David Cameron welfare reforms-no family will receive more than £25,000 a year.

[Hammy02]

Good idea? I think so. I can't believe a single family receives this much already in benefits. It is about the same as the average income so it would be ridiculous for any one family to have more in benefits than someone that works?

Mila

there are lots of ways they could help famillies like ours BUT I would be amazed if after taking out disabled famillies and those where there were several chidlren pre benefits claim there are enough people getting that amount to make it financially viable to change anything IYSWIM. Costs of implementing measures woudl outweigh savings.

The biggest change would be to ensure housing, LA housing, is available to all in need.

Herbie I get what youa re saing but if we're nto sirted when it comes in we are homeless. That would cost the state a small fortune, far more than what they cut: it's a massive cut, and yes adults working (to qualify for tax credits) with a disability should get it. A meet in the middle might make sense. I'm not anti cuts for us as such- indeed councilb adgering me to claim benefits we never have done but can and we could just sign the form and make up some of what we would lose (not enough to save home sadly)- but the ideology is screwed.

they should take a compeltely differen, enabling approach. pay carers allowance to people as they study so theyc an find ways out of poverty; allow people taking a vocational training course whoa lready ahve a degree to get stduent finance (which after all is repayable)

Build ladders for people, not strengthen the chains

Herbie the fact that adults didn't get it is wrong, it doesn't make children not getting it right though

Or how about this bonkers situation...

I became a single mum 7 years ago but worked throughout pregnancy, went back to work 2 weeks after having my baby and then for the next 6 years worked all week in a school, self employed after school and had a third freelance job at the weekends.Roughly 40hours a week. My money including all benefits was never more than 16K.
Left last year to go back to Uni. I now get all my rent paid, I don't pay CT as a student and get free school meals. I also get 10K to live on after all this for my 8 hours(!!) "full time" degree at Uni.
Someone has to realise that making work pay is the only way to stop benefits draining the system.

OP, I have 2 disabled children have tried to work but have never been able to keep a job due to the amount of hospital and therapy appointments I need to attend. We receive around 28k in benefits, and it goes nowhere. DH is self employed in the building trade which can be hit and miss as far as work goes, he earned 5.5k last year after tax. So we don't have holiday's, all our clothes are from ebay or charity shops. We do have a flat screen tv, which was a present from my dad when he sold his house, in fact we have never bought a tv, they have always been given to us.
Our DCs need a specialist diet, which we get no support for, this is expensive, for example a small loaf of bread costs £3.
Due to the cuts already in force, we also have to pay for any specialist equipment we need, this sort of thing is absolutely extortionate in price, the cheapest carseat I can buy for ds3 cost £550.
So yes YABU.

I think they ahve forgotten about all of them now Herbie. Especially those with invisible disability. Quite well accepted autism will not be grounds for PIP claims.

Justone in fairness not all degrees are 8 hours: dh does 40 hours a week in term time, scheduled any time between 8am and ten pm. Bloody slog. He works on top, long hours too.

yes work shoudl pay but actually, so should moving towards work: and being a student counts as this absolutely.

I hope somebody told you that much of the the £10k is repayable and not a benefit? And that it is taken into account for HB? There'salso no rule you have to claim: we don't claim free council tax or the water rate discount we are entitled to.

We can't get FSM as DH works, even though for two years he wasn;t cutting a profit after buying essential equipment and tools. Now that really is an example of penalising the tryer!

"So when we lower/remove all the benefits, where are the jobs going to come from?"

There were quite a lot of jobs but around half were taken by incomers I think? I don't know what this means - that British people didn't want the jobs? That they couldn't do the jobs? This debate seems to get polarised every time because of this digging in of heels than every unemployed person on benefits is desperately looking for a job, desperately trying not to live on the state but is being forced to and is half starved in the process.

I just don't care about the sort of person scarletsmummy describes, I just don't care about them. They have choices and they make a selfish choice. I don't see why I should put the caveat every time, "obviously there are people who really need it, people with disabilities" etc. In face I think carers for eg and very old cared-for don't get enough, never have.

I just do not care one single bean for the people who have a choice. I don't take seriously people who deny they exist.

It does pee me off. It's a given that state support should be there. It pees me off that some people deny the existence of a dependent culture.

They exist Gooseberry

But not in the quantities people think.

Availability of jobs varies- this is not just my opinion, was a think tank warning on news that schemes insisting on work hatched in high employment areas were doomed in eg Merthyr Tydfil.

yy it is limited wrt areas, but there were hundreds of thousands - in fact I believe two million created, and half went to incomers

it is expensive having a disabled child, 7 grand for a voice(computor that talks) cuts to every sort of help you get, bet you anything that will be the people who loose out on this, not the people who don't want to work.
and where are the jobs, I have seen dh looking for work, he has tried and tried, but thanks to health problems he can't drive so bloody limited, added into the mix is the fact the building sites he went to to ask for work didn't have anyone who could speak english, so asking for a job was nigh on impossible.
we are ok now, he went with an agency, wages have gone down and agency takes a cut but is a job.
so I ask again where are the jobs....... if all these people are supposed to come off benefits and we have people from the EU working here, where are they supposed to work?

I don't think there are any more. It's around 30 people after one job in the worst areas but more like one or two to a job in the south east.

These were jobs created before we went bust, jobs created on borrowed money. These jobs weren't taken up by people who were then claiming.

t's either by choice, or they weren't up to them. But if that many people were incapable of taking the sorts of jobs that seemed to be available then screw me our education system's done an even piss poorer job than I thought.

Perhaps, I live close to Merthyr so only know what happened here.

Although I do know that wher Mum is the jobs page shrank from seven sides of newspaper to half between 2009 and 2010 (she is not in Wales).

And so very many lost now: far mroe than created I would hazard. Dh had a redundancy, BIL faces one- both men who worked all their lives. major employers with significant impacts on work outside their immediate employees- people whos ell sandwiches, childcarers etc etc

As for not caring about people who make choices- I care.

Becuase often they ahve kids, and the alst thing we want is to raise another generation of kids who think they ahve no chances, that benefits is all they can aim for.

Disaffectated kids are a terrible thing for the stae and a terrible unkindness to them.

Most benefits are paid to famillies: single people on benefits really do get a pittance. that's for areason: becuase kids matter, becuase raising kids with devent food / eication / health pays off long term. The aprents- well when kid leaves hom they are on the pennies again.

Peachy I know that part of the world. It's been bashed and bashed.

I think the only way of giving children real choice is through education. Dependency leads to disaffection, it doesn't cure it. I reckon.

Still, I don't care about someone who has the opportunity for work and doesn't take it, I really don't.

I did know about all the extra costs of living with disabilities in a household and I think it's appalling if there's any chance of people losing on what they need to function.

But I still think it's ridiculous that benefits should pay for expensive houses for an average, healthy family. I can well believe that more than half of a capped £25K would go on housing. But quite honestly, so what? More than half my £26K salary goes on housing too and I believe that's pretty normal! I live in a 2 bedroomed cottage with my 2 kids in a very expensive village in the SE. Yes, I could move and rent somewhere cheaper but I choose not to because I love my job, live next door to it, the girls can come to work with me for next to no school fees and we can manage on what is left over. Just about. If I lost my job I obviously wouldn't get anything like 25K in benefits so I would have to move house. That would suck but it wouldn't be the government's job to help me stay in my cushy little home counties thatched cottage.

I would love to rent a 4 bedroom house but, unless my salary increases a lot, I can't. My children have to share and guests have to have a camp bed in the front room. There's nothing wrong with that. The same should apply to top level benefits. People who need to claim benefits should never be left destitute or in want of necessities but they shouldn't be able to access better housing than average wage earners either.

I don't have a problem with this at all, why should people on benefits get more income then people in employment. Why should people on low wages have to pay tax to give people who don't an income larger then their own.

No, but sometimes you have medical/SS specification that you should have a certain size property. We do, haven't got it yet, we have to wait, but as the lha won't pay for that we have to wait for a HA property.

Dependency leads to disaffection, education is a way out.... I couldn't agree more which is why I am running after every possible educational and medical intervention for my children to give them the best chance of some semblance of independence and working life as they get older, if they get that too may be able to return to work for a short time. One of my kids I don't think will manage at all, but the others probably will given intensive intervention now.

So that requires a bit of a benefits spend now to prevent further benefits drain in 10-15 years and for the rest of their lives.

'People who need to claim benefits should never be left destitute or in want of necessities but they shouldn't be able to access better housing than average wage earners either.'

We're working poor. But I'll think black-burning shame of myself if I ever begrudge a disabled person, a disabled child, a better home than this damp hovel because the bastards in power have made the cost of living so high in relation to even an average wage here, skimmed the cream off the top to line their own greedy pockets and assumed I was thick enough to fall for their wag the dog tripe to get me incensed at the most vulnerable people in society all because I happen to be poor.

'why should people on benefits get more income then people in employment.'

Because for quite a number of those people, let's not forget the largest chunk of the 'welfare' budget is paid to pensioners, they cannot work, not now, not ever. And they require care and it's far, far cheaper to pay their families to provide that to them than for them to have to turn to the state for it entirely.

'Why should people on low wages have to pay tax to give people who don't an income larger then their own.'

Why should they have to pay such a rate of tax so out of proportion to what they earn when non-doms and tax avoiders pay so little?

expat, I made it perfectly clear that I was talking about "average healthy families"

I'm a bit flummoxed as to why the last few pages are re: disability which isn't going to affected by the cap stated in the OP?

Because as has been said there will be very few benefits claimants who get 25K.

They will be eiher those getting extra help because of a disability, those living in some areas of London and/or with a large family.

So what do you consider that, manic. Because this government has a rather skewed idea of 'healthy'. How many, really, 'average healthy families' are there on over £25k/annum - including HB and CTC, which as pointed out is at least half of that sum in most cases?

Because many, many disabled people, including children, will be losing their non means-tested DLA, and, in the case of children or elderly or otherwise incapactitated, that means the adult carer loses with Carer's Allowance, too.

And well, again, pensions form the bulk of the welfare budget. The second biggest slice of the pie is housing benefit. What does this say to you? Because the majority of HB claimants are in work. It's that big business is able to pay such shite wages that an enormous number of working people are on benefits.

I'm a bit flummoxed as to why the last few pages are re: disability which isn't going to affected by the cap stated in the OP?

Haahaahaaa. If you claim HB, you're affected by caps. If you lose DLA, that's income gone. If you lose Carer's Allowance, you lose income.

And every single 'disabled' person is going to be reviewed, by a private company with targets to meet. They're paid to meet these targets. By you and me, HMRC's supporters.

But no one's ferreting out feckless tax-avoiders, big bonuses, non-doms, etc etc etc. How much savings is there there? An obscene amount.