Iain Duncan Smith: cut welfare to fund police and Forces

Iain Duncan Smith has offered to cut Britain’s welfare Bill by up to another £3  billion annually to protect spending on the Armed Forces and police, The Daily Telegraph can disclose. 

 
Mr Duncan Smith is understood to have offered to restrict housing benefit for the under-25s, and to limit state payments to families with more than two children. 

Both proposed cuts were publicly floated by the Prime Minister last year, but were thought to be off the agenda during this Parliament. The discussions over further welfare cuts took place before last Wednesday’s suspected terror attack in Woolwich, which is expected to lead to renewed pressure on the Treasury to protect security spending.

The Liberal Democrats have pledged to block any further working-age benefit cuts, but will now come under intense pressure from some Conservatives to reverse their opposition ahead of next month’s Spending Review.

A senior Conservative source said: “It is now a simple choice, Iain Duncan Smith has offered a deal which will protect the country’s security. “The Liberal Democrats will block it — and it will be for them to explain why it is more important for teenagers to be given council flats rather than for the nation and its citizens to be protected.”

Defence spending is facing a reduction of about £1.6 billion and the Home Office is facing £800 million of new cuts.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph earlier this year, Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, said that there was a “body of opinion within Cabinet who believes that we have to look at the welfare budget again”.

In the wake of Mr Hammond’s interview, Mr Duncan Smith is understood to have contacted him and Mrs May with the offer of new welfare cuts. It is not known if the trio have yet attempted privately to lobby the Liberal Democrats.