The Wage Stop and Restricting Benefit Income in the United Kingdom : Discretion, Wages and Hardship

In 2013 the UK government introduced a household benefit cap to restrict the benefit income of its poorest people. Although taking different forms, such restrictions are not new there. Drawing upon files held at the UK's National Archives, this article focuses upon the years 1935 to 1975 during which the main benefit restriction that operated was the wage stop. The wage stop affected claimants categorised as unemployed. As the article demonstrates, those claimants not expected to do wage-labour, such as lone mothers and sick people, could also have their benefit limited, though not via the wage stop. The article examines these benefit restrictions through notions of discretion. In doing so, it engages with the misconception that the wage stop was wholly discretionary. And through discussion of the main decisions that were embedded in discretion demonstrates how the discretionary potential to mitigate the impact of benefit restrictions, was often constrained by broader state concerns with labour and social discipline. Consequently, the potential positive use of discretion was limited by a desire not to incentivise behaviours and lifestyles deemed problematic. Hence, like the operation of today's benefit cap, wage-stopped households faced lives marked by poverty, by, for example, poor diets, and inadequate clothing and essential household items.