Rule change leaves jobless without cash

A pounds 65m annual penalty is to be imposed by Harriet Harman on 1.9 million of the most deprived people in the country, in spite of pleas by an independent watchdog. Anthony Bevins, Political Editor, finds the critics helpless.

The Government said yesterday that it was going ahead with new regulations to extend the waiting time for jobseeker's allowance from three to seven days - temporarily leaving many of the most vulnerable people in society with no means of support.

The statutory Social Security Advisory Committee has urged Harriet Harman, Secretary of State for Social Security, not to go ahead with the move - inherited from the last Conservative government.

But in a report slipped out last Friday, and obtained yesterday by The Independent, Ms Harman rejected the committee's appeal against the rule-change, due to take effect from April next year.

David Rendel, the Liberal Democrats' social security spokesman, told The Independent last night that he was tabling a Commons motion against the Order, which would allow MPs to "make a fuss about this iniquitous measure". However, because the change is not based on new legislation, there is no chance of a repeat of the Commons revolt that was staged over last year's amendment to single-parents' benefit.

In its report to Ms Harman, the committee points out that while the unemployed have always been made to wait for their benefit, the current waiting time of three days has been in force for 60 years.

It says that at least half of the 1.9 million people who will be hit are on very low earnings and, because many of them will have been in short- term work, "it is unlikely that they will have amassed sufficient reserves to enable their last wage to last until they receive benefit; nor are they likely to have insurance policies or to have received holiday pay or redundancy pay.

"It is common for those in low-paid employment to borrow against their first wages. Thus, their final pay is needed to pay off debts and provides no cushion for the ensuing week."

For those who have not been in work - an estimated 760,000 each year - the position will be even more serious, because they include the most vulnerable people in society - discharged prisoners; those who have been made homeless because of a breakdown in a relationship, "some of whom may have suffered violence or abuse"; young homeless and those who lead unsettled lives "because of alcohol or drug abuse or mental health and personality disorders".

The committee - whose members include Sir Thomas Boyd-Carpenter, the former deputy chief of the defence staff; Andrew Dilnott of the Institute for Fiscal Studies; and Nick Hardwick, who ran the housing charity Centrepoint - says the measure will "add unacceptably to the hardship experienced by unemployed people and their families".

Ms Harman replied: "The fundamental principle behind waiting days is that social security is not designed to provide cover for moving between jobs or brief spells of unemployment." She said she was confident that the social fund could cope with any "additional demand" from desperate claimants.