| Topic: | Re: Not propaganda - just fact! | |
| Posted by: | Steve Taylor | |
| Date/Time: | 04/05/26 08:22:00 |
“The Tory analysis suggests that the number of working-age households receiving more than £30,000 a year in benefits has climbed by more than a third to 800,000 since the Department for Work and Pensions started using administrative data on incomes people actually receive instead of relying on asking them in surveys. Of those, some 667,278 households took more than the average salary of £32,200 a year in 2023-24 – a record high and up 30 per cent on the previous year. The number dropped to 625,618 in 2024-25, but was still double the 392,000 in 2019-20. The 600,000-plus families accounted for one in 30 of all households in Britain. Of those, 267,000 received more than £40,000 a year, 91,000 were paid more than £50,000 and 16,289 received more than £60,000 a year in 2024-25 – an 8.5 per cent increase on the previous year. The benefit cap, introduced in 2013 by George Osborne, the then Tory chancellor, was designed to limit the maximum amount of benefits that a working-age household can receive, to encourage people into work. But if the household includes one adult in receipt of disability benefit, even if there are other adults in the family who are fully able to work, they all avoid the benefit limit. The Tories are proposing to close this loophole, which allows uncapped benefits for a whole household if just one adult is eligible for the Personal Independence Payment (Pip). They would require all adults who were able to work to be employed for at least 16 hours a week and face a cap if they were not.” |