Iain Duncan Smith has doubled down on his claim that if he “had to” he could live on £53 a week, telling his local newspaper:
I have been unemployed twice in my life so I have already done this (lived on the equivalent of £53 a week). I know what it is like to live on the breadline.
He told the Daily Mail today about when he lost his job in 1992:
The company literally stopped working and like a number of people I was made redundant. I was shocked, but I had to go home and tell my wife that the wheels had come off the bus.
It took about three months to find a job. I picked up the paper every day, put a ring round all the job ads. I went to the library, looked up the stock market yearbook, wrote blind letters to people, used my Amstrad computer every day to look for work. Every bloody day I had to look for work. One of those blind letters got me in to an interview.
So I don’t need any lessons from people about living on a low income and making ends meet. I have done it twice and I know what it’s like to have to been made unemployed and to struggle. I’ve been there, done it.
He was also unemployed for a short period in 1981, after leaving the military.
Iain Duncan Smith has been unemployed for a short period twice. Both times, he made it through on not very much money, but always had the social safety net behind him if his savings ran out. Now he is safely in a career which will keep him well paid for life, he is claiming that that experience gives him the right to pull the ladder up behind him.
In 1981, unemployment benefit was £20.65 per week. In 1992, it was £43.10 per week. According to the Department for Work and Pensions, at April 2011 prices (deflated by RPI), those equate to £69.67 per week and £72.79 per week. When Iain Duncan Smith was unemployed for the first time, unemployment benefit was 18.7 per cent of average earnings. When he was unemployed for the second time, it was 14.1 per cent of average earnings.
At April 2011 prices, the £53 Iain Duncan Smith’s department will be handing over is worth £50.17. That is 8.7 per cent of average earnings.
Iain Duncan Smith has not “been there, done that”. When he went through his short periods of unemployment, 20 and 30 years ago, the social safety net was strong. The first time he was unemployed, he could have received almost a fifth of the average weekly earnings. The second time, he could have received a seventh. He’s trying to claim that that experience means that he knows what it’s like to live on less than a twelfth.
To put it another way, the value of what you can buy with unemployment benefit has remained pretty constant for the last 40 years. Iain Duncan Smith lived through a period when he could have that much – around £70 at 2011 prices – twice. He says that that means he has experience living on almost a quarter less again.
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