A 'benefits cap' announced by the Chancellor will target workers suffering work-related ill-health and injuries.
The benefits limit will include consideration of Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit (IIDB) payment, a Treasury news release confirmed this week, despite the benefit being created as a non-means tested payment intended to compensate workers for industrial diseases and injuries.
According to TUC's Richard Exell, who sits on the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council, 'it seems likely that significant numbers will be affected. There were 324,000 people claiming under the Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit scheme in December 2009 and the current maximum weekly rate is £145.80.' He said 'it is easy to see' how claimants in receipt of other benefits could exceed the £26,000 cap and lose out. 'By definition, the people who would be affected would be people who had had a serious injury or disease caused by their work and who were suffering serious hardship,' he said. IIDB 'is a no-fault compensation scheme. It provides some measure of justice for workers who have suffered a disease or injury that is probably due to their job, but which is hard to prove on an individual basis,'.
Exell added, noting 'is about recognising that employees take risks when they work and the whole of society has a duty to compensate them when one of those risks comes through.' He warned that 'the principles that will be reversed are even more important. The Industrial Injuries Scheme is a way in which society says that we all have an interest in making sure that workers can look to recompense for loss as well as help when you're hard up and that is a concrete way of committing ourselves to the notion that 'we're all in this together.'
While the Chancellor has been hard on benefit claimants as he tries to drive down the deficit, he has been criticised for his failure to rein in excesses in the City. So while the £700 million plus IIDB budget is to be cut, bankers in the City will be allowed to reward themselves with an estimated £7 billion in bonuses this year.
