An impossible move?

The Nuffield Foundation is the founder and co-funder of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, the Ada Lovelace Institute and the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory. [...] We also show the ways in which the power of both the state and housing providers (especially in the private rental market) collides with that of the individuals subject to the Benefit Cap, who often feel relatively powerless to challenge inadequate and unhealthy housing, and for whom state-imposed hardship means reduced capacity to realise positive change in their lives. [...] As their name suggests, these are made at the discretion of the local authority on a case-by-case basis, and the authority also decides the rules on the amount and the length of time they can be paid for. [...] The table in Appendix 1 sets out the demographic characteristics of the sub-sample of those subject to the Benefit Cap. [...] First, we see the operation of power by the state in the imposition of policies that are known to cause damage, the replacement of stable entitlements with insecure mechanisms like Discretionary Housing Payment, which keep recipients in a more heightened state of dependency, and the false framing of policies themselves.