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[webofevil]

Iain Duncan Smith says no "normal" people oppose the disability living allowance changes. I haven't heard him make a clearer statement of intent. #mutants

Comments

[htfb.livejournal.com]

Apropos IDS' blustering on Today this morning (http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9684000/9684222.stm). I can't see how to link to this anonymous comment on The Diary Of A Benefit Scrounger (http://diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.com/2012/01/to-lords.html), so here's a quote in full (with a little formatting added).

Anonymous Jan 23, 2012 06:15 AM

Today the Department for Work and Pensions have published their impact assessment for the household benefit cap (pdf) (http://www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/household-benefit-cap-wr2011-ia.pdf). Our story about it is the second lead on our website. If you read the document, you will see there's a blank space after the second sentence in the "other key non-monetised costs by 'main affected groups'" section on page two.

Shelter have just sent me an extract from the orginal impact assessment originally published last year. (It's not on the web any more, I'm afraid.) And it illustrates how the impact assessment has been gutted.

The new version says:


The cap is likely to affect where different family types will be able to live. It is not possible to quantify these costs because they are based on behavioural changes which are difficult to assess robustly.

And this is what the old version said, in the same space.

The cap is likely to affect where different family types will be able to live. Housing benefit may no longer cover housing costs and some households may go into rent arrears. This will require expense and effort by landlords and the courts to evict and seek to recoup rent arrears. Some households are likely to present as homeless, and may as a result need to move into more expensive temporary accommodation, at a cost to the local authority. It is not possible to quantify these costs because they are based on behavioural changes which are difficult to assess robustly.

The three embarrassing sentences (in the middle) have just been deleted from the new version.