Benefit Changes will leave many without social security

Changes to the way benefits are paid will leave hundreds of local people without social security benefit for a week, a local Liberal Democrat has warned. The move to fortnightly payments will affect loan parents, widows, disabled and unemployed people.

Commenting, Liberal Democrat parliamentary spokesman for Bosworth Michael Mullaney said: "The Department for Work and Pensions should have better things to do with its time than disrupt the lives of vulnerable people on benefit."

"At a time of deep recession, it is scandalous that ministers are going to force people in Hinckley and Bosworth and elsewhere to wait an extra week for their money and then invent a complicated loan scheme so that they can borrow it back.

"The cost of sending out millions of letters and inventing a whole new scheme to tide people over must surely be more than the Government will save by harmonising benefit payment dates.

"Navigating your way round the benefits system can be hugely complex as it is, and now ministers have added another, totally unnecessary complexity to the whole process. If the Government does not reverse this decision we can expect months of chaos and hardship for some of the most vulnerable people in society."