Low income families thousands of pounds worse off

Low income families across Scotland will be thousands of pounds a year worse off per year due to UK welfare cuts, a new report has found.

The Scottish Government report, ‘the Impact of UK Welfare Policy on Families with Children’, looks at what the policies implemented since 2015 will mean for families.

The post-2015 policy that is having the biggest impact on the people of Scotland is the four year freeze to working-age benefits. This policy is estimated to reduce annual welfare spending in Scotland by £370 million by 2020/21.

Other significant reforms include the reduction in universal credit work allowance (£250 million reduction by 2020/21), the two child limit for tax credits and universal credit elements (£95 million reduction), and the removal of the family element for child tax credit and universal credit (£50 million reduction).

Read more: https://news.gov.scot/news/impact-of-uk-government-welfare-cuts

 

 

 

 

Image credit: Thomas’s pics, Flickr