No benefits if unemployed for more than a year and other ways Sunak wants ti tackle the Benefits system

[cakeorwine]

This are the headlines - I can see some massive issues here for people - it's easy to say there are job vacancies - but what if they aren't in the area people are and there is no transport to get there. How does that work? I can see a lot of exploitation here.

There's also the other rules here around PIP payments, part time workers etc.

I wonder how much personal experience Sunak has of such things?

This is an outline from the Daily Mail

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13330045/Benefits-axed-year-stop-lifestyle-choice-Prime-Minister.html

12-month rule for unemployed

Tory manifesto plans will see people on the dole have their benefit claims closed after a year unless they can convince Jobcentre staff they are actively looking for work and willing to accept any reasonable job offer.

Personal Independence Payments

Hundreds of thousands of people with anxiety and depression could lose access to payments worth up to £700 a month and instead be offered therapy to help them back to work.

PART-TIME WORKERS

New rules will require part-time workers on Universal Credit to look for more work. Anyone working for less than the equivalent of 18 hours a week on minimum wage will have to show they are actively seeking more hours.

Disability rules

The work capability assessment rules, which govern who is eligible for sickness benefits, will be tightened to require 424,000 with milder mental health conditions to start looking for work.

Sick notes

GPs could be stripped of their role in signing off people as sick and replaced by 'specialist work and health professionals' who will focus on what work people could do with support, such as flexibility to work from home.

Benefit Fraud

Investigators will be handed new powers to tackle benefit fraud, which hit £6.4 billion last year. In future they will have similar powers to those investigating tax fraud, including the ability to make seizures and arrests

True as well

A family member wants to work but there is no support. He wasn't on benefits so didn't qualify for the help itms

Where are these job vacancies? So google search says:

No 1- Human health and social services
no2- accommodation and food services
Then
professinal science and technological activities
retail
manufacturing

in that order

so let’s take these one by one. It’s appears were very short of nurses and doctors. We’ll blow me down, could that possibly have something to do with lack of financial support for training. How about addressing root cause to make training for nursing and medicine more easy. Students loans haven’t been raised, and now don’t even cover costs for accommodation. Making nurses train solely by university route seems to have been a disaster . BUT, you can’t just walk onto those jobs- 3-5 year training and a vocation to do what is a difficult stressful etc role

care workers- well that just reflects the mentality of politicians who’ve never cared for an elderly or disabled person. It is low paid, antisocial hours, working in often appaalling conditions for private owners who are money making machines. I certainly don’t want someone who has been unemployed for a year, and who has not used that opportunity to already think “oh, beibg a social carer would be good fit” to be looking after my now dying dad with dementia that makes him violent, aggressive, doubly incontinent and non verbal and barely able to move. If Rishi wanted to fill those social care vacancies they’d come up with real solutions lien returning social care to the state control and putting in recognised qualification and decent wages to reflect the skills, vocation etc that carers need. Otherwise abuse of these vulnerable people will not only not get better, but get worse by forcing people into these roles that simply can’t deal with. Especially if they have low level mental health issue themselves. It’s a recipe for disaster. If these jobs paid better and were valued, like nursing, and ere supported with proper valued training then there would be less problems with vacancies

food and accommodation- zero hours contracts, low pay , low respect - hey yep that makes it easy for a 30 year old mum returning to work to do while juggling child care . Or those with painful back and hip issues who’ve been shunted out cos they’re 50 plus.

scence and technology- yeah, really easy for an unemployed person to just rock up at a research lab and undertake precise chemical, physical or biological testing needed (I’m a chemist, ex pharma and know we were always short of lab technicians who need degree training ). Well, guess what, a lot of those junior roles used to be done by inexperienced new graduates or those form the old school polytechnics that did a brilliant job in training scientists for the more manual scientific roles. Then some labour government etc decid3d it would be genius to do away with polytechnic and therefor make all science degrees very academic and less practical. Another own goal.

and so it goes on. Low paid, low security, low terms and condition, low respect jobs that the governments have failed to address how to get uk citizens to be trained, qualified and wanting to do. The focus that university degrees were the only way to upskill our workforce instead of thinking about how to improve quality of low skill jobs that still need doing to make them interesting, with future progression and opportunities.

The only difference now is that EU and other immigrant workers covered this “hole” for years and offered a good solution. Now government shot itself in foot by stopping that economic migration (and their obsession with taking back control via Brexit) without first ensuring the any plans it had to replace them had, not only been put in place, but the new cohorts had been trained and ready to take over.

And then Covid happened. On top of a NHS already on its knees. I was caterer for my exh with mental illness for 20 years. Even 10 years ago there was no support other than laughable “care in community” ( better termed as drug and dump) and no support at all with occ health or psycho support to get him back to work. Just as well I was sole breadwinner for 15 years eh Rishi?

theyre even more stupid than I thought if they think by stopping benefits after a year it will solve these issue.

If one GP Practice has 400 people who do not turn up every week, the NHS has to pay the GP practice for those appointments whether the patients turn up or not. Some of those appointments might have required an interpreter, they NHS will have to pay for it even if the appointment was cancelled - the NHS pays for an hour.

Now multiply that by however many practices in the UK. That's an incredible amount of waste. If we follow what they do in some of the nordics and charge a small fee £5-10, I believe that number will go down and that money can go elsewhere in the NHS. It won't fix everything but it will make a difference.

There are plenty of people who would come here if we paid them well. Even if it was just for 2 years. American / Canadian/ OZ/ NZ doctors barely even come here for fellowships because the UK is a mess. Yet our doctors go there in droves.

It is seasonal, insecure work and no one is going to pay their rent or mortgage with that.

you wouldn’t able to privately rent or get a mortgage with that. You wouldn’t get past affordability. It’s a big issue with the gig economy and zero hours contracts

One of the biggest labour failings was the push for university education for all. We have lost out on so many potentially good nurses, social workers and police officers by now making them degree entry. These are vocational careers and should be open to all.

I've also noticed the standard of care has dropped markedly with nurses since they became another tier of doctors.

@Dartwarbler Many nurses are trained, many get contracts to work abroad before they have even qualified. By the time they graduate they pack and go Go to OZ. I've seen many people do this. more recently many UK and foreign nurses working here take the NCLEX and go to the US. Locum nurses there can make 5K or more per week after taxes. Even a regular nurse post there is 3 x what you get here. Most people don't want to work forever so They go and make money to retire early.

We can't keep our own staff because of poor pay and working conditions.

Seasonal work used to be a subsidy to normal work, it was never meant to be the sole income. The school year is set up as it is so the kids could help out with the harvest.

I know a few people who have no intention of working, they claim everything they can, rent paid etc.

My sister is one of them. She was fuming last week as she had to go to some Restart appointment in a town 10 miles away. Says she has no intention of ever working again, due to retire in 9 years.

She is in the minority of course. But it does piss me off when if you dare to mention this kind of scenario on here you are shouted down or it’s hinted at that it’s not true and nobody would choose to live on benefits. She does and believe me, does not use a food bank and is off on her annual week in Spain in June.

An ex colleague of mine has also not worked in 17 years but did office work for 25 years before losing his job. He’s nearly 65. Volunteers 3 days a week in a charity shop and gets very cross when it’s suggested he may well find retail work with his experience - nope, can’t do that he just wants to ‘work’ in the CPL shop 3 mornings a week. He also goes off on one every time he called in for an appt and plasters his anger over FB. Does my nut in when he goes on about ‘only 2 years and I can finally retire’ etc.

These people do exist (in their hordes) stop pretending they don’t and blaming the nasty Tories for trying to put a stop to it.

@maddiemookins16mum I don't think it's in the minority, I think most people know someone like this. I know 2 actually 3 and one has just gone back to work but very few hours a week presumably to keep getting benefits.

Absolutely.
watched my SIL having to do a degree, 28 years into her career, to be able to be promoted to staff nurse practitioner.
despite her being a “nightingale nurse”

what did that tell her of how the government and policy makers in health thought of her training at one of the best hospitals in the country

Yes, I was aware and yes that’s another issue they’ve failed to address. But if they’re not even making training the replacements form this burnout/brain freeze/bank nursing anomalies then it won’t get better to be removing untrained people’s money and telling them to be nurses.

my point is that whatever the cause of the loss, you can’t stick anyone into these medical jobs- they need training and that costs.

Agreed this is just manifesto puff to make what is already in place seem stronger. There are some great ideas, if it means people can access mental health support and assessment more quickly to facilitate changes then I'm on board but we know this won't happen. Sunak needs tory pleasing headlines at this point rather than concrete plans so I'm not paying this much attention. Disappointing though to see typical tories to focus on pursuing benefit fraud rather than wider scale tax evasion or pandemic loan fraud.

It amazes me how she gets away with it.

I agree with the 12 month rule for unemployed, other country like Japan do it with no issues 🤷‍♀️ it's a short term safety no net if you lose your job and really shouldn't be anything more than that.

@Tukmgru Agree!! 👏👏

So if you are unable to walk whilst waiting 4 years for a hip replacement and the pain means you are permanently medicated up which affects your mental capacity you still have to work ?

Get real - that type of limit doesn't work in a poor society - what you will get is increased suicide , increased theft and burglary and muggings, increased black economy...

Nobody is going to volunteer that information but when there are gaps on the CV and they are asked why, then what do they say? Some jobs also require medical checks.
Also the "if you're unemployed and able to work you should be made to take any job" isn't as straight forward as some seem to think it is. As an epileptic there are some jobs DP cannot do by law and others (such as a fast -paced, high stress or long hours), which will trigger a seizure. He is lucky in that he works 37 hour pw in a NMW job that means that as far as he is able he can minimize the risk of him being unable to work/drive.

Sunak is a knob with no understanding of the real world, surrounded by a load of sycophantic who are so desperate to cling on to the means to fleece the country that they will say and do anything.

This is designed to send more money into tory donors pockets.

He's a disgrace.

Sorry I haven't read the whole thread, so apologies if someone has already made this point.

I would say I can't believe the Tory's are doing this whilst people are struggling enough already with the cost of living, but I'm not surprised, it's what they do well.

Let's hope they're going to be putting in the same effort to stop huge companies avoiding paying massive amounts of tax. Surely this would help more than penalising people just trying to get by? They're just small fry in comparison to what the government has gotten away with over the past 12 years.

I'm no expert in any of this but this just seems to be taking us back to Victorian times.

I don't understand why people are being allowed to claim benefits for being unemployed for even as long as a year let alone longer.

Of course if there really are no jobs in their area or there are jobs but they can't get to them but otherwise there are just no excuses.

I claimed job seekers for 2 months and I genuinely wanted a job and was actively looking. The staff at the job centre were really pushing me to take jobs that either were totally unsuitable or too difficult for me to get to. I don't drive and one job they tried to insist I should apply for meant getting 3 buses with a journey time (with no hold ups and if the buses actually turned up) of an hour and a half!.

I was 59 at the time and had worked continuously from the age of 17. I stopped claiming as I was getting too stressed and thankfully found a job.

Seems in some other areas though they don't push people to find work, even much younger people.

The whole thing smacks of appealing to a certain demographic that typically vote conservative. Most of it is not workable because of lack of resources within the NHS and it just being impractical. I am a GP and I do not count it as part of my role to police people on whether they are really able to go to work or not. I welcome anyone who feels they can be definite about if a person is fit to work after they do their assessments. Doubtful it will be as straightforward as Sunak is thinking it will.

I lost my job and needed to sign on.

There were 1000s of jobs available but as a single parent with zero help, I needed to have one that fit in with childcare which narrowed it down dramatically.

The job centre said I needed to travel up to an hour for the commute and I didn’t drive.
So any job starting earlier than 9am was no good because I needed to get a bus at least an hour before and get my child to their childcare, many of which don’t open before 7am.

I also lived very rurally so the nearest childcare provider was a good 15/20min bus journey away and the jobs were much harder to come by.

It’s not hard to get a job if you have absolutely no responsibilities but most people do.

Some people are on benefits for longer than they should be but most people are on them because they have no other option.

I hate the tories but if you think labour are going to be any better you are very mistaken.

I can't wait for all the delusional labour lovers to find that things don't change if they get elected

IMO, if an area has insufficient work it should be supported.

If we encourage everyone to move to the SE rather than spreading the opportunities, we'll fuck the country even more.

The Tories used to talk of levelling up.

You seem to prefer levelling down!

Is it or is it going back to the true idea of conservatism? It's the idea of your well enough to clean your house and shop for food you could manage 18 hours a week on tills etc which frankly is true.

Yes being a parent is hard we had a time when DS was younger where we got two days off together in 12 weeks as we basically worked opposite shifts to minimise how much time he went to my parents.

He's now 10 and it's all a distant memory! One parent working 9-5 Monday to Friday and 1 doing to 12 hour shifts at a weekend or overnight is doable. We also renovated 2 houses in this time!!