To think pre-paid benefits cards are a stigmatizing, punitive scheme?

[ArsenicFaceCream]

Just announced at the Conservative Party conference.

They will initially be 'voluntary' for claimants with addiction issues, apparently.

But of course the intention is to roll it out.

Universal Credit is going national in February so this could get interesting, given that UC will be paid to working claimants as well as those not working.

I do think that this would be an excellent idea for Mps though.

Pay them in vouchers so they can't spend our money on duck houses and fine dining

I wouldn't bet against you christmas

I thought UC had been 'reset' as a policy, such was the margin by which it had missed its targets and schedule? Yet suddenly it is ready to go

In case anyone gets too enthusiastic, can I remind us that the current welfare restructuring - and concomitant scrounger propaganda - was in full flow under Labour.

Much of it flows from the Freud Report in 2008.

Oh, and Cleggy stood on his hind legs at a party conference before he was elected, and said he supported a move away form unearned benefits, so NI-based disability benefits should be cut but child benefit was sacred. (Turned out CB wasn't either, but I still credit him the perverse wish.)

So they're all culpable.

We certainly can't assume a Labour govt would reverse any of this.

YABU, I don't see why it should be demeaning, most people pay for things by cards now so it's not like this would mark people out as needing help. I also think that for some people in the depth of an addiction having a stop gap to access would be welcome. Most addicts do not want to keep feeding the addiction.

it has been a major cock up

why dont they sought out the huge backlog of PIP claims and other benefits instead of adding more complications to an already messed up system

by the original time frame it pretty much should be national now but is not

there were some figures a couple of months ago saying how few had been transferred/new claim etc

i shall be watching with interest

I think maybe we're about the same age, Arsenic, I had a typerwriter too. My dad took out mortgage after mortgage and multiple credit cards that my mum never knew about. He didn't do what your Ex did but was just as bad in a sly, deceitful way. I don't see him anymore.

Yes, quite possibly it sounds a good idea but in practice, goods can be liquidated. It's crap. I don't know what the answer is. :(

Agree with other posters who say this will be the thin end of the wedge.
It wouldn't be long before benefit cards would be rolled out to everyone on benefits excluding pensioners and disabled people.

The results would be more people plunged into deeper poverty.

There would only be a few large companies who would be able to accept the cards. The extra systems needed to be put in place to process these cards and the restrictions placed upon the cards would mean recipients of these cards probably wouldn't be able to shop at;

Charity shops
Boot sales
Small corner shops
Facebook sales pages
Ebay
Market stalls
Independent travel companies
In fact, any small business.

I'd imagine you wouldn't be able to use the balance on these cards to pay companies such as mobile phone companies for contracts, sky, amazon, play.com, shops like 'the entertainer', certain clothes shops.

In fact, it would probably be easier to name the shops/companies you would be able to use.

There would be too many supporters of the DM variety who would agree that those pesky people on benefits shouldn't have any business shopping at any of the companies I've named above and more besides.

The only 2 purposes it will serve is to vilify the poor and create a black market where the cards are sold for cash for less than their face value and thereby making the poor poorer but doing nothing to control what poor people spend their money on.

As you can tell, I don't agree.

It wasn't long ago that the benefit cap was set at 26000. I knew then that the cap was just the beginning. Now we are told that after the next election, this will be reduced to 23000, and I believe it will be reduced again and again after that until it is not possible to survive on benefits unless you are a pensioner or on disability benefits. Considering more and more disabled people are being condemned by ATOS to look for work they are not able to do, it won't be long before disabled people will be subject to this hell as well as anyone else on benefits.

In a nutshell, if it were to remain as a scheme to ensure people with addictions could afford to eat, perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad idea, but it won't stop there, and anyone who thinks it will is sadly misguided and extremely gullible.

I don't believe anyone has any reason to believe it will stay as a scheme for addicts except for the blind faith that the govt relies on people having.

So they're intending to ask everyone claiming any working age benefits if they are addicts then? Yep I'm sure every addict when asked if they are an addict would tick the yes box

We have a local shop that refuses to accept cards so that would be interesting (they don't due to cost and being next to an ATM).

About ten years ago I was given a book of vouchers for taxi rides which were in denominations of two pounds. The following year it was stopped. Between some people selling the vouchers - you couldn't get change and the drivers wouldn't accept vouchers and cash so if you went somewhere that cost £2.50 then the firm got an extra £1.50 and it was only certain firms (the admin for it was horrendous not only for the drivers but the people having the vouchers) it was stopped. I found it helpful yes, but it was a real pain to use practically and I know many people who having applied and found out what a pain it was to use just sold them.

I think a lot of valid points have been made on this thread, but I do believe that living on benefits has become too comfortable, hence there the incentive to go back to work is dwindling.

I'm not advocating the Poor House or similar, but I think there should be more stigma associated with being on long term benefits.

Even those who have worked for a number of years, then found themselves genuinely unable to work due to ill health/redundancy had the opportunity to protect themselves with Accident/Sickness/Unemployment insurance while they had an income. They chose not to do so and instead decided that the taxpayer should fund their lifestyle should they become unable to work. This isn't ok.

We all need to take more responsibility for ourselves IMO, if policy is afoot to make benefits a bit less attractive, that is all to the good tbh.

On a more prosaic level, a high percentage of recovering drug addicts and alcoholics are fairly reliant on their roll ups. Is it wise to send them all cold turkey? In addiction recovery terms?

The Labour government wouldn't reverse any of this. They can sit smug and say it wasn't us who introduced the cuts so not our fault. Anyway they haven't a hope of forming a government not with Miliband in charge.

Yes! Yes of course it is wise to send them cold turkey!

I had to give up smoking because I couldn't afford it any more, and I work full time !

How on earth can it be considered reasonable for me to then pay for somebody else to smoke?

...and not even have a choice about it!

The left need to have a long hard think about this, they really do.

Regarding disabled being protected I very much doubt it. I was told at a hospital appointment two weeks ago the NHS is not there for people who do not have acute 'manageable and curable' conditions (not good for the stats apparently seeing those who can't be cured e.g. Me) My disability benefits (which were not protected incidentally) paid for the essential services and medical care that has been removed from my hospital to make it more cheap easily managed.

Likewise social services want to do the same. Acute care only. The disabled are flushed with money to pay for all the help they need

Good news though! The local newspaper reported the chief execs getting a huge payrise for all of these wonderful ideas

Steelye do you really think people on the minimum wage can afford insurance?

steele I worked before becoming too disabled to work. I was refused insurance. I applied, various firms, as being on my own I dreaded being forced to rely on benefits but I had no choice. I couldn't earn enough to really save when I worked, though I did try 'just in case'

For me there is nothing worse than being on benefit and I will be for the rest of my life. Over the past few years I've lost count of the number of times I've had benefit related abuse hurled at me. For me it was, and still is, my worst nightmare.

Obviously I can't speak for others but that's my experience of the situation of working and then being forced out of it.

It's wrong. It's penalising the poor again.

When will the MP's stop coming up with schemes to look like they are doing something without really changing anything at all?

If you truly want people to be off benefits long term they need to address the underlying issues. The economy, London centric jobs, self believe in teens whilst at secondary school, the rise of interns taking grad level jobs, education standards (including the failing new academies), am sure there's more.

SteeleyeSpanx, I decided to pay voluntary National Insurance even when I was working overseas.

Should I now not get Incapacity Benefit/ESA because I decided that was the most reliable insurance provider?

In fact, had I bought private insurance when I returned to the UK, it wouldn't have paid out: they would have pointed to inconclusive symptoms years earlier and claimed my now disabling condition was pre-existing.

I'd rather pay more money into the non-profit, massively broad, compulsory insurer (National Insurance) than into a private corporation which spends my premiums on executive jets and then refuses to pony up when I get ill.

Yes! Yes of course it is wise to send them cold turkey!

Even if it contributes to them falling off the wagon and stealing something/selling their card to buy drugs/alcohol? What a successful policy outcome that would be.

This is life, not Sunday school. Addiction doesn't work the way you'd like it to.

The best outcome is to help people get clean, stay clean and into sustainable work, right? If they spend less than £3 a week on a tiny packet of godawful tobacco and some rizla, but stay off the smack, that isn't actually a bad result.

This tory propoganda is turning us into a nation of maiden aunts, all faux shock and moral outrage.

Unless actual extermination is proposed, a smidgen of pragmatism would be helpful.

Steelye do you really think people on the minimum wage can afford insurance?

Good question!

Becca I'm afraid I have to agree with you. It would all depend on who voters deem to be worthy of being given responsibility to spend money as they see fit and who's not deemed to be able to spend their money responsibly.
As I have just seen on the other thread regarding 'mental health and benefit vouchers' in AIBU, there will be disabled people who won't be deemed responsible enough to spend money and should be issued vouchers.
As I said before, this is only the thin end of the wedge and despite that thread being about people with MH issues and this thread being about addicts, it wouldn't be on before more and more people on benefits were deemed unfit to be responsible enough and there goes another group of people moved onto benefit vouchers.

I imagine the govt will work out who is an addict by their health records, hence many addicts refusing to seek help for their addiction, and how long would a person have to be dry/clean before they were allowed to be paid in money rather than vouchers? Will GP's be paid for declaring patients to be addicts under the guise of helping them? At what point does a person become an addict? Who decides?

The gov don't have to work it out.

There's a special box on the Incapacity Benefit/ESA form where you have to separately declare whether you have ever had any alcohol problems or drug addiction problems.

This is separate from the normal "tell us how your health condition affects you" questions.

I don't know what happens to people who have to tick Yes.

if they tick yes the claim will go in their favour at the moment

but if these proposals come in i would imagine the claimant may well not tick the box

but i suppose if the medical requires more information from the GP it would flag up the addiction problems

The Australian Government did this. But only to Indigenous people. Fucking horrendous idea. Those people could not buy a MAGAZINE or a SCHOOL PHOTO of their children!

Because the Indigenous population in Oz are 2nd class citizens (they really are still treated abominably) people did not care because it wasn't affecting them. IN the UK people still won't care because the unwaged are our version of 2nd class citizens.

I'm out of here. It's starting to stink of a police state.