Pressure builds for IDS to live on £53 a week

By Ian Dunt

Over 100,000 people have signed a petition demanding Iain Duncan Smith live on £53 a week, after the work and pensions secretary said he would be able to make do on the money.

Duncan Smith went on yesterday's Today programme after a market trader who said he was subsisting on an overall income of just £53 a week after his housing allowance was cut.

Asked if he could make do on the wage, he replied: "If I had to, I would."

At the time of writing, 124,286 people had signed a petition demanding the former leader survive on the income for a year – a drop in earnings of 97% on his reported £1,581 a week income.

The pressure comes as George Osborne tries to get on the front foot after a weekend in which opponents of welfare reform have relentlessly attacked the changes which came into force yesterday.

"We're trying to make the system fair on people like you, who get up, go to work, and expect your taxes to be spent wisely," he will tell staff at a supermarket distribution centre later, in a rare keynote speech from the chancellor.

"For too long, we've had a system where people who did the right thing – who get up in the morning and work hard – felt penalised for it, while people who did wrong thing got rewarded for it.

"That's wrong. So this month we're going to put things right."

This week saw cuts to housing benefit for those with extra rooms and alterations to council tax, alongside a gradual introduction of universal credit.

Anyone on £32,000 or more will lose access to legal aid, while disability living allowance will be scrapped later in the week.

There will also be a cut in the top rate of income tax from 50p to 45p for people earning over £150,000.

But the government insists many new measures, such as an increase in the tax free personal allowance to £9,440 and a freeze in fuel duty will leave nine out of ten working families better off.

"People in this country understand that the welfare system needs to change," Osborne will say later.

"The system was not just unaffordable. It was fundamentally broken.

"The system became so complicated, and benefits so generous, that people found they were better off on the dole than they were in work."

He will add: "Those who defend the current benefit system are going to complain loudly. These vested interests always complain, with depressingly predictable outrage, about every change to a system which is failing.

"I want to take the argument to them. Because defending every line item of welfare spending isn’t credible in the current economic environment.

"The benefit system is broken; it penalises those who try to do the right thing; and the British people badly want it fixed. We agree – and those who don't are on the wrong side of the British public."

Osborne's intervention reflects the confidence with which the Conservatives believe they are on the right side of public opinion in their attack on welfare spending, but it also reflects a concern at the coalition of opponents who made their voices heard over the long Easter weekend.

Labour joined forces with charities and religious groups to condemn the changes as unfair and harsh.

In a joint report, the Baptist Union of Great Britain, the Methodist Church, the United Reformed Church and the Church of Scotland attacked Osborne and the government for a "systematic misrepresentation of the poorest in society".

Shadow chancellor Ed Balls commented: "It's appalling, it's shocking, it's immoral, it's shameful, it's a disgrace, it's inhumane. What planet are they on? It's totally out of touch. I can't believe they are so callous."

Amid the criticism, Osborne will be grateful for a British Chamber of Commerce report which found Britain is probably out of recession and that the weak pound is starting to finally boost exports.