By Will Horwitz
Today saw the launch of our Need Not Greed campaign’s demand for the earnings limit on Jobseekers Allowance to go up from £5 to £50. It was discussed on the Today Programme (mp3), and Nicola Smith of the TUC gave a great interview on BBC Radio 5 Breakfast (mp3).
People on JSA face a £5 cap (or ‘earnings disregard’) on the amount they can keep each week when they get any kind of paid work. Above this amount, benefits are deducted at the same rate as earnings, which means claimants who take on part time or occasional work are often little better off.
Our experience shows that this low cap on earnings often removes the incentive to take the first step back into work and can push people into illegal cash-in-hand jobs.
The £5 cap was set in 1988 and has never been raised. We argue that raising it to £50 a week would immediately allow people on JSA an easier route back into work. It would allow them to take on a few hours of temporary work to build up experience, and give people more flexibility when moving off benefits.
At the moment, many people getting these kinds of jobs do not tell the jobcentre, knowing that doing so would jeopardise their income. In doing so however, they’re breaking the law.
However, increasing the Earnings Disregard alone is not enough. We’re asking for this now as a measure which could be quickly implemented and make a large difference to the lives of people trying to move off JSA. In the end nothing but a complete overhaul of the benefits system would really allow people to make that smooth transistion off benefits and into work.
To find out more, you can download a briefing paper about the campaign or visit the Need NOT Greed website.
[...] the inconsistency of the earnings disregard across all benefits to ensure accidental fraud is not committed resulting in benefits being [...]