Dispatches- Britain’s Benefit scandal

[Sunnywalker]

Anybody watched this? It’s made me so angry. Some highlights include a company that can’t recruit an apprentice on 26k because sickness benefits would amount to 24k so it wouldn’t be worth it. 500,000, 25-34 years old on long term sick, a woman who has never had a FT job and claims 35k in benefits, this lady would like to work but says will never achieve the same income if she worked.

This country is bankrupt, public services crumbling! What is going on? Why isn’t there an overhaul!

Until this government taxes the rich then I literally don’t care about people on benefits. They aren’t the reason the country is on it’s knees

Conditions like anxiety have gone through the roof. Anxiety is a very normal condition that we all suffer from, surely at some point you have to just try and pick yourself up and get on with it. I was in a bad car accident when I was younger and it left me with extreme scars all over my face. I detest meeting new people as I know they notice my face but I won't let it beat me! I honestly think we have to toughen people up a bit more because life is supposed to challenge you, you can't expect a free ride for ever

Would you swap places with her to have her disability?

Rich people already pay taxes. How much more of other people’s money do you want handed to you?

What is? That a family of three disabled people and someone with limiting health conditions get help to live a decent life?
What is your alternative suggestion?

She probably needs it for mobility or something, or if it's mental illness she will need medication and/or therapy appointments. They don't just give people PIP for no reason.

That is not morality, that is foolishness. Depriving of essential money that one has worked for and has a rifght to is simply stupid.

No, I do not claim any benefits.

If she can work ft and get a decent wage why should she get it?

So she does not want others looking after her child but happy to force others to pay for her to have more time with her child.

The entitlement is off the charts.

Do any of the people saying employers should pay wages higher than current benefit levels realize employers can't afford to do this? They are making redundancies now, they don't have the money to dish out lots of pay rises.

The UK is poor. Something has gotta give, the government borrows more and more money each month and financial markets are increasingly reluctant to lend to the UK.

I'm actually a single parent and receive UC. I work full time so it's a "top-up". I have a job in the public sector, I have a degree. It's stressful and some days I just want to fall into a heap and cry. I'm grateful for the help I get from UC otherwise life would be much harder than it already is. I have no savings, only debt and a mortgage.

I have a friend who is also a single parent, with children. She has not worked in 11 years. Shes being pushed into work by the job centre and applies for jobs but she tells me she never gets any, but she also says doesn't want to work anyway, why should she, she's a single parent and it's hard? Shes a really lovely friend so while I don't always agree with her choices or thinking I never judged. Until.

She told me she was under investigation for having over the "UC savings threshold". I was shocked when she told me the amount of money that she has saved over the years. She hasn't inherited this money (it's not a huge huge amount but it's over the 16k). She's saved it all from UC.

She's gone mad that they dare investigate her, that she should be able to save her money, and that the money she gets from UC "isn't that much anyway". When she told me what she gets it's more than what I get working full-time! In a job that I had to get a degree for. A job that makes me tired, stressed, feeling like I've got no time for my children. That my children have to be up at the crack of dawn for to go for long days in childcare.

I couldn't contain it and had to tell her that respectfully, she gets more money than I do for working!

I guess she can save as she doesn't have the expense of running a car or fares to get to work, childcare etc.

It did make me a bit angry and I wonder why I bother. But hopefully my salary will go up, I have a pension and my own house (with a mortgage I struggle to pay but that's another story). So long term my prospects are better. But in the moment, when I feel so drained as I do, it's difficult to take in.

My point is, she can manage to work ft

A lot of those redundancies are to reduce costs to increase value to shareholders.

Many of those companies are making record profits.

This.

My family the opposite, all hard working for little outcome, many working themselves into early graves. The stigma of benefits meant even though some may have been entitled they didn’t claim, rather would put themselves in financial debt.

Then a few years ago a relative couldn’t work due to health reasons, then a significant nhs fuck up had meant she will never work again (46yo at the time). She has never been so financially stable. She joked even if she could she’d never go back to work. It’s definitely changed the opinions of some and several other family members ( I have a huge family) have taken the steps to stop working themselves into the ground and accept they can claim benefits for a better life.

And very likely she has disability costs. Many of us find that pip doesn't cover our full costs

I can assure you it's not made up, she also gets income support and has 2 children under 4 so gets as she says "paid" for them.
As PP said it's all the associated benefits related to being on Income Support.

Op I've just searched it on chanel 4. I've not watched this one yet I'm hooked on the one before it
That's about the duchy of xxxx making money from NHS and schools etc ie charging them rent and not paying any corporate tax.

I work in a mental health crisis house. I do permanent nights. I also man the crisis line overnight which people can ring for advice and support if they or someone they car for, are experiencing a mental health crisis. It's a wonderful job. I always feel like I'm doing something worthwhile and absolutely all the staff and management there are good people.

Absolutely no-one needs the equivalent of a 6 figure salary take home on the back of benefits. The poster would not have been in this situation in any other western country and no other country would fund that level of excess - disabled or not. We cannot afford that as a society. We don’t have enough people working to cover that at all.

Unfortunately, you are correct - when approached by food banks staff, I invariably say to them - there should be no food banks in the 1st world country, we have enough money to send to the rest of the world, to write off many countries' debts. We pay taxes to the government to look after the vulnerable - it is not our job to feed them, we pay taxes. This malarkey should be re-organised too - social canteens, where people would come and eat, using food coupons. Otherwise they spend their benefit money on drugs, alcohol and cigarettes and we have to pay taxes and also fill up food banks? Why?

No the cap is a limit on the total amount you can get in benefits. The limit varies but, outside of London, it's equivalent to approx £22kpa. It's removed for health conditions affecting ability to work.

If you're in low paid work then provided you earn over a threshold the cap doesn't apply. Instead Universal Credit starts by calculating your needs to give a figure called Max UC; effectively the amount the law says you need to live on.

There is a regime by which earnings are deducted involving a taper plus, in some but not all cases, money you can keep before UC is affected.

If earnings after taper are more than Max UC you get nowt. If they're less you get the difference.

For most people the biggest bit of Max UC by some distance is rent.

My school friends who went straight into the “single mother council house benefits industrial complex” get to stay in London whereas I have to move out to the backarse of nowhere as I can’t afford to rent or buy the 2, 3 and 4 bedroom properties they get to occupy for free. Since they don’t need to commute to a job perhaps they should be encouraged to move out to Hicksville. But then we have the wailing and gnashing of teeth about taking them away from their friends, family and support network. But what about mine? And I have to pay my way to lose out on all that too.

I think the ONS found that most of the anxiety/depression/mental health conditions were secondary conditions and not the primary reason people weren’t in work. This isn’t hugely surprising as we know this happens.

We do need to sort out NHS treatment for that though. But also businesses need to make adjustments that allow people to get back into work. Some of the people on this thread who think there are too many people on benefits are also people who wouldn’t make adjustments and wouldn’t hire people with disabilities or criminal convictions, or encourage people to go into work with transmissible illnesses if they can even though they may infect people who may get very ill. People can’t have it both ways.

There is a very high level of working poverty in this country.

You haven't answered my question.

If she didn't work, I bet you'd complain about that as well.