Happy new year.  Blwyddyn Newydd Dda.

I’ve now updated my welfare reform paper, which you can download here.
It’s up to date (for a very brief while, I’m sure) and includes the details which emerged during the Lords’ Committee and early Report Stages.

Amongst other changes it now has:
A Council Tax Benefit reduction of 16% for working age people while pensioners continue on current rules. Benefit changes for older people are in a separate paper so there are no examples in this document.
Some initial consideration of the consultation; Support for Mortgage Interest – Informal call for evidence, December 2011, DWP. This paper includes some modelling of the loss of equity caused by the proposal to reclaim mortgage interest support payments.
It includes the WTC and CTC freezes announced in the Autumn Statement

It also corrects some errors in previous version including the mortgage support exclusion table for a single parent not a couple being included.

There are large consequential changes caused by the benefits cap being limited to the maximum of HB in the current scheme.

I can now start talking about Universal Credit coming ‘next year’.

I’d appreciate any comments on this; it is meant to be a blog for discussion.