The proportion of people who believed benefit cuts would damage too many people’s lives rose five percentage points to 47% in 2012
Attitudes to unemployment and to welfare payments have softened, a major survey of the public mood suggests.
The annual British Social Attitudes Report – which questioned more than 3,000 people for more than an hour – found 51% said benefits were too high in 2012, down from 62% in 2011.The survey also showed a fall in support for Scottish independence, from 30% in 2006 to 23% in 2012. About 60% said the Scottish Parliament should be running taxes and welfare.
The British Social Attitudes Report has been running for 30 years.
According to the NatCen Social Research survey, sympathy for those without jobs has increased, while support for benefit cuts has fallen. The number of people who agreed with the statement that benefits are “too high and discourage work” fell from a high of 62% in 2011. And about half thought the unemployed could get a job if they really wanted one, down from two thirds in the boom years of the previous decade.
The coalition government identified reducing welfare spending as one of its most urgent priorities after the 2010 general election. Benefits have been capped by Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith since then to a little less than £26,000 per year, per household.
But the proportion of people who believed that benefit
cuts would damage too many people’s lives rose to 47% in 2012, from 42% in
2011.
In February last year, Mr Duncan Smith claimed that “five million people are trapped on out-of-work benefits and almost two million children are growing up in workless households”.He has also strongly condemned those who appear to have manipulated the system to gain as many benefits as possible. But the survey suggests that British people no longer have as much sympathy with this view.
The proportion of people found to be supportive of extra spending on benefits rose to 34% in 2012, compared with 28% in 2011
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