To be concerned about what Liz Kendall is up to with disability benefits?

[Locutus2000]

The Times reporting just how enthusiastic Labour are about targeting the disabled.

I can only hope they are getting the worst ideas out there first, if not I dread to think what is coming in the upcoming review.

I was confident Labour would at worst be no worse than the Tories.

I was wrong.

Free archive link here.

Living on just ESA alone as a long term sick unemployable individual - that's absolutely shit. I have no idea how much they would get. I don't believe it would be enough to enable even a very basic standard to be honest with you.

Would I rather they could access a benefit such as PIP over £100k earning Johnny down the road who also gets PIP? Yes I would and if they find a way to be eligible to access this, and use that to enable a basic standard of living. Yes I'm all for that. Original intent of the benefit or not.

I can’t imagine a job earning 100k that someone ill enough to claim pip could do

@Tittat50 My DP is on statutory sick pay for the last 3 months. We are skint and it is short term. I know how little it is.

I fear the efforts to remove the stigma surrounding mental illness have backfired because ‘mental health’ and ‘depression’ are now used so widely as to be meaningless. I have had episodes of moderate depression, when I managed to keep everything going, and severe depression, when I could barely function. During the most recent of those periods, my partner said he got really fed up with the number of people who said ‘oh yes, I understand’ when he explained why I couldn’t do this or that, because he really didn’t think most of them did.

It doesn’t help that the NHS largely has a one-size-fits-all treatment approach of drug A, then B, then C etc rather than looking at which symptoms are most problematic and then seeing what the research would suggest is the best drug combination. It would also be helpful if you could get something other than CBT without having to be under tertiary care. Until I was under the hospital team, I was never offered anything but, and I found CBT totally useless.

I do not wish to read this whole depressingly predictable thread so forgive me if this has been addressed previously. However, there seem to be a number of posters, as always, who, despite apparently having a friend, family member or window-cleaner who they swear is playing the system in some outrageous way, seem to know little or nothing about disability benefits. Just to reiterate, PIP is a non-means tested payment. This means that it is awarded purely on health grounds and is completely unrelated to employment status or other assets a claimant may hold. It is not an out of work benefit and it is up to the recipient how it is spent.
To all the posters on here whinging about the life of luxury all us disabled people are supposedly living at your expense, look on the bright side, you and your loved ones are just one illness or accident away from a severe and life-long disability of your very own!
When that happy day comes you toocan experience the daily joy of living in a world which seems designed to exclude you from public and private places, jobs and pastimes while miserable and small-minded non-disabled people resent you for the minimal and occasional accommodations which are sometimes begrudgingly made to allow disabled people a degree of access to activities and facilities non-disabled people take for granted. You can also look forward to being accused of getting 'special treatment' because someone has done something extremely basic like providing a ramp or one assigned disabled seating area on a bus by unpleasant moaning bigots with massive chips on their shoulders who are apparently incapable of empathy or imagination and are unable to grasp the fact that they are possibly only temporarily able-bodied themselves.

Absolutely spot on. Well said.

@Everlore why do you think those of us who do not get disability benefits have no experience of disability?
And disability benefits were originally designed to meet the care and travel needs of disabled people. I know that is not how many use the money though.

How many hours does she work and how much PIP does she receive each week?

I'm with you on this one

I work full time and also get PIP it allows me to buy in help for therapy, special diet food, help at home such as cleaner n gardener - without it I wouldn’t be able to work at all and would have a worse quality of life
I didn’t ask to be ill - would happily swap perfect health for the benefits I get

I hope you have enough financial support to enable you to not be in fear going forward, whatever the long term prognosis work wise.

Sick pay will not be offered to many. Many will be alone with no partner and no sick pay. I support this group accessing whatever they can to enable a basic standard of living.

@Tittat50 I think we are going to have to sell our house and downsize to free up money to live on. Not sure DP is going to be able to return to work, but has been turned down for PIP. That is because the issue is work, rather than personal care.

@Maia77

*MrsPeregrine
A lot of the posters on here won’t be old enough to remember what life is like under a Labour government. It wasn’t exactly great last time and my parents have told me how awful things were in the 70s.

However in the in 1970 average house price was £4975 and average income around £1300. In 2024 average house price is £267,200 and average income £37,430. Back in the 70s families could live on one wage unlike today.*

I agree with @Maia77 - plus Labour left the NHS in a very good condition prior to being voted out in 2010 and most of that has since been undone by the Tories. Also, I believe that the Tories were going to end the WFA too.

I can remember a Labour government. We had Labour when the NHS worked, you could easily get an NHS dentist, and public services worked.

You don’t get PIP for being ill - you get it for being disabled. The two things are different.

I don’t know if this person claims PIP or not, but one of my senior colleagues (who will be on over £100k) has a severe physical disability and would definitely tick the boxes to qualify for it. They can work, they just need adjustments to the office environment - which they get. I also work with people who are visually impaired and claim PIP.

Couldn't agree more.
It's also shocking that NHS helicopter ambulances are operated by charities whilst taxpayers pay for the royals to fly about in them (whilst also lecturing us about the environment).
The older I get, the more I feel that we're just brainwashed into accepting the royals.

Daily mail list

See I think that's unfair and I get why you'd find that so. I don't like the current system because although not knowing your situation, I am guessing you aren't necessarily in a luxurious high earning category.

My situation isn't the same but I have some understanding wherein I lost £30,000 in savings I had towards my home as I used it to basically live on and support medical costs associated with my conditions when I became very unwell. ( The NHS were very ignorant of my various illnesses).

I could I believe apply for more financial support than I receive but I don't. I have a very basic quality of life and no material desires as my quality of life is rather shit. So I have re evaluated life and don't want to take the piss when I have a basic standard of living. I'm in the very grateful I have a home and TV category.

I feel that a large group of people don't have that. I also know people take the piss. I just don't believe they're the biggest problem in all this. And history tells me the truly vulnerable will be targeted and will really suffer terribly.

I fear the efforts to remove the stigma surrounding mental illness have backfired because ‘mental health’ and ‘depression’ are now used so widely as to be meaningless.

I might ruffle a few feathers with this post but I've thought this for years. I felt there was a big shift around the time Nick Clegg started banging on about Time to Talk. Suddenly it seemed like everyone was talking about their mental health, and now in 2025 the 'self-care' industry is worth $1.5 trillion.

I was first diagnosed with depression in 2002. I don't know if it was the area I lived in or my age (teenager) or if it's just how it was all over (I'd be really interested to hear about other people's experiences around this time), but in my experience it was definitely not something people talked openly about, it was something that was spoken of in whispers. I was 'lucky' in that my dad also suffered from episodes of depression and had been under secondary care himself, so he understood what I was feeling and shared little bits about his own experiences. Other than that, I didn't know anyone like me and felt so isolated. I remember an episode of Ricki Lake where she talked to several women who were severely depressed and they were describing what it was like. Some of them were crying and watching them made me cry too because it was like, oh, I'm not all alone going through this. My dad gave me an old relaxation tape he had because there was nothing much else available before internet shopping took off (I think he'd been given it by a psychiatrist). I listened to it every night in bed, still wearing the clothes I'd had on for two weeks. It was awful.

Fast forward 23 years and as far as I'm concerned, nothing's changed. People talk about mental health problems, but they seldom talk about mental illness. Psychiatric wards today are about as inadequate as the were in 2003. Celebrities are interviewed about their experiences of depression and anxiety, but for the most part they're not talking about true depressive illness. They're talking about feeling low and demotivated, and about feelings of frustration and disappointment. Those feelings are still valid and worthy of compassion, but they're not depressive illness. People with severe and enduring mental illness still feel isolated. They're still talked of in whispers, and there's still fuck all help available to them.

@Tittat50 All I can do is get on with it. But it does sting to see people working without any carer support in their life, and getting PIP.

Someone please make this make sense. And still, people are quoting ' my friends friend down the road' examples straight out the Daily Mail and ignoring my multiple posts on the RFamily.

I can't answer why the brain goes to ' lazy Lynn down the road' but the proportion who go oh look at these buggers here in their ridiculous adornments is virtually nil.

To me it feels like ' if I'm going to suffer slaving away, I want you to also '.

I understand why hard working people are annoyed. I understand many people feel they aren't getting adequate compensation for their labour, paid and unpaid. I understand that.

If 2 people are together working non stop every day in McDonald's. Will they be able to afford their own home, to have children and luxuries on top. I do wonder if they would. My argument is, tax the shit out of McDonald's or force a higher wage to staff so that their labour feels adequately rewarded.

( I need to explore how feasible that is because I hear posters saying these companies would just leave - and they might).

@Tittat50 One thing I have realised over many years is that people support welfare benefits, as long as they view it as fair.

Yes I think that's a really good point. The current system is pretty flawed and we can see examples like the PIP situation in your case that isn't fair in comparison to another PIP person bringing in much more than you guys. That's not fair.

Yet, I fear the media demonise and stigmatise to shift public perceptions on this so they believe things that aren't true, get angry about the perceived extent and then support policies that might actually kill people.

It's why I'm a bit obsessive with the RFamily reference. The media doesn't really go there and doesn't demonise them so the public generally ignore the massive elephant in the room - which they are.

@Tittat50 I agree about the Royal Family and the massive waste of money.

So many people are struggling. The MN family on over £100k income but "struggling" is not most people's experience. Loads of people are struggling just to pay the bills. Most jobs advertised where I live that are not specialist nurses or engineers, are on just over minimum wage. So when people see a neighbour not working on long term disability who is going out nice places every day and having fun, they do get jealous. And the other side is that disabled people with more profound disabilities get nowhere near the support they need.

@JoyousGreyOrca I can understand that feeling for so many people working so hard.