Welfare cap goes national

I went to Enfield today to see how the pilot of the welfare cap was working on the ground. One thing occurs to you chatting to claimants and to local councillors. There has been a special discretionary budget around to help with the pilots so that unexpected problems can be addressed. Anecdotally, I picked up suggestions that quite a few people in Enfield who were affected by the cap were hanging on by their fingertips this month but were going to fall off a budgetary cliff in a few weeks time when their discretionary payments run out. Are we seeing the policy rolled out nationally just before the proverbial guano hits the ventilation in the pilots?

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I met Nicola Gardner who was moved out of Islington a year ago because her £550 a week rental costs were seen as too great. Camden Council moved her to Enfield Council but then the lower £300 per week rental she was being charged there fell foul of the cap. Enfield council has told Ms Gardner that she will be relocated if she falls into arrears on her rent, as expected, and would then be offered alternative accomodation – probably in Birmingham. Nicola says she can’t face that and with no family or friends in the area would find it hard to pursue her dream which is to return to full-time work when her youngest child, aged three, goes into full-time education next year.

Nicola slams scroungers who never try to get work like the best of them. Four years ago she left work to look after a sick parent. Then she had a baby and she hasn’t worked since. But she was three years on the buses, two as a driver and seven years working in car park management and insists she’s determined to get back into work in 2014.

When I was back in Westminster, I picked up a sense that some Labour MPs felt Liam Byrne had gone a bit far for their comfort in his statement accusing the government of missing some larger families in their cap policy and welcoming the principle of the cap. Labour MP Andy Love, who is one of Enfield’s MPs, said he understood the need to “go with the flow” of public opinion but thought the policy could end up costing more than it saves. Iain Duncan Smith said in interviews that was nonsense and he was convinced by his own reading of the data and anecdotal evidence that the policy would drive people into work and benefit them and the taxpayer in equal measure.

Nobody doubts the popularity of this policy (the latest polling published by the DWP puts support for the cap at 73 per cent). As of today’s statement from the shadow work and pensions secretary, the cap moved one step closer to that special status of “policy that unites all three main parties.” Some will see that as a moment to reach for the panic button.

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