Philip Davies stood up in the Commons the other day and mentioned a tragic story of a constituent coming to him when they’ve lost their job. I imagine one of the hardest parts of being an MP is dealing with someone who has had to cope with losing their job, it must be awful.
The constituent in question was a top-rate tax earner before they lost their job and now finds themselves ineligible for benefits because they have savings they must work through first.
Davies’ question, which you can see for yourself here, is basically whether or not the Minister agrees with his proposition that such a system discourages people from saving as it would deny them benefits if they lost their job.
Now there are many variables that come along in the process of becoming unemployed that can affect your benefit payments, not least whether you were sacked, resigned or took voluntary redundancy. But given the lack of information we’ll just presum the person was made redundant and ignore the other variables.
What Davies doesn’t say is that to not receive any benefits when you lose your job you have to have savings of over £16,000 to not be entitled to any unemployment benefits.
To suggest that someone wouldn’t save thousands of pounds for the sake of getting £60 a week if they were made unemployed is ludicrous and suggests Davies is just using the situation to have a rant about benefits in general.
You can see details on the benefits system in this article on The Times’ website.
From what I can make out, basically there are two types of unemployment benefits. Income based and contribution based.
Presumably Davies is referring to income based benefits, as you are automatically guaranteed contribution based unemployment benefits if you have paid any National Insurance Contributions in the last two years.
To qualify for income based benefits you cannot have savings of over £16,000.
Now while you can never underestimate the pain of losing your job, and certainly for a top-rate tax payer they may find themselves over-qualified for some jobs and thus find it harder to get a new one, to suggest that benefits should be paid out to people who have over £16,000 in the bank is surely over the top?
As horrible as the situation is, in all honesty I believe the best help a government could give would be to help them quickly find another job. £60 a week when they have so much in savings won’t help them at all. Getting another job quickly will.
A quick search reveals many employment schemes and help for the recently unemployed from the government, here, here and here to name but a few. They include counselling for the recently unemployed, the New Deal (various focuses on all age ranges), perhaps the best help for a high-rate tax earner is the extra money the government has put aside to help white-collar workers find new senior posts, which you can read about here.
When you compare it to Davies’ other assertions – namely that we should ‘look’ at the benefits system for single mothers, hint – cut benefits and access to council houses as it encourages them to get pregnant – you can see his priorities become clearer.
In summary, Philip Davies believes we should cut benefits for single mothers, and give them instead to people who earned over £40,000 a year and have savings in the bank of over £16,000.
If you know of a clearer dividing line between Conservatives and Labour in Shipley for the next election, aside from Davies’ opposition to the Minimum Wage, I’d like to see it.
