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Original poster

Well this is a new fucking low....

298 replies

CherryMyBrandy · 18/11/2023 04:41

Tories are now proposing to stop benefit claimant's access to medicines if they have been deemed not doing enough to look for work....

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/michael-heseltine-hate-politics-jobless-prescriptions-b2449412.html

It's not enough to sanction them, so they basically have next to no money to live on. Now they want to take away their access to medicines, some of those will of course be life-saving.

OP posts:
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Original poster
CherryMyBrandy · 18/11/2023 22:58

Lovepeaceunderstanding · 18/11/2023 11:33

@CherryMyBrandy , that is a LIE, They will if they refuse to look for work have FREE prescriptions removed. Quite right too! No one should expect to be able to laze around at the expense of those who go out to work each day.

It's not a lie. Removing free prescriptions when you have no money means you cannot access medicines. It's really not that difficult to comprehend.

OP posts:
NettleTea · 18/11/2023 23:09

yup, because when you are on about 80 quid a week, paying 10 for a PPC is a massive amount of your money gone.

NameChangedForThis1234567 · 18/11/2023 23:13

FatherJackHackettsUnderpantsHamper · 18/11/2023 12:52

The idea the 'processes' are fair or work is, frankly, total bollocks.

Do you remember that case a few years back that hit the headlines - where there was a purpose-designed assessment centre for disability benefits, where disabled people were required to attend in order to process their cases? The one that had been situated on the first floor in a building without a lift?

That one single decision alone tells you all you need to know about the absolute hatred and contempt the government hold disabled people in.

I used to work in a job centre that had no disabled toilet access. Some of the appointments lasted a long time. I had to assisted a disabled man in a wheelchair into the women's toilets (the only ones on the ground floor (they had a lift but it took months for them to fix it)) and he had to drag himself from the main door (the wheelchair wouldn't fit) along the floor into the toilet. I was so embarrassed. What an awful way to treat disabled people. So humiliating for him.

Anecdotally, DWP also have a very poor reputation for providing reasonable adjustments for their disabled staff.

caringcarer · 18/11/2023 23:54

IClaudine · 18/11/2023 10:02

Not being or being awarded PIP doesn't = being well enough or not well enough to work. It is an in work benefit.

People often have to fight to get PIP in the first place. Lots of people lose PIP when their case comes up for review and have to fight to get it back. Lots of people don't even apply for PIP because the process is so difficult.

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I think I've seen the government plan to use PIP instead of UC capability for work, which at the moment people get paid for even if they fail to get PIP.

CesareBorgia · 19/11/2023 00:02

caringcarer · 18/11/2023 23:54

I think I've seen the government plan to use PIP instead of UC capability for work, which at the moment people get paid for even if they fail to get PIP.

Show quote history

So does that mean that people who work and receive PIP (often to help with the adjustments they need to work) will have their PIP cancelled unless they stop working:?

caringcarer · 19/11/2023 00:03

RosaGallica · 18/11/2023 10:44

The traditional way of looking for more workers in a free and democratic society is to provide decent wages and a work-life balance, health provision, holidays and other benefits.

Wages have had to be propped up by benefits for so long because they are too low in comparison to the real cost of living, which quietly quadrupled overnight 20 years ago and has been rising steadily ever since. Work is simply not worth doing for far too many people. The emphasis should be on making it worthwhile again, not on creating a new totalitarian slavery while the rich build more superyachts and open more offshore bank accounts.

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I do think those who work full time should get more money than those on benefits but sadly this is not true, they don't. Minimum wages should be higher so those on benefits don't get more for not working. 40 hours at minimum wage is less than those on UC get if they have several kids and housing benefits, plus free dental care, prescriptions and Cost of Living bonuses. Last year people on UC got a 10.1 percent pay rise whilst many workers got 3 or 4 percent. There is not enough incentive to make people with DC work.

caringcarer · 19/11/2023 00:23

CesareBorgia · 19/11/2023 00:02

So does that mean that people who work and receive PIP (often to help with the adjustments they need to work) will have their PIP cancelled unless they stop working:?

Show quote history

No they can still work and get PIP, just like now.

iloveeverykindofcat · 19/11/2023 06:01

All morality aside, imagine being so economically illiterate you think a proposal like this would actually save money. I swear to God some people are incapable of joining two thoughts together.

Either that or they'd gladly punch themselves in the face if it meant they got to watch someone else getting punched harder.

iloveeverykindofcat · 19/11/2023 06:16

there is always a percentage of people who will chose to not work, how would you suggest that they are encouraged out of the benefit ‘lifestyle’ if not cracking down on them?

Here's a radical proposition: I wouldn't. I literally don't care.

  1. Healthy, well-adjusted adults want to work. I don't necessarily mean paid employment. I mean meaningful, goal orientated activity. Its so well established in psychology and sociology that its basically a truism. We evolved to work. We cannot do nothing long term - we would go insane. This is true for 99.9% of the human species. Actually its true for other species too, hence the pathologies you see in zoo animals.

  2. Given the above, the percentage of adults who are genuinely fit to work (in the broadest sense, because I'm including caring responsibilties etc in the definition of work) and do not do so is miniscule and

  3. The cost of finding these people and forcing them into some kind of labour would massively outweigh any kind of monetary benefit derived from doing so.

And yes, I've studied this. Properly. I'm a sociologist and work is one of my interests.

Ruminate2much · 19/11/2023 06:51

Horrific. The persecution of benefit claimants has to stop.

MrTiddlesTheCat · 19/11/2023 07:45

SerendipityJane · 18/11/2023 19:23

All is clear. This is another matey matey fast lane way to skim more money from the taxpayer.

They should have said this from the start. If there's one thing MNetter hate more than benefit scroungers, it's fat benefit scroungers.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/nov/18/obesity-jab-maker-data-to-profile-benefits-claimants

Edited

Something about this plan makes me feel really uncomfortable. Is it a step onto the very slippery slope of forced medical intervention?

Passepartoute · 19/11/2023 08:11

Welshphoenix · 18/11/2023 08:26

They actually took the right to legal aid to challenge benefit decisions years ago. People have to either rely on charity or go through the horrendous process of challenging themselves, which for many very vulnerable people is just not possible

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No, legal aid for welfare benefits advice still exists, although it is currently hard to access as it is so badly paid that there are few solicitors offering it.

Mischance · 19/11/2023 08:21

Of course there is a small percentage of people who take the piss. Just like there is a small percentage of the general population who are criminals. We don't punish the whole population for that and benefit claimants should not be demonised because of the few who play the system.

How right you are. And among those who take the piss I would include the rich tax avoiders. But they are ignored in the sanctions game as they are Tory donors.

Passepartoute · 19/11/2023 08:24

Livelovebehappy · 18/11/2023 09:22

Genuine benefit claimants, who can’t work, have nothing to worry about here. This is aimed at the people who are deemed fit to work who are putting in zero effort to find a job. People aren’t reading it properly, and as usual are catastrophising the situation. The government have to do something, whether it is the Tories, or a future Labour government. Soon there will be more people on benefits than working the way things are going…..

The problem is in part that in over 60% of cases benefits offices get these decisions wrong - we know that from the current appeal success rate. I was reading the other day of someone who was sanctioned for not turning up for an interview when the reason she didn't turn up was that she was in intensive care at the time. So over 60% of claimants risk having their health and indeed their lives put in jeopardy by mistake. Is that acceptable?

And what do you imagine is going to happen when people can't afford to pay for much-needed prescriptions? They're going to have to steal or beg, or go to A&E. If they're in hospital, the hospital isn't allowed to make unsafe discharges: if they know the patient won't be able to get prescription medicine, they'll have to keep them, at a cost way way above the cost of benefits.

And who wants to be the person in a Benefits Office telling someone they can't have essential medicine the deprivation of which will put their lives at risk or cause permanent life-changing damage?

It just makes no sense at all.

pointythings · 19/11/2023 08:57

I do think those who work full time should get more money than those on benefits but sadly this is not true, they don't. Minimum wages should be higher so those on benefits don't get more for not working. 40 hours at minimum wage is less than those on UC get if they have several kids and housing benefits, plus free dental care, prescriptions and Cost of Living bonuses. Last year people on UC got a 10.1 percent pay rise whilst many workers got 3 or 4 percent. There is not enough incentive to make people with DC work.

  1. Benefits were frozen for many years under austerity, so the large rise was necessary to catch up - and even so was eaten up by inflation.
  2. If you want people with children to work, do better at providing affordable childcare.

None of this is rocket science, but it takes a mindset of substantive change and a move away from reaching for punishment as a first option every time. This is not the Tory way.

RoundTheBendThenBackAgain · 19/11/2023 09:02

VikingVolva · 18/11/2023 18:06

It's not the point though is it?

Ascribing the rise in illness to malingering, when there is the new burden of long covid and other conditions exacerbated by covid, is just plain wrong.

And using that wrong conclusion to place barriers in the way of accessing the medicines that the person needs to recover their health (or at least reach the best state they can) is dreadful

Show quote history

I've not ascribed any rise in illness to malingering. I said that there is and always has been people trying to game the system.

Passepartoute · 19/11/2023 09:06

Livelovebehappy · 18/11/2023 10:12

Whilst this is a very sad case, the fact that it went to the papers shows it was an isolated incident, where the poor man had obviously slipped through the net. There will clearly be incidences like this, but rare. There’s shit service across the board atm from NHS and government departments. I would guess if someone is appealing against a PIP/benefit decline, that the suspension of free prescriptions etc would be paused pending the outcome of an appeal. I just think people on here are scaremongering amongst people who this will not affect. Genuine claimants who are currently on benefits and are not being asked to look for work are not the target group here.

Show quote history

I'm sure it's comforting to think that mistakes are rare, but that simply isn't true. We know from appeals stats that they get over 60% wrong.

I remember going to a talk about tribunals which included a senior judge in the welfare benefits tribunal. He said he and a colleague had conducted an exercise where they went through the paperwork on every appeal awaiting hearing to weed out the ones where a clear mistake had been made by the Benefits Office so that the appeal had to succeed: without trying too hard they were able to weed out 67%. So those were people who had gone without benefits to which they are entitled for several months because of very obvious mistakes. They conducted that exercise because they were well aware of the poor quality of decision-making that they were seeing regularly in the cases coming before them.

Your faith in benefit officials' infallibility is quite sweet but it just isn't borne out by the facts.

RoundTheBendThenBackAgain · 19/11/2023 09:14

iloveeverykindofcat · 19/11/2023 06:16

there is always a percentage of people who will chose to not work, how would you suggest that they are encouraged out of the benefit ‘lifestyle’ if not cracking down on them?

Here's a radical proposition: I wouldn't. I literally don't care.

  1. Healthy, well-adjusted adults want to work. I don't necessarily mean paid employment. I mean meaningful, goal orientated activity. Its so well established in psychology and sociology that its basically a truism. We evolved to work. We cannot do nothing long term - we would go insane. This is true for 99.9% of the human species. Actually its true for other species too, hence the pathologies you see in zoo animals.

  2. Given the above, the percentage of adults who are genuinely fit to work (in the broadest sense, because I'm including caring responsibilties etc in the definition of work) and do not do so is miniscule and

  3. The cost of finding these people and forcing them into some kind of labour would massively outweigh any kind of monetary benefit derived from doing so.

And yes, I've studied this. Properly. I'm a sociologist and work is one of my interests.

When you say people don't want to do nothing for long periods of time, many of these people aren't doing nothing. Visiting friends and family, watching TV, going into town. Filling their day up with bits and bobs. They're happy doing that. You may have studied it, but many people who have grown up on sink estates, like me, and grown up in families of people with this mindset know that there are people who are happy with this lifestyle.

Passepartoute · 19/11/2023 09:15

Takethehintandfuckoff · 18/11/2023 11:52

Nothing incentivises people to work like denying them healthcare. Imagine how quickly you’d be running to the job centre if they stopped your epilepsy meds or your insulin.

Imagine how many employers are eager to employ someone liable to have epileptic seizures when they have the choice of several other healthy applicants.

Passepartoute · 19/11/2023 09:22

Hotsausage2 · 18/11/2023 14:27

So for all those who disagree with this, then what is the answer to stop the false claimants? Those who choose to not work for reasons such as - refusing to work so they don’t have to pay child support. There are plenty of those around. Why should they be supported for the majority of their working lives in claiming benefits despite no reason not to work.
there is always a percentage of people who will chose to not work, how would you suggest that they are encouraged out of the benefit ‘lifestyle’ if not cracking down on them?

One answer would be to raise the minimum wage well above benefits levels, and to provide more help with costs like childcare.

Passepartoute · 19/11/2023 09:32

TorringtonDean · 18/11/2023 15:00

It’s not taking away medicines. It’s taking away free prescriptions. That’s only if they don’t engage with help for getting them back to work. Having purpose in your life and meeting people through work, plus the income it brings you, is good for mental health.

If only it were that easy. Conditions like clinical depression, severe agoraphobia, schizophrenia etc are not so easily cured.

Judges in the Mental Health tribunal complain regularly about the fact that mental health assessments are made by unqualified nurses who don't necessarily have any training or experience in that field. That means that a claimant who has a sheaf of reports from highly experienced consultants in the field who have been working with them for years risks getting his diagnosis dismissed at a stroke because some half-awake nurse with no understanding of what they are doing didn't put enough ticks in the tickboxes on the relevant form. If the claimant is lucky, they get help in appealing for which purpose the NHS has to incur more expense providing reports saying that no, he hasn't had a miracle cure and the assessment is just wrong. However, because the appeal system is so slow it will take months to overturn the decision. If the claimant can't get medication during that period, there is a high chance that they will end up back in hospital - provided, of course, they don't end up in prison because they've attacked someone whilst in a delusional state or a state of utter panic.

But I suppose Hunt just hopes that they'll all commit suicide and remove the problem that way.

RosaGallica · 19/11/2023 09:38

@caringcarer , @Passepartoute , what is worrying me more and more about these politics of division is that all the easy targets have gone. The kind of decisions being made now, as evidenced here, are highly impractical and take no regard for how people actually relate to each other. They are cutting directly now into the ability of a group of people to organise and live together at all. Communication has broken down and society is going to follow.

Tatumm · 19/11/2023 09:48

Of course, why is it always the case that CEOs need carrots but the workers need sticks?

IClaudine · 19/11/2023 09:49

RoundTheBendThenBackAgain · 19/11/2023 09:14

When you say people don't want to do nothing for long periods of time, many of these people aren't doing nothing. Visiting friends and family, watching TV, going into town. Filling their day up with bits and bobs. They're happy doing that. You may have studied it, but many people who have grown up on sink estates, like me, and grown up in families of people with this mindset know that there are people who are happy with this lifestyle.

Show quote history

Let's just run with this for a moment and say it is true.

I am willing to bet a good percentage of the people you describe will have very poor literacy and numeracy skills. They will be really unlikely to be attractive to employers unless the state invests lots of money into making them employable. I don't see anything mentioned in government plans that indicates this will happen?

Forcing these people to look for work without doing anything to improve their skills is going to be a waste of everyone's time. The state's, employers' and benefit office staff's.

Lots of these people will have children. We should be focusing on those children, investing in them and their education to improve their life chances and hopefully break the cycle of unemployment. Removing their parent's access to prescriptions and sanctioning their benefits achieves nothing and will just ensure the cycle continues.

RoundTheBendThenBackAgain · 19/11/2023 10:51

IClaudine · 19/11/2023 09:49

Let's just run with this for a moment and say it is true.

I am willing to bet a good percentage of the people you describe will have very poor literacy and numeracy skills. They will be really unlikely to be attractive to employers unless the state invests lots of money into making them employable. I don't see anything mentioned in government plans that indicates this will happen?

Forcing these people to look for work without doing anything to improve their skills is going to be a waste of everyone's time. The state's, employers' and benefit office staff's.

Lots of these people will have children. We should be focusing on those children, investing in them and their education to improve their life chances and hopefully break the cycle of unemployment. Removing their parent's access to prescriptions and sanctioning their benefits achieves nothing and will just ensure the cycle continues.

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Ok, so let's not just guess, or bet. Let's take the people I know for instance, my own family. Not a single one of them have literacy or numeracy issues, all can read perfectly well, they aren't unintelligent people. They simply don't want to work. They spend their days popping into each othes houses for a coffee, browsing the shops in town, doing housework.... they don't want to work. I don't know why you're so opposed to believing that amongst the many genuine benefit claimants, there are also simply people out there who just don't want to work. It's very naive.

I don't and have never said that we should remove access to prescriptions etc. However I do think that you can only do so much for people and it's not right to let able bodied, able minded people to just be lazy and live off hard working taxpayers. If you had an adult child at home who just wanted to lounge around all day and night, meeting up with mates, eating all your food, costing you money, contributing nothing and there were no issues preventing them from gaining employment other than laziness and entitlement, would you just let them live all their days like that? Or would you be forcing them to stand on their own two feet?

I mean it's up to you if you want to believe that there isn't anyone in this country gaming the system...

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