Six weeks today the reduced overall benefit cap policy begins. It will place at least half a million children into poverty and probably evict and make the same number homeless irreparably damaging their life chances.
According to Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all we have a left wing opposition in the Labour Party and one whose left wing views are a danger to the country (blah blah blah!) and so I sat don to watch the conference speech of Debbie Abrahams the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary for this radical left wing party.
Oh dear what a huge disappointment and not a mention of the Benefit Cap at all and despite Corbyn himself saying over 12 months ago at the TUC conference that it must go.
Instead Abrahams speech opened on the bedroom tax which Labour will scrap – and rightly it received not one handclap as that has been the policy for a few years pre Corbyn so nothing new there.
Then the speech got really interesting I thought with the following excellent line…
evidence based policy beats policy based evidence
I was enthused reader waiting for some big announcement on the Benefit Cap, the policy to start in 6 weeks that will add another 500,000 children into poverty that will add to the 4 million children Abrahams said are already there. Yet not a whisper, not a dickie bird, not one mention of this outrageous radical policy that for example makes other current campaigns such as the Homeless Reduction Bill as totally meaningless – without abandoning the Benefit Cap policy there is not a hope in hells chance of reducing homelessness – end of, end of, end of!
Oh dear it seems the same Blairite notion of the Labour Party not coming out to oppose any policy that has a positive public opinion rating is alive and kicking and with this so-called surge to the left politically too!
Deluded shithousery is seemingly endemic in the Labour Party culture.
I am sure that leaving the scrapping of the hated Work Capability Assessment (WCA) until the end was the plan to get a rousing applause and scrapping the WCA did get a polite clap. It should the WCA is an outrage and clearly Abrahams is hoping the electorate forget which party introduced it in 2008.
Yet failing to mention the Benefit Cap at all was a massive mistake and a massive let down to the more than the ADDITIONAL 500,000 children (for fuck sake) it will place into poverty from 42 days time. Not a fucking dickie bird!
IF the Labour Party is going to get lambasted and labelled as being left wing then the cap doesn’t fit with this cautious right wing Blairite / Brownite / Milibandite shit-scaredness of not even mentioning this horrific policy and not even to its friendliest audience
Scandalously shameful!
Two Pesky Facts
- Over 60% of existing capped households are single parents with pre-school age children therefore the not expected to work cohort – and as 95% of them claiming housing benefit are female then this is a huge gender issue Labour has missed
- There are more currently capped households in receipt of ESA (15.5%) than in receipt of JSA (14.4%) – So Labour has let down the unable to work cohort in the benefit cap.
As Abrahams made constant reference to disability and gender in her speech …!
The Political Charge ..
Here is what Corbyn said at the TUC conference in September 2015:
So why not a dickie bird in Debbie Abrahams speech Jeremy? Try growing a set for once instead of all the rhetoric!
Just imagine if the Labour Party had said the reducing benefit cap will massively increase homelessness and child poverty. When (not if) it does and that will be from 7 November and by next Easter everyone in the country will see this, then you could have dealt a huge blow to the whole austerity / welfare reform nonsense of the Conservatives and been seen as ahead of the game and unlike the Tories knowing what the hell you were doing.
Yet you’ve missed that huge political open goal by being craven … just as you did by not including any ‘welfare’ (sic) policy in your 10 pledges. I apologise if opposing the quintupling of homelessness and allowing 500,000 more children into abject poverty is a little too left wing for you.
Sorry did I say ‘oppose’ when I should have said MENTION!
SPeye Joe (Welfarewrites) 
It’s not really true, this. The upcoming reductions of the Benefit Cap were introduced in the Welfare and Work Bill of July 2015. Labour opposed this – and Abrahams was one of the few Labour MPs who voted against it at the second reading.
Should still have mentioned the Benefit Cap in her conference speech, sure; but an oversight is not the same as supporting the government’s policy.
Imagine IF Labour said the reduced benefit cap will cause chronic child poverty and homelessness. Tories would have to deny it.
THEN when this happens as it inevitably will a huge political victory happens AND Tory ‘welfare’ policy credibility is in tatters…
HUGE OPPORTUNITY MISSED
Oversight? Never in a month of Sundays for me.
Firstly, the 2015 Labour manifesto (page 47) had this reduction as Labour policy
Then Sept 2015 TUC conference Corbyn says he’s against it and Owen Smith (then Shadow DWP) goes on Newsnight same night and says it is not Labour policy
This is a hot potato that Abrahams tried to avoid and hide with the WCA announcement. It is craven, craven, craven and Labour Party hasn’t changed in that it will NOT oppose a policy that is ‘popular’ in opinion polls and hence they have no principle.
Wait till 6 weeks time when proverbial starts to hit fan and the failure to even mention this today and the fact it was also Labour policy will come back to haunt and will also show that Labour did not oppose the additional 500,000 children this will place into poverty
I agree it would have been good to hear something on the benefit cap, but also PIP and it’s abhorrent medicals by unprincipled contractors, cuts through Universal Credit and welfare cuts/freezes in general. I hope and trust all these things might still come to attention.
PUT A STOP to this people are alredy starving, dying killing themselfs, and loads homeless no food whats up with the people of the country should stand together and fight these cruel vile tories, so dispointed this was not top of the list,
There is no way that Labour are unaware of the impact of the benefit cap. When I first started reading your blog over 12 months ago, I was so horrified by this cruel policy, I wrote to the HA for our area, and also Kate Green, my MP, who was shadow minister for the disabled at the time and begged them to oppose this in any way they could. I even provided a link back to your article for them to verify the figures that you had provided. I didn’t even receive the courtesy of a reply from either of them.
That’s the same Kate Green as here … http://www.thecanary.co/2016/09/28/i-went-undercover-labour-party-conference-i-saw-left-speechless-images/