Following another Newsnight scoop, there must be debate in Westminster about whether the coalition are going to change their approach to uprating benefits – increasing them annually in line with inflation – for people of a working age. Coalition splits have already been predicted and then resolved before the pre-Autumn statement debate has even got underway.
This issue arises because the Coalition are on the hunt for welfare savings and playing around with benefit upratings is always one of the first places HM Treasury will turn to save money. To start with it’s worth recalling that the Coalition has already changed its uprating policy from RPI (or the derived ROSSI index) to CPI for most working age benefits – generating significant savings, arising from lower living standards for recipients – than would otherwise be the case. So any further change in upratings policy comes on top of this.
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