Who really gets £500+ weekly state benefits?

[vivizone]

I find this shit so hard to believe. Reading the media, you would think this was a common figure on life on benefits.

Yesterday and today's Metro newspaper - people writing in saying they agree with the cap of £500 and why should people be sat on their arse and be rewarded by £500 per week. . Why should they earn £200 per week working and people are getting £500 a week doing nothing.

Seriously, who gets this £500 per week that is being peddled out of the media? I spent 7 months out of work after redundancy and I could not live on the pittance I received for me and my children. I do not know how people do it. I really don't. I had a decent redundancy package and that was the only way I could make it.

How many people do you know (forget the newspaper stories) that are RECEIVING £500 or more every week? I thought so.

How come if life is/was that cushy on benefits, not enough people are/were packing in their jobs to join a life of riley?

We have been had. Life on benefits is HARD and DEMORALISING. I have tried it and I can tell you you get PEANUTS.

The reason why stories run on people living in million dollar homes/getting thousands a week in benefits is because it is RARE. It is SO rare, that it gets reported on.

Yes obviously! We work very hard an still cant afford a house yet pay ridiculous rent

"there are many people who are lazy scroungers. Because of them, deserving people will have their benefits cut."

No kitty, because of them and because of people like you, who would quite happily throw the Hecates to the wolves in order to punish the few, deserving and desperate people will have their benefits cut.

Ethel many HB claimants are low paid workers - it's not limited to the unemployed. In fact, only 1 in 8 HB claimants are unemployed IIRC - the rest are low paid workers, carers, disabled people and pensioners.

And 'artists'

to reform the housing market

@optimistic but isn't that awful? People shoudl be paid enough and I can't believe that having housing benefit availabel to landlords hasn't meant they have hoiked up prices.

No kitty, because of them and because of people like you, who would quite happily throw the Hecates to the wolves in order to punish the few, deserving and desperate people will have their benefits cut.
Would I? I said that the deserving would lose out because there are so many people taking advantage of the system. I think you'll find it's the government putting all claimants into one big category not me.

It is awful yes - wages are far too low in comparison to the cost of living. Cutting housing benefit won't change that. I saw something on the BBC a couple of weeks ago about comparing the rise of housing benefit to the rise of rents, I'll see if I can find it... Anyway, I seem to recall it said the rises in HB/rent weren't the same. Given that many LLs don't take LHA I don't think there's much of a causal relationship tbh. The problem is that many of those in receipt of housing benefit would traditionally have lived in social housing, meaning that the low waged would have afforded their rent without help and the unemployed/disabled/pensioners would have costed a lot less to house via housing benefit. Now they've mostly been sold off so the government is paying an inflated rate of housing benefit to pay for those same houses.

DLA shouldn't even be considered in the same category as other benefits.

It is for DISABLED people who CANNOT improve their situation because of their disability to live a half decent life. How hard is that to understand? The fraud rate for DLA is LESS THAN 0.5%.

DLA is utterly irrelevant in any discussion about benefit rates, scrounging etc. How stupid do you have to be to not get that despite repeated explanations here on MN?

When I was a single mum with one DC, this is what I got:

£110 a week HB to pay my rent

£70 a week Income Support

£55 a week Tax Credits

£35 a week Child Benefit

£25 a week council tax benefit

£50 a week maintenance from DC dad (obviously NOT a benefit but included in income)

It works out at a NET "wage" of approx £355 a week, which is £18600 a YEAR - untaxed...which I believe would be the equivalent of earning a gross salary of about £22k (ie before tax and NI)

Just stating the facts in my own experience.....I am on the fence TBH ....personally when people get their knickers in a twist about benefits being too high, I actually think that is deceptive because, actually, IMO its that wages are too LOW and the cost of living is way too high.

These threads become tedious . People cite individual situations where complex disabilities and extreme circumstances mean someone needs a high level of financial support and cant work. No one is begrudging them anything .

It's where people have as much capacity to work as anyone else, but can't be bothered, or think its their 'right' to have as many children as they want, or live in a particular area, funded through other peoples hard work. That's patently against any concept of equity.

And I don't think this is just about the jobless either. I think one of the biggest problems with the welfare and tax credits system is that it can incentivise people to work the minimum amount and well below their capability simply because they will get topped up by tax credits to the same level they would be on if they worked more. How one earth can that be right?!

Just as an example, a friend of mine, lovely lady, is a qualified teacher but chooses to work as a classroom assistant because in her words 'with tax credits topping up my low wage I earn pretty much the same as I would if I was a teacher with no top ups. Why work about twice as many hours a week with about 5 times as much responsibility and stress?'

And I can see her point. She's a lovely lady, and I'm sure the pupils get a first class deal, but how utterly ridiculous that our economy and social welfare system operates like this- that someone is rewarded for NOT working to their full capability using the skills and qualifications they took a long time to secure.

This was the article I was talking about, from the analysis on the side:

Ian Pollock, personal finance reporter

It is sometimes argued that housing benefit is inflating the level of private rents.

The facts do not appear to support this.

Weekly housing benefit paid to private renters in England, Scotland and Wales has hardly risen in the past few years.

Figures from the Department for Work and Pensions show that housing benefit went up from £105 a week in July 2009 to a peak of £112 in May 2011.

It then fell back to £107 a week in May 2012.

That was an overall rise of 2%.

But the letting agency group LSL says monthly private rents in England and Wales rose from £650 a month in July 2009 to £712 a month in May 2012.

That was a 10% rise.

So rents do not appear to be rising fast because many low paid private renters claim a state subsidy.

Akaemmafrost. DLA is there to meet the associated costs of having a disability. Exactly as it should be. That's why it's not means tested, and is available to anyone who has a disability, whether they have nothing in the bank or they have millions.

It is not there to tell people that they cannot improve their situation. Plenty of people in receipt of DLA can and do live 'more than a half decent life'. And many can provide financially for themselves and their families.

I get DLA for my ds and I am his carer. I know exactly what it's for.

Yes let's cut DLA and carers because the millions of pounds carers save the government is nothing, I'm sure I can find someone to watch my children for 3p an hour!!!
I am not better off with DLA and carers, because DLA isn't mine to spend! It belongs to my girls. It covers their extra lessons, books, specialist boots, therapy, and anything else they might need.
DLA. I run around from appointment to therapy to appointments countless times a week.
Please please take my stuff, look after my kids and I would happily go back to work fulltime.
At the moment I work one afternoon a week in paid work, am a trustee of a charity and run a support group.

I am a single parent of 3, one with SN.

I work around 30 hours for shit money.

I get way more in benefits than I earn, the childcare tax credit alone is more than my actual salary.

Raise the minimum wage to a living wage, then take away benefits. Saying "people on minimum wage can't afford to live, therefore people on benefits should get less than then" is twisted.

Then you shouldn't be writing off millions of disabled people as being unable to improve their lives. Some can't, but many can and do.

And no I'm nowhere near £500 a week.

I wasn't. At all. That's how YOU chose to interpret my post. Ie focus on perhaps clumsy wording when it is clear that I am NOT writing off many disabled people. What a ridiculous thing to say.

And as for me personally, I CANNOT improve mine and my dc's life atm without DLA and CA. I cannot work, I am a lone parent, I have two dc with MULTIPLE SN but only recieve DLA for one. Without it life would be pretty awful, as I would be expected to look for and get a job, which is impossible for me in my situation. So for ME that statement is true and was in NO WAY intended to write off millions of disabled people.

It wasn't clear to me at all. You said DLA is for people that CANNOT improve their situation. Which read to me that you think that anyone who claims DLA is powerless to help themselves, and I strongly disagree with that.

But I'm glad that I mistook your meaning, it sounds like we pretty much agree on DLA otherwise.

X posted. I'm sorry if I caused offence, I really am. I just get a bee in my bonnet about people with disabilities not being given enough credit for the things they can achieve.

As I said that was YOUR interpretation it certainly was not what I meant. I think you can probably see that now that I have explained my own situation .

Well we are totally on the same page then outraged .