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

@maddiemookins16mum If you are a single mum on NMW a 2 hour commute at beginning and end of day can mean childcare wipes out your earnings. It is very different from a highly paid person commuting. It is also often impossible to get paid childcare for 7am to 7pm unless you have a nanny which is out of reach for someone on NMW.

Mental health is also a protected disability. I honestly don’t see how they can do this. Surely just having benefits taken off you and your disability ignored will be challenged on a case by case basis as every case differs. It will cost a fortune, then there is the cost of assessing everybody and disputes on decisions, the ludicrous one size fits all therapy that will be useless for many and cause worsening of conditions….

I fail to see how it will save money. People will get even more ill on top of all that and cause the NHS more.

A poster on here during Covid (who also had Chardonnay in their username) AND supported the lockdowns and restrictions thought people should pay for face masks. I remember the reply like it was yesterday.

It was "You think people should get them for free? "

Ah, did she?

Bless you.

Surely this could backfire on them. e,g. if family members, carers care workers all refuse to do any care for this person they cant be done for neglect by the state when its the state that has declared this person fit for work The state cant have it both ways. I would love to see this absolute hypocrisy pointed out in a court of law one day.

Seriously though, I have bought face masks for myself when they were mandatory and I also had some cloth/reusable ones, which again I was happy to pay for because it provided income for someone making them.

Should I have waited for someone to provide me with some?

Did you wait for masks to be given to you for free?

Childfree people shouldnt be expected to do it either. Just because they havent got living proof that they have had sex without contraception

What about the unemployed who have also paid into the system. Could it not be argued that’s it’s their money, well Its not an argument, it’s a fact. You’re not the only one of us who pays their taxes.

Not every baby is conceived by their parents having UPS. Many conceptions are through contraception failure.

Well yes that point does rather pass some people by

I was waiting for fruit picking to come up. So have to share this yet again SIGH!!!

a. Fruit picking veg picking etc a lot of which is LIVE IN work. If you rent social housing you have to actually fucking well live there. You are not allowed to live away from home for the length of time these employers want you to. If you want that you will need to give SH tenants more rights! But that would also mean giving them more rights to leave their home for other reasons Up for that are we social housing haters???!!!

b. Gas safety checks fire door checks electric checks Surveys My tenancy agreement says i have to be home for these and no i cant get a friend or neighbour to do it for me.

c. the hatred there is for SH tenants ensures that some busybody would probably report the flat as abandoned if a tenant were to risk their tenancy by taking this job. See recently deleted thread, https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/thirty_days_only/5042443-aibu-to-consider-reporting-a-council-flat-not-used?page=3

d. i have mentioned SH tenants because they will be the most likely group expected to take these jobs yet their hands are tied and they cant And even if they wont perhaps they want a life after the working day (just like home owners have. You know the ones who arent expected to do these jobs instead of sharing a berth with a stranger

No i bought mine. But we were in a serious pandemic were we not? They managed it in Italy outside pharmacies.

Are you OK?

You have been stewing for years because a random person on the Internet thought masks should not have been free, and you think they ought to have been because Italy?

They are probably planning to replace the 40"000 exodus of care workers caused by THEIR Covid vaccine mandate by forcing people into these jobs. Even those who arent suitable for this work.

Support these policies? Be careful what you wish for if you have an elderly relative in a care home

There are some NHS trusts that already have employment teams set up to support people into work that have mental health issues. This includes helping them find work and providing therapy, I’d like to hear from one of the advisors to see how well it’s going….

the access to work grant pays travel costs, and provides other support to help keep people with disabilities and long term health conditions in employment.

however this means that tax payers are paying to keep people with disabilities and health conditions in work, as well as paying the cab firms wage!

the benefits system is a utter joke, and don’t get me started on employers not paying an actual living wage and the care system is diabolical too.

I worked with a severely sight impaired man once. He suddenly had his transport costs taken off him as they had suddenly decided he could see enough to get himself safely on and off public transport again

Luckily the firm he worked for were happy to employ his son, who could drive, and his son wanted to work there, otherwise he would have been unable to work and no doubt be one of the people posters are moaning about

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

Employers, and especially small companies, really don't want applicants from problematic families and so filter them out very early on, well before interviews are offered. I work for a micro-business, and when we (quite rarely) have a vacancy, it's made very very clear. We are pretty casual about time-keeping once you're employed. If there's a need for occasional flex on school runs and drop offs/pick ups, business errands are timed to fit in around them. So it works like Joe needs to collect his kids at 3.30 from school today, so he will get the the drop off for item X going in that direction and continue on to fulfil the family commitment bit. But most of our Joes work incredibly hard to earn the start a little late and finish a bit early privileges. We are never going to offer a job to a man or a woman who makes a big deal about family needs and commitments. Businesses need to make a profit. Profit is what pays better wages.

Access to work has it's limits though. When DP had to use it they would only pay half of his taxi fare to work and back. He was paying just under £400 pm for a 20 minute journey from work every day. If there had been a bus, train, tram or tube he could use then all costs would have been met by ATW. Luckily he now works 2 minutes away from me and on the same shift pattern so when the inevitable happens and he has to surrender his driving licence getting to and from work will no longer be the ball-ache it was.

It'll never happen, he's just a windbag whose party won't be in power for much longer

If there’s no public transport where he lives, how do other people that don’t drive get to work?

I understand that he was paying a lot of money to get a cab, but if other people in the area don’t drive and have to use cabs it seems reasonable that only part of the cost was paid

Where I live public transport is shocking. So people who don’t drive are stuck working very locally or not at all. Buses don’t even run into the industrial estates in the town let alone further afield

Well in my example, which admittedly is not the one you are responding to, but is one where access to work funding was withdrawn, the person in question is severely sight impaired.

He can't get a bus because he cannot see which is the correct one, or where his stop is. So he gets a taxi. He's not the same as "other people that don't drive". Disabled people and able bodied people who don't drive have different needs which is why judging disabled people's needs on the basis of what able bodied people do is unfair and inequitable

This is another issue that probably won’t have been considered.

Lack of public transport means some people are either stuck in low paid jobs, can’t travel far because of caring commitments or lack of public transport services, which means some people won’t be able to find suitable employment.