April: when everything changes

[DanaC]

This is it then. The 'bedroom tax' the benefits cap, the changes to council tax, changes to the NHS etc etc.

The biggest change to the welfare system in generations. The biggest change to the NHS since its founding. Many physicians see the changes to commissioning and governance as the deathknell of the NHS as we know it.

April 1: Bedroom tax introduced; Thousands lose access to legal aid; Council tax benefit passes into local control; NHS commissioning changes for ever, Regulation of financial industry changes

April 6: 50p tax rate scrapped for high earners

April 8: Disability living allowance scrapped (replaced by much narrower 'personal independence payment'); Benefit uprating begins (capping raises at 1% for 3 years, regardless of inflation)

April 15: Welfare benefit cap (absolute limit on the total package of benefits or tax credits regardless of family size or circumstance)

April 28: Universal credit introduced (serious concerns over whether this system will be ready and implementable)



From the Guardian:

Bedroom tax introduced

The aim is to tackle overcrowding and encourage a more efficient use of social housing. Working age housing benefit and unemployment claimants deemed to have one spare bedroom in social housing will lose 14% of their housing benefit and those with two or more spare bedrooms will lose 25%. An estimated 1m households with extra bedrooms are paid housing benefit. Critics say it is an inefficient policy as in the north of England, families with a spare rooms outnumber overcrowded families by three to one, so thousands will be hit with the tax when there is no local need for them to move. Two-thirds of the people hit by the bedroom tax are disabled.

Savings: £465m a year. As many as 660,000 people in social housing will lose an average of £728 a year.

Thousands lose access to legal aid

Branded by Labour a "day of shame" for the legal aid system, the cutoff to claim legal aid will be a household income of £32,000, and those earning between £14,000 and £32,000 will have to take a means test. Family law cases including divorce, child custody, immigration and employment cases will be badly affected.

Savings: a minimum £350m from £2.2bn legal aid bill.

NHS commissioning changes for ever

An NHS commissioning board and a total of 240 local commissioning groups made up of doctors, nurses and other professionals will take control of budgets to buy services for patients. They will buy from any service providers, including private ones so long as they meet NHS standards and costs. Strategic health authorities and primary care trusts disappear.


Costs: £1.4bn, mainly in redundancies, followed by savings as high as £5bn in 2015 owing to fall in staff numbers.

Council tax benefit passes into local control

Council tax benefit, currently a single system administered by the Department for Work and Pensions, is being transferred to local councils with a reduction in funding of 10%. Council tax benefit is claimed by 5.9 million low-income families in the UK. The new onus on councils has come at a time when local government funding, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, has fallen by 26.8% in two years in real terms. A Guardian survey of 81 councils last week found many claiming they face difficult cuts, with almost half saying they were reducing spending on care services for adults. This also comes at a time when 2.4m households will see a council tax rise.


Savings: up to £480m a year, but depends on decisions of local councils.

I think about this stuff and I feel physically sick. The wilful and deliberate breaking up of the things that make us strong, justified by lies about what makes us weak.

Angry? Me? Too fucking right I am angry.

50p tax rate scrapped for high earners

Announced in the 2012 budget. George Osborne said the 50p rate, introduced in April 2010, caused massive distortions in 2010-11 and raised only £1bn, rather than the £2.5bn forecast by Labour back in 2009. HMRC found £16bn was deliberately shifted into the previous tax year, largely by owner/directors of companies taking dividends in the previous year when the highest rate was still 40p. Labour claims 13,000 millionaires will get a £100,000 tax cut.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2...-conservatives