A Looming Cliff Edge for the Benefit Cap

In just five months’ time the Benefit Cap mitigation is set to expire on 31 March, 2025.

Currently, child poverty rates are increasing in Northern Ireland, with 24% of children now living in poverty. The Benefit Cap mitigation payment is really important for women, children and larger families. If it is not extended, thousands of people may lose access to vital support.

Statistics show that 86% of the mitigation payments for the Benefit Cap are paid to women.  It is therefore really important that we try and put pressure on our Government to extend the Benefit Cap mitigation.

The Cliff Edge Coalition have produced a video explaining the Benefit Cap mitigation and the impacts if it is not extended. 

Welfare reform mitigations were first agreed by the Northern Ireland (NI) Executive in 2016 to alleviate some of the harshest impacts of the Westminster welfare reform agenda. With an impending ‘cliff edge’ of the mitigations in 2020, the Cliff Edge Coalition (the Coalition) formed in 2018 to campaign to sustain and strengthen these vital measures to protect people from poverty across NI. Following campaigning by the Coalition, the NI Assembly legislated to indefinitely retain the mitigations for the Social Sector Size Criteria (Bedroom Tax), close the loopholes which had prevented many claimants from accessing financial assistance through the mitigation scheme, and extend the Benefit Cap mitigations until 2025.

However, there remains an urgent need for the Coalition to continue its campaign for a strengthening of the mitigations package in NI. The harsh impacts of new welfare challenges which have emerged since the original mitigations were introduced, and which have been exacerbated by the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, are increasingly affecting households causing financial hardship and poverty.

The Benefit Cap is a policy that limits the total amount of social security support that working-age people can receive. The Benefit Cap limits the amount of benefit, including housing benefit, to couples living with or without children or lone parents with dependent children to £423.46 per week. And, single person households without dependent children living with them to £283.71 per week.

The Benefit Cap is currently mitigated in Northern Ireland, which means that those who would be affected by it are currently receiving a payment in their benefits equal to what they would have lost under the policy (a ‘Welfare Supplementary Payment’). However, this mitigation is set to expire at the end of March 2025.

We are extremely concerned that in just five months the Benefit Cap mitigation will expire, and thousands of people may lose access to vital support.

Like the Two-Child Limit, the Benefit Cap is a highly gendered policy; 86% of payments to mitigate the Benefit Cap are made to women. If the Benefit Cap mitigation is lost, households who currently rely on these payments will be forced to look to other – often discretionary and inadequate – sources of support. We fear that many will fall into debt as a result.  Scrapping our existing welfare mitigations will push people into destitution.

We need to retain the current welfare mitigations and strengthen them to offset the trajectory of rising child poverty, and a growing number of households struggling to make ends meet.

Contact your MLAs now to stress the importance of extending the Benefit Cap Mitigation.