The Conservatives may not reveal details of plans to slash £12bn from the benefits bill before voters go to the polls on 7 May, Iain Duncan Smith has said.

The welfare secretary said it may not be “relevant” to explain where the rest of the cuts will fall until after the election.

His comments on Sunday came after the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) thinktank said the planned cuts will be difficult to achieve, involving “pretty dramatic” reductions in areas such as housing and disability benefits over the next three years.

The institute’s director, Paul Johnson, said reductions under Labour would be “quite a lot less” but could involve big cuts in the first couple of years after the election and would leave the country with a deficit of up to £30bn – while the Tories would eliminate it altogether.



Duncan Smith was asked by Andrew Marr to address a leaked document obtained by the BBC on Friday that appeared to suggest his Department for Work and Pensions was considering changes to industrial injuries compensation, child benefit, the carer’s allowance and disability benefits.

The paper was one of a number drawn up for consideration by civil servants and did not represent government or Conservative party policy, he said.

The former Tory leader told the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show that the Conservatives had already announced about a quarter of the £12bn cuts it has pencilled in for working-age welfare benefits, by extending a freeze for a further two years and reducing the cap on household claims from 26,000 to 23,000.

He said: “When we are right and we are ready, we will talk about what we plan to do …

“[Voters] know for certain that we are going to save that £12bn. We may, we may not, decide that it’s relevant to put something out there about some of those changes.

“As and when the time is right, we will make it very clear what our position is. A quarter of what we need to save is already out there. That’s a good indication that we know where we are going to go to be able to make those savings.”

Insisting that he was not intending to carry out “cheeseparing cuts”, Duncan Smith said: “I cannot and will not on this programme try to write the next spending review. What I will say to you is that there are some things that we will do, and want to do, that are of life-changing, dramatic effects. That is about getting people back to work and improving their life chances.”

However, Johnson said it was not yet clear how the Conservatives would make the planned welfare savings, while preserving the “triple lock” protection for pensions.



He told Marr: “They’ve said £12bn of cuts and they’ve said they want to achieve that within the first three years of the parliament and they’ve said they want to protect pensions.

“That is really tough to achieve from the rest of the budget. That’s a more than 10% cut for the rest of the social security budget.

“That would require pretty dramatic changes to things like housing benefit and disability benefits. You can’t do this in the way most of the cuts have been done over this parliament, which is just to reduce the rate at which things get increased.”

Johnson said the Tory plans would involve a “sharp cut over the first two or three years, and then the potential for a bit of increased spending towards the end”, but it was less clear how welfare reductions would be introduced under Labour.

He added: “In terms of its totals, it’s clear that Labour wants to do quite a lot less, because it doesn’t want to get rid of the deficit altogether, it is happy to borrow to invest. Labour would be happy with a deficit of £25bn-£30bn, whereas the Conservative party doesn’t want a deficit at all.”



Shadow work and pensions secretary Rachel Reeves said: “The public have a right to know who will be hit by the Tories’ plan and they must now come clean on their £12bn cuts.

“Iain Duncan Smith’s refusal to admit how children, disabled people, carers and working families will be hit by secret Tory plans six weeks before the election is completely unacceptable.”