Recently in Benefits Category

How many times have we heard government ministers state coldly: "A life on benefits is no longer an option."

Employment minister Chris Grayling joined that club this week. "Say goodbye to a life on benefits," he enthused, as if he were plugging a remedy for embarrassing itching. 

He followed this with a more predictable comment that those in "genuine need" would continue to be supported.

Grayling was flagging up the government's rethink on disability living allowance, which will be replaced by the personal independence payment.

At the same time, letters were being sent to recipients of incapacity benefit asking them to be reassessed to see whether they could work.

As my colleague, Mithran Samuel, pointed out yesterday, the government is pressing ahead with this without having fully evaluated a pilot reassessment process in Burnley and Aberdeen.

Worryingly, the government is allowing the dissemination of misleading - even malicious - propaganda insinuating that many DLA recipients are on benefits for life.

That may be the case - but with good reason, and one conveniently ignored. A glance at the government's own DLA website suggests that, in order to claim the allowance, the condition of a claimant has to be so serious that there is little chance of them working again.

Even those on the lowest threshold have conditions that are, at best, life-limiting.

Like any system, the DLA is open to abuse, but to imply that two million claimants are coasting along on a state-funded magic carpet, their lives unquestioned, is flawed.

Perhaps we ought not be surprised. Energy minister Greg Barker was reported at the weekend as telling an audience at the University of South Carolina: "We are making cuts that Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s could only have dreamt of."

There's something to be proud of.

Picture: Rex Features

Lucky for the coalition that Libya is dominating the news that it was able to slip in a major change to social policy that erodes further the miserable living standards of the lowest of low-income families.

As Community Care reported, welfare minister Steve Webb (pictured) has announced a clampdown on Social Fund crisis loans from April. 

Intended for people in the direst of circumstances, the interest-free loans will continue - but access will be reduced. The number of claims will be restricted to three a year and, importantly, some of the essential household items that can now be purchased using the money, such as beds and cookers, will be unavailable.

Webb, a Liberal Democrat who in opposition was a cheerleader for people living in poverty, says those who need help can apply instead for a budgeting loan, ignoring the fact that this is based on a points system and, in any case, depends on how much money is in the district budget.

The Department for Work and Pensions justified this attack on the poorest of the poor on cost grounds. Presumably, Webb thinks the £360m a year is a drain on the UK economy, as opposed to the money spent interfering in the affairs of other countries, despatching SAS missions, rescuing them, employing PR people...and the list goes on.

But poor people are seldom visible to government. They are merely a figure on the balance sheet of a minister who wants to make an impact. Will they protest? Unlikely; for that they would need grassroots organisation, something that is lacking.

Webb's main successes are likely to be in increasing the disparity between the better off and the less well-off and empowering loan sharks. Hardly something to be proud of.

To paraphrase a former Labour aide after the 9/11 attacks: it's a good time to bury bad news.

Picture: Rex Features

If it can be argued that the government's child benefit cap is targeted at better-off households, the same cannot be said of any cuts to the emergency fuel top-up payments made to pensioners and low-income families during cold snaps.

A solemn face for solemn times. And few come more solemn than the funereal visage of Ed Miliband - a fitting contrast with brother David, whose perma-grin suggests he spends too much time in too many wedding pictures.

So desperate was chancellor George Osborne to appear tough on scroungers, tough on the causes of scrounging, that his welfare reforms became wedged halfway between the red devil and the Tory blue sea.

I blame man-of-the-moment Nick Clegg. The Lib Dems' leader started it by calling calling Gordon Brown a "desperate politician". He could equally have levelled that charge against David Cameron, because two of the Conservatives' campaign moves this week have the mark of the last-chance saloon.

Cuts and welfare have dominated the news this week - and I fear this is more than a coincidence.

Of course it is laudable that the government wants to move one million people from benefits to employment by 2015. Of course there are people who want to milk the system. Of course "something should be done".