In September 2016 Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Damian Green reaffirmed the Government’s commitment to make “no new cuts” to social security and tax credits.
In any case, April 2017 will be a time of considerable change irrespective of what Chancellor Philip Hammond announces in next week’s Budget.
A number of welfare changes are already due to take effect from 6 April, many of which were announced at Summer Budget 2015.
These changes run alongside changes recently implemented, such as the introduction of a new, reduced benefit cap, and ongoing reforms, such as the roll out of Universal Credit.
The table below summarises the key savings from and numbers affected by these changes. Overall, they are expected to save just over £12 billion a year in 2019-20.
Chapter 7, Welfare changes, of the Library’s Spring Budget 2017: Background briefing provides further background to each of these measures.
Picture credit: Blackheath by Martin Deutsh; Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)