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

There are probably a lot of jobs in the country - but in the wrong place for the people who need jobs.

And the people in the areas where there are jobs already have jobs so it's hard for businesses to get people as the people in the area already have a job or don't need a job.

Maybe we should be looking at ensuring that jobs and opportunities are more spread out around the country. We could call it Levelling Up.

So you want to tax the very thing that opens access to employment: education? The main factor in ensuring social mobility and productivity? Wowser, how very progressive of you!
Taxing any form of education is regressive and small minded. We all benefit from a well educated population and preventing people from accessing education unless they are wealthy is immoral.

Or people could move or commute, I work nearly an hour from home as we love our house.

Move to the South East from Middlesbrough?

Can you hear yourself?

Maybe people should relocate from deprived parts of Northern England to the Home Counties where the jobs and opportunities are?

For people to be able to commute you need a decent public transport network. You need people to be able to afford to get to work and still live.

if someone is working a minimum wage job they are unlikely to be able to afford a long commute. Low wages also make moving a lot harder (ignoring the many other reasons why just moving isn’t an option for many people)

Yip with the 2.50 in their bank account they can afford the train down, the upfront rent for a new home and then pay a can to bring their stuff down - simple ain't it

I’ve always worked, if something happened that I lost my job I couldn’t easily move to find employment. I’d be moving away from a hard fought package of support for my DD - and needing to start that fight all over again - moving the kids away from their dad who they see all the time, moving away from my support network, away from family and friends. I’d have the expense of moving, finding a house, schools, childcare all at a time of financial uncertainty.

There’s a huge degree of privilege attached to the idea that people can uproot their lives for work, especially given the lack of employment rights that could see you out of the job you’ve moved to access.

When I was in France, a paramedic made told me he got dole equivalent to his wage but it went down very quickly and then to nothing by the end of the year. I think this is the Tory’s attempt to stop the cyclical nature of some families relying on benefits (I’m aware this is not the norm). I think it’s a good idea-in principle. How it’s going to play out irl is a different matter.

I'm effectively a full time carer now for a friend who's an ex nurse, worked all through COVID in care homes and over 20 years in the NHS before that. She now can barely walk without double sticks. Without retraining there's nothing she can do, and she doesn't have enough money to retrain. She's now about to have her flat repossessed. PIP has been refused as apparently she's not immobile enough.

The person who sent out the form letter didn't even put their job title at the bottom.

Expect even more of this.

I hope every Tory minister rots in hell, along with a fair few from the Turncoat party (Libdems). And their voters. Or that they too have to go through this at least once in their lives.

But some of those families you are talking about may not be very attractive to employers. So what happens then?

It is a sad fact that there is a small percentage of the able bodied population who are simply never going to be able to get a job for various reasons. We can't let people starve, so we have to support them.

What is important is breaking the cycle so that their children don't endure the same life. That means investing in them, not allowing them to live in poverty because we deem their parents to be feckless.

Which is why I said what I said at the end. Unless there are serious issues (physical/mental) then I’d say most people can earn.

I think the line between ‘able to work’ and ‘not able to work’ has shifted quite a lot over the last 30 years tbh.

Taxing any form of education is regressive and small minded

I thought Labour wanted to tax private education.

If there are jobs available in the area that can work for the people who apply for them - transport, working around childcare / comittments.

There are plenty of areas in the UK where these conditions for employment don't exist. Transport is a joke. Driving may not be an option.

And moving to parts of the UK where there are plenty of opportunities may not be that easy or practical.

I really don't think some posters on here understand the economic situation in some parts of the UK.

Look at Hartlepool

Hartlepool's employment, unemployment and economic inactivity - ONS

70% employment
5% unemployment
27% economically inactive.

You can have all the jobs in the world there and all the opportunities BUT you have 27% economically inactive - why?

Compared to Woking

Woking's employment, unemployment and economic inactivity - ONS

85% employment
3% unemployed
15% economically inactive.

That is a massive difference between regions of the UK

And moving to parts of the UK where there are plenty of opportunities may not be that easy or practical

rents are probably higher in those areas too. Not to mention trying to get a landlord to rent to you in that position, when you rock up to a new area full of hope but ultimately unemployed, with your two kids, no support and barely a deposit.

https://amp-theguardian-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.theguardian.com/money/2024/apr/21/working-people-debt-cost-of-living-crisis-rents-workers?amp_gsa=1&amp_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQGsAEgg

Exactly

"Just move" is meaningless twaddle spouted by people who moved as a student and assume its that easy for a single parent of two children with an existing support system in their current area to do

It's soundbites politics that lacks critical thinking, empathy and compassion

North - South divide, lack of transport, less jobs available, less apprenticeships, poorer housing leading to mental and physical illness, huge decline in manufacturing industry where many would have traditionally worked. Now you need qualifications for everything.

Let's not forget that the biggest recipients of benefits and those who profit most from them are businesses that effectively have their wage bills subsidised by UC and landlords who rake it in through housing benefit! So who is really suckling off the taxpayer's teat?

It is still a massive transfer of money from the poorer people in society on PAYE to those significantly richer but let's blame some poor sod on minimum wage or 80 quid a week ESA/Carers Allowance/JSA/UC. Punching down is so much easier than being a competent, non-sleazy government that invests in its people for the good of the nation!

They do. My comment stands ie taxing education of any sort is narrow minded, VAT is well known to be a regressive form of taxation.

I think there are an awful lot of people out there sick to the back teeth watching workshy individual getting more money in benefits than people working full time. Not talking about people who have disabilities

The amount of excuses being offered on this thread for those who ‘can’t’ work is ridiculous. Too long a commute fgs…….yes it can be a challenge but plenty of us have long commutes and have no choice but to endure them as otherwise we don’t earn any money.

If you have ASC anxiety then even getting on a train or bus will be a huge challenge. Many won’t be able to drive, experience exhaustion from holding it together and masking several hours a day….

These aren’t excuses it’s reality. Autism is a protected disability.