As the election campaigning season begins, both main parties continue to avoid saying exactly where cuts to the welfare budget will fall.
The Conservatives aim to cut £12bn from the welfare bill. Recently leaked documents from the Department of Work and Pensions have outlined some options the Tories may consider, including taxing disability benefits, limiting child benefit to the first two children and regional variations in benefit caps. The Labour party has also avoided giving further details about planned cuts. When asked about this on the Andrew Marr show, Douglas Alexander, Labour’s campaign chief, replied: "We've set out our agenda and that's the programme on which we will fight the election."
Church leaders have expressed concern about some of the Coalition’s welfare reforms. Recently a number of Christian groups welcomed a call by MPs for a review of the benefits sanctions system. How have cuts to welfare been viewed by different religious groups since 2000?
The graph shows how far participants in the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey from 2000 to 2012 agreed that “Cutting welfare benefits would damage too many people’s lives.”
We can see that over the period all groups increasingly disagreed that cutting benefits would damage too many people’s lives. In 2000 a majority in all groups supported the statement; by 2010 a majority in all groups except those of non-Christian faiths disagreed with it.
In 2012, however, this trend was reversed slightly as a greater proportion in each group came to support the statement. For example, from 2011 to 2012, among those from minority faiths agreement levels jumped from 52% to 67%, and among Catholics from 43% to 51%. The shift in agreement among the population as a whole in 2012 was from 42% to 47%, according to the 2015 edition of the BSA.
Those of non-Christian faiths were the most likely group over the period to be concerned about the impact of welfare cuts. In most years they showed an agreement level well above that of the population as a whole. Catholics were the next most likely group to support the statement. (It should be noted that oscillation in the responses of those of other faiths may be influenced by the small sample size for this group.)
Anglicans were most likely group to be sceptical of the statement, and they were often more sceptical than the population as a whole. In 2010, for example, 37% of Anglicans supported the statement, compared to 42% of the total population.
However, Anglican responses were often similar to those of Nonconformists and the non-religious. In 2012, for example, the statement was supported by 42% of Anglicans, 44% of ‘Other Christians’ and 49% of the non-religious.
Anglicans, then, may be less likely than other groups to be put off by party warnings of further cuts. Those from minority faiths, however, may find Labour’s talk of moderate cuts balanced by greater borrowing more appealing.
This socio-political statement is one of several asked by the BSA survey to determine where groups sit on the ‘Welfarist-Individualist’ axis:
• The welfare state encourages people to stop helping each other
• The government should spend more money on welfare benefits for the poor, even if it leads to higher taxes
• Around here, most unemployed people could find a job if they really wanted one
• Many people who get social security don’t really deserve any help
• If welfare benefits weren’t so generous, people would learn to stand on their own two feet
• Cutting welfare benefits would damage too many people’s lives
• The creation of the welfare state is one of Britain’s proudest achievements
See where each group sits on the overall Welfarist-Individualist axis here
This snippet taken from our report on Voting and Values in Britain: Does religion count? (pp. 106-107).
See the full report here and an Executive Summary here for further analysis of voting behaviour and religious identity.
Data source: British Social Attitudes 2000-2012
Individual traditions within the 'Other Christian' and 'Other religion' categories are grouped together within the BSA data due to small sample sizes.
