Balls refuses to be drawn on vote over benefits cap

George Osborne has indicated the Government would legislate to break the inflation link, which earlier this year saw benefits uprated by 5.2 per cent and which the Chancellor said was not “fair” at a time when most people’s salaries are rising much more slowly.

Increases in most working-age benefits – including jobseeker’s allowance, Employment and Support Allowance and Income Support, as well as elements of Child Tax Credit and Working Tax Credit – will be capped at one per cent over the coming years, although benefits for disabled people and carers will continue to rise in line with inflation. Child benefit will be frozen next year before rising by one per cent from 2014.

Labour responded that benefit and tax changes announced mean that a working family with children on £20,000 a year will lose £279 a year from April.

Asked yesterday if Labour would vote against any Bill which contained a one per cent rise in benefits for the next three years, Mr Balls told the Sky News Murnaghan programme: “George Osborne is playing a political game here because he wants us to commit to legislation he’s not even published while many of your voters still think he’s being honest when he says it’s only an assault on the feckless and the workshy.

“We need to change the debate and say to people, look at the truth about who is losing, lower and middle-income families.”

Mr Balls said Labour would set three tests on whether any change was going to hit working people, impact on child poverty and be fair.

He said: “I’ve not seen the legislation, I want George Osborne to change his mind. I’m not going to say to you how we’ll vote until we see the legislation.”

Asked if he would restore the top rate of tax to 50p if Labour returned to power, he said: “If there was an election called today, where we had a manifesto tomorrow for an election in three years time, we would reverse the top rate tax cut... what I can’t do is say to you in two years time what we’ll do because it is not responsible of me to start making promises on taxes or benefits, and it all depends on how bad George Osborne’s economic management is in the meantime.”

Mr Balls also talked about the impact of his stammer on his Commons performance, replying to the Autumn Statement.

The Morley and Outwood MP said “sometimes it gets the better of me”, adding: “Every now and then I get tripped up because I’ve got a stammer, as have thousands of people in the country.”

Mr Balls said there was “no denying” that he did not get the beginning of his statement right, but added: “I think it’s important for people like me to speak up and say: ‘you can have a stammer and be at the top of politics and deal with it, but every now and then you have a bad day’.”