Is it legal that the NMW is lower than the benefits cap?

bigk77irl

I'm a 37 yr old single male with kids from a past relationship(they are with their mum) I am employed but on an as and when basis and cannot get any extra help. I am looking for permanent full-time work and getting nowhere as I am not qualified and to get the qualifications will cost me personally(no gov help). How come single people on benefits can claim a package of £18200 a year but for me to get that I would have to work 55 hours a week. The WTC rules state that you must be working 30 hours(on average over the year I have worked less than that) in order to qualify for WTC yet those with kids living with them only have to work 16 hours. to cap it all off this year I will have earned around £2.5k less than last financial year as the work is not there!!!

Is that legal??

One very angry person who is disillusioned with the system

Indie_Kid

Most single people won't get that level of benefits, unless they have a high rent.

zagfles

There are child poverty targets but not adult poverty targets. As a result, benefits for those with children on low incomes are much higher than those without. Blame the last govt.

nannytone_2

how do you work out that a single non worker gets a 'package' of 18k a year?
people with kids get to work less hours because they have children to look after ( a lot think this is wrong, but it is the rules)
i do feel for you, but ultimately, you are a fit healthy single person who is expected to support themself

tomtontom

The cap is an upper limit, not a base line. Few people actually receive that amount.

What level of education are you looking at and what qualifications do you already have?

sniggings

bigk77irl wrote: »

I'm a 37 yr old single male with kids from a past relationship(they are with their mum) I am employed but on an as and when basis and cannot get any extra help. I am looking for permanent full-time work and getting nowhere as I am not qualified and to get the qualifications will cost me personally(no gov help). How come single people on benefits can claim a package of £18200 a year but for me to get that I would have to work 55 hours a week. The WTC rules state that you must be working 30 hours(on average over the year I have worked less than that) in order to qualify for WTC yet those with kids living with them only have to work 16 hours. to cap it all off this year I will have earned around £2.5k less than last financial year as the work is not there!!!

Is that legal??

One very angry person who is disillusioned with the system

you are comparing apples with oranges, if this single person on benefits gets £18k a year, most of that will be housing benefit, if you are living in the same situation as them but working, you too can get housing benefit if you do not own your own house, as said you have to compare like with like.

I have just signed off and believe me I was not on anywhere near £18k, nearer £8k.

Mr_Lawnmower

bigk77irl wrote: »

How come single people on benefits can claim a package of £18200 a year but for me to get that I would have to work 55 hours a week.

As has been pointed out, very few people will get anything like that amount. £18200 is the maximum a single person who does not fall into an excepted group can get in benefits, not a baseline entitlement. The benefit cap primarily applies to those with a large number of children.


Parliament has absolute discretion to set the law as it sees fit, subject to the precedence of EU law in the those areas where EU law applies, and the potential need to declare new legislation as incompatible with the Human Rights Act 1998. There is nothing I can think of in EU law or the Human Rights Act to prevent Parliament from setting benefit entitlements above national minimum wage - though doing so would be utterly stupid. If the baseline benefit entitlement was above minimum wage for a typical 37 hour working week, it would become almost impossible to fill minimum wage jobs.


Benefit entitlements are often much less than someone without experience of the system might think. If you lost your job, are in good health and had no dependent children or caring responsibilities, you should be entitled to Jobseeker's Allowance at £71.70 per week based on the NI contributions you've paid whilst working. That's a whopping £3728.40 per year - except that these payments are limited to six months.

After six months you would be assessed for a means-tested Jobseeker's Allowance that starts out at £71.70. Any income you have is deducted from this allowance, as is £1 per week for any £250 (or part thereof) you have in capital over £6000. If you have more than £16000 in capital you will not get a weekly payment from this system.

Help with rent and council tax is on top of this figure, but this will never exceed the actual costs you have to pay and may not meet it. Help with mortgage payments is now very limited.

Do you still think the benefits system is generous?

Morglin

bigk77irl wrote: »

I'm a 37 yr old single male with kids from a past relationship(they are with their mum) I am employed but on an as and when basis and cannot get any extra help. I am looking for permanent full-time work and getting nowhere as I am not qualified and to get the qualifications will cost me personally(no gov help). How come single people on benefits can claim a package of £18200 a year but for me to get that I would have to work 55 hours a week. The WTC rules state that you must be working 30 hours(on average over the year I have worked less than that) in order to qualify for WTC yet those with kids living with them only have to work 16 hours. to cap it all off this year I will have earned around £2.5k less than last financial year as the work is not there!!!

Is that legal??

One very angry person who is disillusioned with the system

In order to get that amount, there would have to be housing assistance in play.

If your wages are low, you can also get help with housing costs.

Means tested benefits go on income, from whatever source, and everyone is entitled to claim them.

Lin

BigAunty

zagfles wrote: »

There are child poverty targets but not adult poverty targets. As a result, benefits for those with children on low incomes are much higher than those without. Blame the last govt.

Good point. One journalist wrote that Labour missed a trick on resolving poverty by focussing money on 'innocent' children. Instead of getting adults into employment so they can support their families, they passively handed out higher benefits for them - hardly the best way to end poverty. It also means that services for vulnerable adults, such as addiction and mental health treatment, was also affected in the rush to lavish money on children in poor households.

BigAunty

A lone parent with 2 children is entitled to approx £230 per week in disposable income benefits - income support (or JSA if their youngest is 5 or over), child tax credits and child benefit. Then they get a 2 or 3 bedroom rate of Housing Benefit (size criteria depends on age/sex of children), plus council tax discount.

In an average housing cost cost area, this means that they would get around £400- 500 a week in benefits (that's £21-26k in benefits per year, just in a cheap rental area, it will be significantly higher in London and the south-east, for example) .

Lone parents can also receive working tax credits if they work 16 hours per week. Around 60% of lone parents are in employment but I imagine most are in low paid, part time roles.

So a lot of lone parents, if they are even working at all, are probably picking up around £100 a week.

How can a lone parent possibly bring up 2 children and pay the rent if they did not get substantial extra benefits? We have a low pay/high cost economy.

Even if the lone parent worked full time, the chances are that they'd earn around £200 a week - that's around half of the minimum income the govt have calculated to keep their household out of poverty and with a roof over their heads, based on my example of them living in an area where the rent and council tax is around £170-270 a week).

It's really bad that many social groups, such as lone parents, are heavily long-term benefit dependent and will never be in the position to actually be financially independent but that is embedded into social policy, society, due to economics, etc.

It hardly no sense at all to allow single people without dependents or disabilities to also expect to match the benefit income of other types of households! When the coalition took power, they found out that under Labour, more was getting paid out in benefits, credits and allowances than employees paid in income tax receipts, a terrible imbalance that they are trying to address.

I'm not really sure where you get your sense of entitlement from - the most modest bit of number crunching shows your opinion isn't feasible implemented as policy. This country spends billions on lone parents each year with fathers notoriously poor at contributing towards their broken families. The state, trying to fill the void that comes from absent parents (90% male), cannot extend much largesse to those in low paid employment because of this huge commitment.

rogerblack

I note also:
http://blog.cix.co.uk/gmorgan/2014/02/07/the-benefits-cap-and-real-income-levels/

Those caring for children are topped up to considerably over the cap level, if earning the same amount as the benefit cap.