Benefit cuts don’t have widespread support

We recently asked the British public how much they knew about benefit rates - and what they thought about some of the cuts proposed by the government.

The general picture is that cuts don’t have widespread support. Those more likely to support the cuts - such as younger people - are the most likely to over-estimate current benefit rates.

It’s unwise to assume benefit claimants are an easy target - most people will need the welfare state at some point. And it seems the public are more conscious of this than we sometimes assume.

What do people know about benefit rates?

We found that 44% of people have a good idea about general Universal Credit (UC) rates, insofar as they answered ‘less than £2,000’ when asked what an out-of-work single parent with two young children, living in private renting, would receive each month from this benefit. A further 22% offered the ‘least wrong’ answer, i.e. £2,000-£2,500 per month.[1]

Knowledge of health and disability benefits is lower. Only 35% of people answered correctly that the UC health element (for people with limited capacity for work and work-related activity) provides eligible claimants less than £500 per month to cover additional health-related living costs (although a further 23% offered the ‘least wrong’ answer of £500-£1,000 per month).[2]

Perhaps most alarmingly, only 20% of people are aware that the highest rate of the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) daily living component is less than £500 per month (although a further 31% of people  gave the ‘least wrong’ answer of £500-£1,000 per month). This benefit is available to people who need extra help with daily living activities, such as washing, dressing and preparing meals.[3]

Younger people are most likely to be wrong about benefit rates

There are clear differences between age groups evident in our results. Only 36% of people aged 18-24 answered correctly when asked about the likely UC award for the claimant described above (although a similar proportion (34%) gave the ‘least wrong’ answer).

This is a lower percentage answering correctly than all other age groups with the exception of those aged 75+ (32%). Yet while only 5% of those aged 75+ gave the ‘most wrong’ answers of ‘£2,501-£3,000’ or ‘more than £3,000’ per month, this proportion was 15% for younger people. And 49% of people aged 75+ answered ‘Don’t know’, compared to only 15% of younger people (and 28% of all respondents). 

There was a similar, but less stark, pattern of age-based differences when people were asked about UC health and PIP rates.

What do people think about benefit cuts?

We asked people for their opinions on planned and likely changes to the Universal Credit system that will result in lower payments for some claimants:

• Cut 1: Reduced amount of UC health for new claimants (it is being almost halved from £97 to £50 per week).[4]

• Cut 2: Increasing the eligibility age for UC health from 18 to 22.[5]

• Cut 3: Freezing the maximum amount of UC housing element available for private renters (i.e. a real-terms cut).[6]

Opinion is somewhat divided. But only 26% of people support the first cut, and only 26% of people support the third cut. The results here include those answering ‘I support this proposal’ and a smaller proportion answering that ‘the government should go further’.[7]

In contrast, 38% of people do not support the first cut, and 41% do not support the third cut.

The exception is the second cut, where the result is closer. 35% of people surveyed either agreed with raising the eligibility age for UC health from 18 to 22, or wanted the government to go further. 33% are opposed to the change.

Younger people are most likely to support cuts

While still opposed, on balance, to the changes we asked about, younger people tend to be more supportive of cuts to benefit rates than other age cohorts - a result that may be explained by their tendency to over-estimate payment levels.

On the first cut, only 15% of this group answered ‘I support this proposal’. But people aged 18-24 were far more likely than other age groups to say that the UC health cut should go further (17%), meaning this cohort were more likely to support the cut than all other age groups.

18-24 year-olds (33%) are also about as likely as other age groups to support the second cut, despite the fact it is explicitly targeted on their own cohort - since most would no longer be able to apply for UC health, if they developed (or already have) a work-limiting illness. The only age groups with higher results are people aged 45-54 (37%) and people aged 75+ (40%).

 Interestingly, unlike any other age group, people aged 18-24 are more likely to want the government to go further (17%) than they are to support the cut as it stands (16%).

The same pattern was evident on the third cut: they’re generally no more likely than other age groups to support the proposal, but those younger people that do support freezing UC housing element are more likely to want the government should go further (13%) than they are to support the cut as it stands (11%). 

Working-class people and women are less likely to support cuts

In terms of knowledge of benefit rates, there are no significant differences between occupational groups. Yet there is a clear class divide around support for cuts, with occupational group AB (senior managerial and professional workers) more likely than occupational group DE (semi-skilled and unskilled workers, and unemployed people) to agree with proposed cuts, or want the government to go further. 

This is especially the case for the cut to UC health, with 32% of the former group supporting the proposal or a further cut, compared to only 20% of the latter.

Gender differences are even more pronounced. Across all three proposals, women are less likely than men to support benefit cuts.

This is especially the case for freezing the UC housing element. 20% of men support the freeze, and an additional 9% want the government to go further. The respective results for women are 16% and 5%. And women are far more likely than men to answer ‘I do not support this proposal’: 46% compared to 36%.

Benefit cuts are bad policy, and bad politics

The government is facing difficult fiscal circumstances. But we know that inflicting more hardship on those with the greatest needs is not the solution. And the public tends to agree: people are more likely to oppose than support the kind of cuts the government is intending or expected to introduce. This is evident even where people over-estimate how much financial support the benefits system provides, as is the case with UC health.

And despite being more likely than older age groups to say that the government should make further cuts, even younger people still tend to oppose rather than support the proposals included in our survey.[8] 

It may be the case that some younger people have internalised anti-welfare narratives, perhaps because this age group tends to be discriminated against in the benefits system. A simpler explanation is that some younger people have yet to discover how inadequate benefit payments are - with the relatively higher level of support for cuts associated with a lack of knowledge about benefit rates.

For most people, claimants of income- and health-related benefits are not a class apart. Anybody can experience the kind of problems that make support from the benefits system necessary. It may be that more of us are concerned about benefit rates being inadequate than unaffordable.

Notes

1. Our calculation is based on the claimant receiving a full standard allowance for single people aged 25+, the child element for two children born after 2017, and the housing element at the average maximum rate for a 2-bedroom property across rental market areas in England. The benefit cap means that this claimant could not receive more than £1,835 in Universal Credit per month payments anyway. For some claimants in London, a higher benefit cap of £2,110.25 means they may be able to receive more than £2,000 per month if they receive the maximum housing element available: this might help to explain why survey respondents based in London were less likely to identify the ‘correct’ answer (37%) than across the country as a whole.

2. The UC health element is currently £423.27 per month.

3. PIP is paid weekly. The highest rate of the daily living component is £110.40 per week, equivalent to just under £480 per month.

4. This change has been approved by Parliament and will be implemented in April 2026.

5. This change was announced in the recent Pathways to Work green paper but has not yet been finalised.

6. Maximum housing element rates were last uprated under the previous government in April 2024. The current government is expected to maintain the freeze it applied after taking office, although it still has an opportunity to change course at the upcoming Autumn Budget.

7. To avoid leading questions, the survey described these policies as ‘proposals’ rather than ‘cuts’. Note that the government is already intending to ‘go further’ on the second cut: the new, lower rate of UC health will be frozen until 2028/29 (i.e. a real-terms cut each year). The survey did not seek opinions on this additional cut.

8. Our results need to be treated with the usual degree of caution. 2,090 were surveyed online by Yonder between 29th and 31st August 2025. 18-24 year-olds were sampled in proportion to this group’s size in the wider population, meaning 185 were included in the survey. For more information on the specific questions asked, contact the author of this post, Craig Berry, at craig.berry@citizensadvice.org.uk.