Well this is a new fucking low....

[CherryMyBrandy]

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.

And let's not forget the state of mental health services in this country that people with serious mental illness also have to struggle with.

It is already too easy for them to fall through the cracks. The last thing they need is more draconian sanctions.

As someone who is currently attempting to navigate both DWP and NHS systems with a mentally unwell child, and I realise this sounds dramatic, it honestly sometimes feels like the current government wants her to end her life.

I cannot comment on how hard it is trying to navigate these "safety-nets" with physical impairments but I don't imagine it is much easier.

I'm sorry you're having such a tough time. Having worked for MH services, I know first hand how difficult the system can be to navigate for some people.

However that doesn't negate the fact that there are sadly some people who do abuse the system. It would be naive to ignore that. There will be some people who think that every single benefit claimant is "at it" and should be put to the workhouse. There will be some people who are on the opposite end of the spectrum, who say that no one fiddles the system and that every single person out there on disability benefits are poor souls who are gravely unwell and are living in squalor on the pittance that the DWP awards them. And then there are folk who realise that, in life, there are always going to be people who do try and fiddle the system and some of them slip through the net and manage to successfully claim. Along with those who don't get the help they need.

Is now a good time to ask why in the UK it is deemed acceptable for a multi-millionaire to pay a smaller proportion of their income in tax than a teacher or nurse?

Or shall we continue on but benefit claimants...

^ and why do big business - Amazon etc - get away with paying so little.

Well I should think that seeing as this thread is about benefit claimants, then people will continue to talk about benefit claimants. Feel free to start a thread about tax avoidance and I'm sure plenty of people will have plenty to say about that issue also.

The DWP themselves admit that only 3% of the total benefits bill is overpayments due to fraud and error. That figure includes overpayments due to their error.

I don't think we should be pushing vulnerable people further and further into poverty for such a tiny figure. Especially when this figure is dwarfed by money lost due to tax avoidance and evasion.

The system already unfairly targets the ill and vulnerable.

Instead of punishing people, more than 97% of whom are not committing fraud, we should look at why people cannot/are not working and fix that.

It costs the taxpayer far more than benefit fraud that multi-millionaires are allowed to get away with paying so little in tax.

What constitutes this fraud though? Are these 3% of fraud cases only cases such as those with more than 16k in savings and claiming benefits/those who are working and claiming benefits etc? Or does it include people who can work but won't work and so pretend that they have some illness which can't be proven and manage to slip through the net and successfully claim benefits? As I'm not sure how the DWP could put a figure on that.

There are many reasons why some people don't work. Some people won't work for minimum wage whereby they earn not much more than they would on benefits once they've taken into account bus fares/transport to work, meals at work, childcare etc. I don't blame them to be honest, it's terrible that people can barely afford to live while working full time. Some people are lazy. For some, it's a multi generational thing. That's like my family, my grandmother was a hard worker, supporting 6 children as a single mother while working 3 jobs. But my grandfather was a layabout who always had excuses as to why he couldn't get a job. His attitude has been passed down to his children, and their children (my cousins). There are lots more reasons why people don't want to work.

I don't pretend to know all the answers as to how to get everyone who can work, working, but I do know that the system isn't working and that it needs reformed - to both give those who genuinely need it a safety net and to weed out those who abuse it.

OK. And that's a great point to bring up on a tax avoidance thread.

@RoundTheBendThenBackAgain

They publish a spreadsheet each year which breaks it down by benefit.

I didn't go through it so I cannot answer your question.

I would guess it is mostly error, followed by not claiming as a couple (understandable in financial abuse situations) and then working cash in hand (in insecure jobs with no rights and probably on less than NMW) but that guess is based on my own anecdata and might be total tosh.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fraud-and-error-in-the-benefit-system-financial-year-2022-to-2023-estimates#:~:text=3.6%25%20(%C2%A38.3%20billion),billion)%20of%20total%20benefit%20expenditure

I'll do just that.

I wonder why a government headed by someone who pays a smaller proportion of his income in tax than teachers and nurses wants us to talk about a small number of poor people getting slightly more than the miserly amount they are entitled to and not rich people avoiding much larger sums of tax?

This really should be very simple.

We look at the rate at which the DWP gets its decisions about capacity to work wrong - 60% overturned on appeal, and that doesn't include those who are too unwell or afraid to appeal in the first place but whose decision was nevertheless wrong. So the error rate is very, very high.

Knowing that this is the level of competence in the DWP, it should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that under these new rules, more people who are genuinely unable to work are going to get sanctioned than people who are actually cheating the system.

It's like lining up 50 people against a wall because you know one of them has definitely committed a crime, and then shooting all 50 because that way you will at least have dealt with the guilty one.

Anyone who thinks this is acceptable lacks a moral compass.

Anyone who thinks this is acceptable lacks a moral compass.

Anyone with a moral compass wouldn't have attended parties during lockdown and than sat next to his boss while the boss lied about it in parliament.

Great, I'll keep an eye out for the thread and happily contribute. As long as it's not tonight, Saturday night plans and all that....

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

Perhaps if the NHS didn't have the longest waiting lists in its history there wouldn't be so many people needing to claim sickness benefits.

I am so tired now of these stereotypes of benefit claimants and I'm tired of being judged by ignorant people who have no idea what a depressing thing claiming benefits is.

I have a disabled DD who will never live independently and is unlikely ever to be able to hold down a job. We used to have a house, I used to have a professional career, she used to have a Dad. Life (and death) happened and we no longer have any of these things.

I volunteer one day a week at a charity (when I don't have to cancel because DD is ill, has hospital appointments or is refusing school). A full time paid position came up there. I would have loved to have applied for it and my supervisor really wanted me to but there aren't many employers who will accept term time only, being unable to come to work, often at short notice. There is no after school care for kids of her age with LD, even if I could get her to go.

I know I'm ranting now but it makes me so angry.

I don't doubt that there are people defrauding the system but that is the same in any walk of life. This government are trying to demonise benefit claimants to try to cover up their shit performance over the last 13 years and ignorant people who have no idea what life on benefits is like for the majority are going along with it. They should be ashamed.

Nobody has said that though. You are making things up.

Your zeal to ensure that it’s impossible for anyone ever to falsely claim disability benefits means that people like frequency’s daughter, who don’t have support from their family, are sanctioned because they are unable to navigate the system. Is this your intention?

It wont happen.Its a legal disaster waiting to happen.it is just scaremongering and a sop to their hard right.
I dont know how taking people medication would make them more likely to be woek!

I am not getting into whole discussion but without a fit note the UC service can't just take somebody's word that they have autism, bipolar etc and lots of people with these conditions do work.

I call bollocks. What type of benefits?

It’s a vile policy born out of hate. Even looking at it from a very hardline economic angle would show that making sure unemployed people can still access vital medication is a good idea as otherwise those people will likely become sicker and require more healthcare resources. For those with mental health conditions, there is arguably an even wider societal benefit for people having access to the appropriate medication.

What's that got to do with anything? This is such a childish post.

In every aspect of life, some people take more than they are entitled to. So we have benefit fraud teams, tax fraud teams, police etc.

That is irrelevant to a discussion about whether free prescriptions should be withheld from some of the poorest people in society.

They should not. This policy is both cruel and stupid.

The GP can sign you off with depression. That doesn't automatically make you eligible for sickness related benefits for depression. They are two separate processes and to get long term sickness related benefits is not easy.

The vast majority of people with depression remain in work.

Jeremy Hunt on Newsnight last night. "We have always been a compassionate Conservative government ...". So this is them being caring. I'd hate to see what they get up to when they aren't being.

I am one of those genuine claimants that have been talked about a lot on this thread. The "deserving poor" you might say. Hmmph!

In regards to the people who are claiming fraudulently (and I don't doubt they exist) I say this: I DON'T CARE! I really don't give a fuck. If the DWP catch every single one of them, it won't make an iota of difference to me. Or to anyone else.

I mean, what do you think? Will this government use the tiny amount of money saved to target and help those people who are not claiming who are entitled to? No

Will they pay more in benefits to us "deserving" claimants? No

Will they put that money towards the NHS or other public services? No

Childcare? No

Schools? No

Mental health services? No

Will they lower the taxes and/or raise the wages of the hard working people in this benighted country?

No
No
No
No
No

It wont help me and it won't help you. So I ask you - you who are wanking on about how we MUST catch and stop these terrible people - who want to know: WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT? - Why do you care?

Why?

I can tell you that from my perspective you look like small-minded, jealous, bitter arseholes.

Benefit fraudsters are not taking the tiniest fraction of what the government and their rich backers are taking from this country. You're looking the wrong way.

Get your heads out of your arseholes before it's too late. Because, as others have warned you, when they're done with us, you're next.