And I absolutely agree that the disabled should have a decent standard of living on those benefits. That's is what the welfare state is for.... but these days one should really ensure that bad choices are avoided as the outcome is decreasing benefits.
@KathArtic, just please be aware the sick and/or disabled have seen considerable financial cuts under the coalition and Tory govt. They also face a very stressful disability benefit assessment process. The severe disability premium is to be cut under Universal Credit as passed in the 2011 Welfare Reform Bill, the Independent Living Fund to cover those with high care needs has already been abolished, so many having to pay out of pocket to bridge the gap in care, financial care contributions by the person to care packages have increased considerably too, housing benefit rates frozen and disability criteria narrowed.
Institutes have written reports saying the disabled have suffered the largest cuts since Cameron and Osborne implemented austerity. The UN have condemned how the disabled have been treated under austerity here in the UK. The coalition and present government could have left disability benefits and care alone but they didn't.
Your second statement suggests that the welfare budget has got too big because too many people are taking from it. As a percentage of the national coffers, welfare spending (not including state pension here) as part of GDP was not considerably more by 2010 than it had been for the last few decades. It has gone up 0.81% since 1990 (it was 7.65 % of total GDP by 2010) according to a table I have just looked at. Link here www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/spending_brief.php I suspect a considerable amount of that increase was the larger housing benefit bill due to private renting with council housing stock being at an all time low. Also of course if the national minimum wage was enough to live on there would be less need for tax credits.
This Tory govt, and the coalition before, do not believe in a functioning welfare state even for the disabled. They want eventually for individuals to take out private insurance to cover for sickness and unemployment and the state to offer the bare minimum including the sick and disabled. Goodness knows how those disabled from birth or childhood are supposed to live who never had the opportunity to take out private insurance or those on low incomes who would struggle to pay private insurance. America has much less welfare provision and those on low incomes or out of work and disabled get very little state help. I was always shocked when I talked to American friends with the same illness as me how little state support there is. If their family didn't have money to help they suffered a lot, not to mention guilt that families had to pay out so much. The Tories since 2010 are taking this country down the road to the American model of protection for the individual. To gain public support they push the idea that the country can't afford to offer welfare support as people are abusing it. It's a false narrative so people don't protest. There may have needed to be some tax credit changes in certain areas, all systems need to be changed at times, but not the large scale welfare cuts the government have imposed. This was an ideological choice by our government under the smokescreen of austerity. Some economists argue cuts/austerity after a global crash impedes growth and indeed the annual government deficits have got larger not smaller.
Every system will have a few who abuse it or individuals who are born with a very disadvantaged start in life. These people need more education and early years support, not just cuts. HMRC write off large tax losses in total from individuals who don't fill in their forms properly, not to mention corporate tax evasion that avoids paying out billions. Yet there is not the same scale of protest and judgement from the public as there is about benefits.