Jeremy Corbyn pledges Labour to end benefits freeze, when resources allow …
Labour’s General Election 2017 Manifesto, enthusiastically endorsed and promoted by Jeremy Corbyn, would have kept £7bn out of the £9bn of planned Tory Social Security cuts over which Iain Duncan Smith resigned.
Labour in Government, under Corbyn, would have left in place the benefit cap and the benefits freeze.
To put the benefits freeze into context, the basic rate of Income Support for a lone parent, over 18, has been frozen at £73.10 per week since April 2015.
There are currently 401,630 lone parents on Income Support in Great Britain.
Whilst Labour in Government, under Corbyn, said it would not be able afford to end the benefit cap and benefits freeze, it did say it would keep in place the Pension Triple Lock.
The Triple Lock guarantees all pensioners, regardless of income, at least a 2.5% increase in their State Pension, even if inflation is rising at less than 2.5%.
Corbyn is saying now that when savings are made in the Social Security budget then, and only then, will the benefits freeze be ended.
Corbyn is expecting savings to eventually occur through the introduction of a real living wage of £10 an hour and by the building of affordable homes.
In the mean time, as rising inflation continues to erode their income, those on benefit, for example lone parents, must just grin and bear it, Mr Corbyn?
Corbyn vows to end benefits freeze as part of war on “chaotic austerity agenda”
Corbyn has yet to pledge to scrap the benefits cap.
Had Kinnock or Smith or Blair or Brown or Miliband gone into a General Election not committed to ending the benefits freeze and scrapping the benefit cap then Corbyn and many of his most committed, vocal supporters would have been all over them like a rash.
And rightly so …