday’s resignation by Iain Duncan Smith, the Foyle MP said:
“It is clear that the root cause of George Osborne’s push to cut Personal Independence Payments has been the “Welfare Cap”.
“Indeed, Iain Duncan Smith is also admitting that the “Welfare Cap” has also driven the proposed cuts in Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), the attempted Tax Credit cuts and the squeezes on Universal Credit.
“That corroborates some of the very points I made in response to last July’s budget and the Welfare Reform and Work Bill which is transposing the cuts which stem from the fact that George Osborne reduced the Welfare Cap by £46.5 billion over four years in his summer budget compared with his spring budget.
“The SDLP is the only party in the north to consistently oppose the Welfare Cap. We voted against its introduction in Westminster when the DUP and Alliance voted for it. In all the Stormont House and other discussions on Welfare Reform we were alone in stressing the risks from the Welfare Cap including in devolved contexts. Sinn Fein did not know what we were talking about, mistaking the Welfare Cap for the “Benefits Cap” on households. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland tried to dismiss our apprehensions by claiming the Welfare Cap was just an inert reporting mechanism but her former cabinet colleague has blown such complacent delusion apart.
“I have argued that what was bubble-wrapped as a neutral budgetary tool would be repeatedly used as a cuts weapon by the Treasury. It is clear that George Osborne now uses the Welfare Cap, which was introduced in the last parliament with the assent of the official opposition, as a search engine for benefit cuts. These cuts which will hurt vulnerable people are not just his austerity trophies but the means of paying for tax cuts for people who are better off.
“It is welcome that we have another of the Chancellor’s “G-turns” from his budget announcements. But parking the proposed new PIP cuts and his handrail-, or crutch-, tax cuts does not remove the underlying syndrome of a “benefit-cuts-R-us” framework which the Welfare Cap reflects.
“It will not be long before the Treasury decide that rather than using the Welfare Cap to induce changes in welfare legislation (with attendant political complications), they will use it to impose working cash limits on administrative decisions and interpretations around rules, rates and benefit numbers.
“The logic of Osborne’s approach is to have welfare budgets managed on an assigned sums and volume-control basis like other spending lines. He and allies will work out changes to rules, rates and assessments which they can mount without primary legislation using the very wide regulatory powers which the 2012 Welfare Reform Act gave ministers.
“Now that Iain Duncan Smith is finally owning up to the fact that the Welfare Cap is treated as a cut-seeking missile system by the Treasury, all parties need to look again at its implications.
“Those who went along with its introduction in a 90 minute debate on the “Charter for Budget Responsibility” should recruit his observations as cause for revising the status and purpose of the “Welfare Cap”.
“Those of us who have consistently warned of its invidious potential would be glad to be joined by others who are having their eyes opened the narratives now being aired.
“Some of the then “Labour rebels” who voted with us against the Welfare Cap are now in leadership positions, so they should be emboldened to use the fact that the IDS observations vindicate their original misgivings.
“None of these current arguments relieve the former Work and Pensions Secretary from his responsibility for so many negative aspects of Welfare Reform and his previous attempts to justify the Welfare Cap.
“The legislation which he framed could still be used to facilitate the disappearance of benefit entitlements in adherence to the Welfare Cap.
“His continuous insistence that Universal Credit would be rolled out on time and in budget and he was taking personal responsibility will now be discredited by Tory colleagues as well as disbelieved by the rest of us.”
