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

Some stats (but they will have changed with this year's budget)

In August 2023, 22.6 million people were claiming some form of benefits, in England, Scotland and Wales.

In 2023-24, the government is expected to spend £265.5bn on paying pensions and benefits, just over half of which (£134.8bn) goes on benefits to pensioners.

After the state pension, universal credit (UC) is the government's highest benefit spend, allocated £59.8bn this year.

In October 2023, 6.2 million people were claiming it, about 38% of whom have jobs.

It is expected that £14.3bn will be spent on housing benefit this year, which helps people pay their rent.

In May 2023, there were 1.3 million working-age recipients and 1.1 million of pension age.

Housing benefit is gradually being replaced by UC.

The main benefits for disabled people are:

• employment and support allowance (ESA), which helps with living costs (£8.2bn)
• personal independence payment (PIP), which helps with daily living costs and getting around (£21.8bn)
• disability living allowance (DLA), which is in the process of being replaced, by PIP in England and Wales and adult disability payment in Scotland (£6.7bn)
• attendance allowance which helps with extra costs to cover carers (£6.7bn)

In February 2023 there were:

• 1.6 million people claiming ESA

• 4.2 million people claiming either PIP or DLA
• 1.6 million attendance allowance claimants

The government is expected to spend £12.6bn on child benefit this year.

Personal tax credits

Child tax credit and working tax credit are being replaced by UC.
The government is expected to spend £8.8bn on them this year.

Pension Credit

Separate from the state pension, pension credit helps people over state-pension age with low incomes with living costs, at a cost of £5bn in 2023-24.

More than 1.4 million people currently receive pension credit, although the government says there are significantly more eligible pensioners who do not claim.

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@IClaudine

Exactly!

The problem is with businesses not paying people enough to keep up with the cost of living.

I think I'll just pay my taxes for one year then.

How much of someone's earnings should go on transport?

How far should someone have to go to work?
Maybe they should get a taxi seeing as how local transport can be difficult?

If this all goes through it will result in suicides, just thinking about it all (as someone who is currently benefit-dependent) makes me feel suicidal.

Tory cunts trying to waterboard blame for their mistakes onto the poorest and most vulnerable.

What a surprise.

I just got even more convinced that I'll never vote for them.

A lot of this is already in place - they're trying to whip up feeling against people on benefits.

People can't claim on the grounds of seeking work and just turn it down - you get sanctioned long term if you continuously breach your claimant commitment.

You don't get pip for average anxiety and depression- that's for people who can't leave the house or are regularly self harming. And it's already not down to a doctor if someone gets pip - they provide the initial fit note but you don't qualify til you've passed an assessment with an external agency.

But people will read this and think none of these things are in place - that there's hundreds of people refusing jobs and chilling on a fortune. I work with traumatised young people leaving care who get £311 a month - their rent is covered but they have to cover utilities, WiFi and water out of that as well as food. They have experienced domestic violence, sexual abuse, sexual and criminal exploitation and disrupted education. They need intensive therapy and support to get into employment- and many employers treat capable and hardworking people very badly, so why would they give a job to someone who will need so much support.

Absolutely this!
Fuckers

This and also this.

Hashtag didn't come down in the last shower.

@universalsnail Don't let the bastards grind you down.

It won't be forever. I hope things pick up for you soon 🙏

Yes - if you need a fit note for a week because a virus is dragging on and your self-cert has run out; or you need one for four weeks because you've had major surgery, it's ridiculous to think of having to go to an appointment with some kind of work specialist - and in any event, by the time such an appointment materialised, you'd probably be recovered and back at work.

None of the plans actually do anything to tackle the underlying problems they are just headlines which yet again aim to make things harder for the most vulnerable in society.

ds is 14 and due to his needs will most likely need high levels of support for the rest of his life. Things like this really worry me for what support he will have for the future

If only they would put in support to help people get into work
Much better for people to be working
some aspects of benefit system eg we have part time staff who won’t take on more hours as it would cost them
That seems unfair to full time staff

What a bright future lies ahead of us, as those of us in work no longer have to pay taxes to support the feckless poor. How I look forward to a society full of homeless beggars, where sex work is common, where those of us able to work full time have to stretch out our earnings to feed and house and clothe all of our dependents or leave them to fend for themselves on the streets, where desperate people turn to crime, where we are are simultaneously supposed to act as carers but also to break up family support structures for the sake of a job. I remember looking at Victorian slum conditions in museums and being glad we've moved away from that sort of lifestyle, but I see now that I was just being brainwashed by woke campaigners like Dickens who were pushed on me by my liberal elite teachers.

I think the problem is, i know many people on Jobseekers benefit that i think ... I'm sorry but they are never going to get employment ( at least enough to live on) where we are, no offence but they just wont and its not even there fault a lot of the times.

As an example, a man i know .. Lovely man BUT has gone for many many interviews the past 4 years and cant understand why he doesn't get employed even after going to tons of CV writing and interview skills courses from the Jobcentre and i feel awful because i know why, Hes very unintelligent, Hes dyslexic and cant read or write very well. He knows no maths at all and cant really do customer service roles as hes a bit scary looking and socially awkward from his past. He tries everyday to find work but People judge him for things that arnt his fault. The longer he is out of work the harder as he now has no references etc.

But should he be punished further because of this?

Just some screenshots from figures I've found from GOV.uk about tax gaps and benefits net loss.

You're being goady.

I was recently made redundant. I now have to figure out how to live on £780 a month - that's all of my income at the moment. I've applied for over 50 jobs already, have a professionally written CV but have heard nothing back from any. I have about three quid left until I get UC again new week.

But yeah, it's a right lark this not working!

They do.

These announcements are just bollocks from a PM who expects to lose the election, he knows these policies will never go before the commons.

It's just tough talk to avoid a leadership challenge.

Noise noise noise.

We need a general election, they've had more than long enough.

You're missing the point that people are applying for jobs and not even getting interviews. Also missing the point that a lot of schools don't offer breakfast and after school clubs. My sister must have applied for over 1000 jobs in the last year but hasn't even had an offer because she can only work limited hours because of childcare.

These figures are quite unreliable. If you look at the recent news about carers, they have been prosecuted for 'overclaiming' pennies per week. When this happens the whole payment is classed as fraud, but it isn't really - the error is very small.

We lose so much more to tax fraud.

It's just about keeping people angry and looking away from the bigger issues.

I think that we are becoming a country where there aren’t enough tax payers to prop up the system. It doesn’t really matter who is in government if there isn’t any money.

Exactly and it misses the point about the changing face of employment

This man would have had plenty of opportunities for employment before factories became so automated. He could have earnt a sufficient living on a factory line doing a fairly basic task.

The automation came along. And it was supposed to make our lives easier and we were supposed to be working less hours. Instead what happened is some people work the same/more hours and some people dont have jobs. Because the industries that have sprung up to support automation, IT, robotics, tech and associated newer jobs such as call centre work cannot necessarily be done by someone who could have been a factory worker and before than generationally a labourer

So instead of making peoples lives easier, automation has made some people richer and the bulk of us paying taxes to support those who cannot pivot to another role.

Its similar to going abroad for industries such as steel works or mining. It makes some people richer but leaves others out of work.

Then we have AI coming along. And once again this is going to make the owners of some businesses very rich. but its potentially going to put a lot of people out of work who dont necessarily have the skills to just pivot into a new industry.

So the reality is, if we remove all the jobs that people who aren't as intelligent or as able can do, then we have to be willing to support those people.

And that support should come from those benefitting financially from AI and automation instead of making life harder and harder for those left behind.

Whatever party win the election ( I doubt it will be the Tories ) are going to have to address the benefits bill. It's completely unsustainable. Not sure what the answer is but reform is needed.
I work for a charity for over 50's. We get a lot of people wanting benefits advice really because they are fed up of working having worked often for 50+ years. In their early sixties, possibly done a manual type job, plumber. electrician etc and can't physically do it anymore. Half of them have no digital skills, so not easy to retrain. They need to bring the state pension age down a bit or make people take their private pensions earlier ( if they have them, many don't. )

More info here as to how Labour would start to close the tax gap.

labour.org.uk/updates/stories/how-labour-will-crack-down-on-tax-dodgers-to-fund-our-schools-and-nhs/

Put it the other way. Should people rely on the taxpayer by choosing to live in an area where they are unlikely to ever get a job?

It's completely unreasonable to feel you should be allowed to live on benefits because there are not any jobs where you are. This is not a long term possibility. People just being paid so they can live forever somewhere remote. So entire villages are just paid benefits. And their kids. And their kids kids. On what planet?