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!

Yes, that's high for benefits. These programmes seem to use the maximum they can find.

Great post.

I find there is a lack of critical thinking around these sorts of programmes, which are absolutely engineered to create a blaming and shaming narrative towards benefit claimants. It is convenient having a group to blame for everything, and the group is always at the bottom of the pyramid naturally. Tax evasion and shady behaviours from those ‘at the top’ is largely unquestioned because it’s deemed aspirational to hoard so much wealth. I can’t believe we are still discussing ‘benefit scoungers’ in 2025, it really is on par with the ‘chav’ discourse from the early 00’s.

Anyone who claims there is no issue with poverty in this country is ignorant or wilfully blind. The gap between the rich and the poor is ever widening, social and health inequalities are deepening and this needs addressing - but nah, it’s easier to just hate on the benefit scroungers instead. Or asylum seekers. Or immigrants. Any marginalised or vulnerable group will do.

All the disability benefits.

Your own thread to peddle right wing hogwash on without pesky facts and truth.

Also sickness benefits paid to anyone who can con a GP into writing a sick note should stop.

You only get half the standard amount whilst waiting for the stringent medical assessment.

I'd love to know the breakdown of these figures. A single person on PIP gets just over £7000 a year. Even if they had enhanced rate PIP mobility and care they wouldn't get anywhere near the figures you quote. I have MS and a heart condition but have been able to continue working - I can't afford to stop work anyway - but I am heartily sick of the benefits bashers. Time was, people didn't resent and criticise the disabled or long-term sick; and then Cameron changed the rhetoric. Compassion it seems, has been a dirty word ever since.

A genuine illness where you cannot work then of course not or a level of learning or physical disability where work is not possible (*however a lot of people woth LD want to work). I would want all the benefit money channeled to give thise people a better life than they get now.

However, amxiety/ chronic fatigue etc should only be short term covered whilst you get support to move through it. Too many people use the word "disabled" when they see not and it is offensive to people who really are.

I have one friend who is a wheelchair user and has health difficulties and is a very successful journalist. I have another who works in the NHS and is off work at the drop of a hat. Most recently she needed a week off because of anxiety after a "car accident" ( she knocked her wing mirror off)

You really think it's easier? 320 a month?? That's nothing.
I worked in a pub as a teen and I had so much money and freedom. The job was awful and I was treated like shit.. but I certainly made more than 320 a month and had a whole social life and loved working.
This boy sounds depressed. It sounds like he has dropped out of life. That needs addressing. He needs proper support. It isn't normal to find it easier to live on a pittance and stay inside all day. That's not just laziness that's a problem.

OP please could you explain this? I don’t get this bit.

“can’t recruit an apprentice on 26k because sickness benefits would amount to 24k?”

That’s just not true. In my job I often get to see what people claiming benefits are paid. The administrator in my team was so disheartened to see that a 20 year old on benefits gets £600 per month more than she does working full time.
I strongly believe anyone claiming benefits should not receive more than someone earning minimum wage, but sadly it does happen

UC will expect him to find a job or his £320 will stop. He will not be allowed to carry on without finding work.

I think people with disabilities should have the same quality of life as someone who is able to work. I assume you work and you haven't decided to give it up and go on benefits because you could still get enough to cover the bills. I'm sure there will be a few who play the system but I think it is a small minority. Most people want to work because it is good for our wellbeing having routine, social connections, achievements. Do you really think sitting at home everyday claiming benefits is what people aspire to? It would be a very dull and empty existence.

Quite, and a point I made, but apparently it's different 🙄

I hope so - my foreign grandmother (daughter of European maid) placed at 9 as a live-in maid in a rich person's house in a villabe, vowed she would never live in poverty in a village and became a teacher. It was her wretched experiences in childhood that spurned her on - she was obsessed with leaving 'service' and never living like her mum.

For some people, anxiety and chronic fatigue are long term debilitating conditions that cannot simply be ‘moved through’.

‘No one’ ? It isn’t ‘one’ person though it’s a family of three disabled people and one with a limiting health condition. And as for the rest of it, apt username because the UK isn’t even in the top five of countries paying the most generous disability benefits.

This boy sounds depressed. It sounds like he has dropped out of life. That needs addressing. He needs proper support. It isn't normal to find it easier to live on a pittance and stay inside all day. That's not just laziness that's a problem.

Absolutely. The huge rise in sickness claims comes from young people, who have been royally shafted by successive governments, being let down further by the shocking state of mental health services. They need help, not punishment.

Would you really??
You are quite hard nosed aren't you?

Does that include those of us, who have had the misfortune to be diagnosed with cancer and need to undergo debilitating treatment and therefore would struggle to work ? Where we are poisoned continually, so we can hopefully see our children grow up? And yes, that does include me. Guess what? I've been diagnosed with cancer number 4! Yes that's right, I may need to claim ESA!!

All the disability benefits.

Free games consoles for your pets.

What is the break down of that 35k? Because i guarantee it isn't nearly close to that much in cash. It will be made up mostly of rent support, healthy start vouchers (for milk and veg), reduction in council tax, free school meals, free prescriptions / eye tests, cold weather payments towards gas and electricity etc.

While 35k sounds a lot, and is a lot, the actual amount of money the claimant has to spend on anything is much less and because of the 6k cap on savings it's a 'spend it or lose it' type deal.

It would be hard for those who haven't grown up in these conditions to understand but once you've in that situation it is very hard to get out.

Once you get a job, your welfare payments are docked at something like 80p on the £1. So at a minimum wage job paying £12ph you would actually be geting £2.40ph and with that wage you would have to pay tax & NI, travel expenses, work clothes, food, breakfast and afterschool clubs etc and it becomes so that working is not financially better off.

Wages need to be higher and employees need to be more flexible with hours. This isn't the 50's when a milkman could support his 2.4 family with a stay at home wife on his single income.

So you split up the family? You need to watch Cathy Come Home.

[b]The poverty line is an average, it’s curated. [/b]

Yes and that's why I always ask how poverty is calculated because if it's being in the bottom fifth of a well off country that doesn't automatically equal a poor standard of living.

i think those physically able should have to work for their benefits, getting into the mentality of work will improve people”s well being.

I think many (although obviously not all ) people signed off sick would benefit from ding some work. It might be working for their benefits (at least initially). I get it, I do I’ve got ptsd and suffer from associated anxiety and depression - not great on top of adhd. I’ve gone to work feeling suicidal, I have to work longer hours to make up for my adhd, but I think I would have spiralled without the structure of work. Having a job has enabled me to pay for various treatments that have benefited me.

I’ve worked with plenty of people who have suffered varying illnesses and disabilities, from cancer to polio induced disabilities, to blindness to CP, I’ve worked through a years worth of twice weekly physio from serious car crash injuries.

The country is broke, it can’t afford for people to be sat at home unless they can support themselves.

I think the problem is that it is too easy to claim and too many people are taking the piss. Compassion does soon run out

Universal Credit then, same sh@t, different name.
Tell me why someone on UC and PIP and all the hidden benefits (free bus pass, dentist etc) should have an income more than someone working FT on minimum wage....

The government aren’t paying for it - we are - the people who work and pay taxes:

Some families will never pay tax and increase the countries economy.

Look at countries where there are no benefits - for example where I live you have to be living and working here for 10 years to even go on a council house waiting list - we have 2% unemployment rate.

You have to have a permit to work here and the company has to show that there isn’t any local talent to fill the position before going for other outside workers.

We don’t have large amounts of families on benefits - people work - they do get top ups but no where near the levels in the UK.