To think the able bodied / mind/ non carer/ non low wage s worker on benefits, benefit population that claim benefits should contribute somehow to the community/ get the money for WORK .

[Crikeymaccrikey]

Yes this may be costly to set up such as enhanced dbs checks etc.

I feel that this would both give a purpose and a contribution. And lead to jobs possibly/ develop cv / show work ethic.

In addition , it may stop the resentment and the benefit bashing if the claimants are seen to be contributing to society.

This is not necessarily a tory notion.
Karl Marxs idea about each to ones own ability... encompasses this idea of people working together for the whole of society accordi ng to ability. A quick google implies this is actually a socilaist idea of all doing what they can . This is what i am suggesting.

And before anyone says they would be pushed into things.. maybe there could be a choice of ways to contribute ,like on a data base.

Also, I am a cleaner myself. I literally clean poo off loos. I do not feel less worthy than others . I do the job because I can no longer work in my profession , as I get older, ( burnt out nhs) and see nothing but value in my ( ? Seen as some,lowly work). It gives me structure, a decent wage, and I contribute. All good. No shame in doing a good job , whatever that job if it is in my ability.

How can this idea, properly managed be other than reasonable. ?

@JustLyra but not in its current form it hasn't There was a lot less help years ago

The poor laws...

Fascinating stuff really.
No relevance on modern day, but interesting none the less.

Then the great evils of the 30s and 40s..

I think labour swore to rid society of the great evils.. yeah, that went well. 😁

s unrealistic to think no one plays the system

nobody has said absolutely no one does it.

Its just that the rhetoric of the majority being on the fiddle is bollocks.

And it’s dangerous bollocks because it allows governments that don’t like the poor or disabled to attack benefits with impunity because they’re “aiming at the fraud”. Without giving a single shit that the majority of those suffering from the cuts are absolutely genuine.

@JustLyra where is this evidence ? Give it 10 years and there will be a lot more generations claiming
When benefits were really high people actually couldn't work as they were worse off when taking into account getting to work etc
When tax credit system was in place And I was offered more hrs i had to say no as we would of been worse off , once I added childcare costs and extra petrol etc
Thats not a good place to be either

There was enough for the multi generations of lazy work shy families that are allegedly around to have been around, yet a large charity couldn’t find them…

I work in a very deprived area up north. A lot of poverty high rates of depression sickness, mental health. Its dire.

Years ago under Tony Blair I was seeing claimants who were taking more income than me by claiming benefits. But people were okay, they had money in their pocket, kids were fed, people claimed what they were entitled to and no more, because they didn't need to.

Along comes the tories, they put in lha and bedroom tax, they give shared accommodation rates and benefit cap.
Suddenly a single person is on 250 a month with 250 rent and left to rot. That person has no choice but to try get extra income. If they can't get work it's easier to claim sick and pip. It's not rocket science.

Universal credit has increased the applications for pip. I rarely did them till uc came in do j blame people for trying to survive? No. Do I get angry when people tell me they lie to get it? Yes. But the system isn't working. Let's have a universal basic income for all. Soon to be trialled in uk leave the pip for those who need it. Workers shouldn't be worse off than those who don't want to work and along the way let's look after people. But able bodied people should be offered opportunities not some shit pound land slave labour job. Skilled work. They used to pay people extra benefits to start work. All that has gone. Also get rid of zero hour contracts. Benefits are at least reliable unlike that rubbish. It's just not black and white and to say I'm lying is just lazy because I see how broken it is and how people have to do what they can to survive.

@JustLyra yes a couple people on here have sAid nobody does it
If you live in an area surrounded by people you will know people who do
You will also know people who seem to get nothing barely and seem to get no help at all and really struggle

Absolutely this!!

@JustLyra how would they find them ? They wouldn't be privvy to peoples personal data
I know multi generational families , are they a figment of my imagination

How many of you who say this rarely happens live in a deprived area
If you haven't had a job for 15 years who do you think whats to employ you ? So when people do want work its not always easy
People get trapped in benefits as well as thats not good either

I've lived on council estates and/or areas of deprivation most of my adult life, and most of the people I know work or if they don't somebody in their household does. That wasn't true a decade ago, but it is now. And they are mostly employed part time, insecurely self employed, on zero hours type contracts. That's who wants to employ people who have been out of work for a while, people who want cheap Labour and know that they can treat their workers whatever way they like because nobody can just 'sit on benefits.' Roles like cleaning, factory/warehouse, retail, hospitality, deliveroo, etc. Care work too because they always are desperate for care workers. Most of the time one full time job is being spread between many people on zero hours so that in reality there aren't more jobs, just more people working the same job just with not many hours (and contracted to not do anything else).

Otherwise people go on the sick after years because they have developed mental and physical health problems and addictions from the misery and inadequate life quality that is a life on the dole. I don't think forcing people to work for free is going to motivate those people who have lost all hope. The opposite, in fact.

@Antigonesaunt helping people get bAck into secure work is the answer and there seems to be none of that
Zero hrs are find for sAy students etc but nor families
I know families who end up worse off working than benefits at times when you take transport into account , childcare issues etc
I mean how many jobs pay when your off sick with a child
Loosing a weeks pay cripples people
The system is broken but its going to be hard to fix all at once
Some families are stuck in a cycle as well
Its just frustrating when you see someone playing the system and then another struggling to put food on the table
I think maybe a universal payment is maybe a way to go ? But then anytime min wage goes up then so does food and costs so it never feels like when your at the lower end that it gets better

I live in one of the most deprived areas in the country. I don't know a single person who has never worked a day. Even the local heroin addicts do the odd days/weeks on the fishing boats, although admittedly, they do have long periods of unemployment. What they don't have is the correct support to get clean and stay clean. A family member of mine would deliberately get caught shoplifting in order to be arrested. He wanted to go to prison to get the help he needed to get clean.

I don't know any families with multiple generations of long term unemployment. I also don't know anyone who fraudently claims to be disabled.

I'm long term unemployed according to my neighbour. I overheard her musing with a shopkeeper at the local corner shop about how I could afford to drink "every weekend in the garden on benefits".

The reality is I work from home full time on a fairly healthy salary in a position with good career progression opportunities.

I guess also a universal payment means no filling in tons of forms and questions and for those claiming PIP endless appts
A fair system that helps all that need it
Long term disabled especially as you can't change your situation

@Frequency long term unemployed doesn't have to be never employed though
But your considered long term if been many years
My own uncle hasn't worked for last 30 years
My 26 year old nephew has worked about 6 months in total if you added up all his jobs
I would consider them both long term unemployed

@worriedatthistime to clarify, leaving out the people suffering from addiction who tend not to live in family units, all of the households I know have at least one member of the family who works at least part-time if not full time. It's more common to have 2 (mum and dad) working part time than one working fulltime but that is down to the local job market/lack of fulltime opportunities/zero hours contracts rather than a deliberate choice. I know a decent handful of people who have more than one job or do some kind of selling/crafting/cash in hand type thing on the side of their main job.

@Frequency its a mix here
A lot work but there are families where no one works in the house incl adult children
Its often a little more complex than just not working in many cases
Zero hrs doesn't help at all or the hrs sometimes as childcare isn't always available around here
Only a couple schools offer before and after school clubs and childminders are like gold dust and both only cover say 8-6 so if shift work is all thats available ( and there is a lot of that around here ) they simply logistically can't do it

Exactly this.

I think universal basic income would be fantastic. Would stop everyones bitching for a start. People would be able to improve themselves over time without the fear of hunger and destitution, and we could have a robust work force who actually wants to be at work and unify for decent contracts, because they are not too terrified of being made redundant.

Which is why it won't happen, because if the 99% stop infighting the 1% and their media lackeys will be in trouble

Scroll down to "Appendix 1: Overpayment rates and monetary values by benefit"; it breaks everything down into three separate categories: Fraud, Claimant Error, and Official Error.

The 0.3% for PIP and 2.5% for pension credit are purely fraud, not overpayments. Figures for overpayment are listed in the last column. (On my screen I had to scroll to the right to see that column.)

Universal credit has increased the applications for pip. I rarely did them till uc came in

You didn't do a single PIP application until UC came in. Because PIP did not exist until UC came in. They were introduced at the same time.

Universal Credit and PIP were both introduced in the Welfare Reform Act 2012, and both launched with the same regional pilot/gradual rollout in April 2013, and with the same proposed schedule for full rollout, which was the intention for both to be fullly rolled out by 2017. In both cases the full rollout was substantially delayed by technical problems. (UC won't be fully rolled out until 2024.)

gov.uk has comprehensive statistics on exactly how many people have applied for PIP every year since 2013 and they make clear the increase in applications between 2013-2021 is due to the fact the rollout where people have been moved from DLA to PIP has taken such a long time.

to say I'm lying is just lazy because I see how broken it is and how people have to do what they can to survive.

The reason everyone's saying you're lying when you claim 99% of disabled benefits claimants are faking (or some weird claim that 99% of disabled benefit claimants in your area are faking but only in your area) is because there's not a single shred of evidence to support your claims, and every single official source and statistic disproves it, not to mention many of us have personal experience and know that what you're saying is total bollocks.

Then make jobs pay a living wage no matter what age the employee is. Ds turned down a job this week when he was offered it. The ad said wage was £10.30 an hour but when he got the offer they only want to pay him £6.83 an hour because he is 18. Ds is a carer for me & his dad & by taking a job he would have been worse off & lost his carers allowance even though he would still have been caring over 35 hours a week.

Forcing people to work for benefits will cause more unemployment because employers will hire cheap labour in benefit claimants & dump their more expensive staff. Remember the old Youth Opportunities scheme in the 80's? Employers took kids on for a bit more than their dole money & then when their time was up got rid of them & got new ones, nothing more than cheap labour.

DH works in benefits in a 'very deprived area up north'. In the top 5% of deprived areas in the UK, in fact. We've just been chatting about this thread and he actually laughed at your assertion that 99% of PIP claimants are fraudulent. He might encounter a couple a year who seem not quite on the level, and that's out of literally thousands.

He pointed out (again, as you've already been told many times, and you'd know if you genuinely worked in the field) that you need reams of evidence from consultants and so on before you can apply. People who are 'faking' won't have any of this, so they don't generally tend to bother. And no, a letter from a GP is not enough evidence on its own to claim disability benefits.

He also wonders how you know people who have claimed via your place of work are out clubbing - do you keep their details then stalk them on Facebook, for example? Because that's incredibly worrying, and you could lose your job if you do.

I'm sure you wouldn't want to end up on benefits and face the stigma you yourself have placed on others, would you?

"if they can't get work its easier to claim sick and pip"

As you've clearly been through "assessments" for "sick and pip" you'd know this isn't the case. Even with years of medical evidence from a qualified medical person, I was told there's nothing wrong, there's no medical reason why I can't drive. My parents were told when I was 4 I'd never drive. I'm now in my mid 30s. Nothing's changed.