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.

Yes, they get it long term but they are reassessed. The longest award I was told that exists by my work coach was a 10yr award that has a ‘light touch review’

there are no lifetime with no reassessment awards. There are no indefinite awards either, they all have an expiry date and usually the reassessment starts 1yr prior to the expiry date.

Your Father would have had to apply for a car on the Motability scheme, they don't seek people out to give cars to. The fact that your Mother used the money to lease a car that sat outside, bar once a month, when that money could have been used for other things should be of more concern to you. Unless your folks are rolling in money! The rest of your post is not worth commenting on imo.

At least this means that the poster would agree that Liz Kendall and co are scare-mongering the public with their batshit ideas of sending work coaches to mental health wards, and everything else.

I don’t think everyone thought Labour would save us - just that Cons with Brexit (you couldn’t make it up how they stood by while Brexiteers made all those promises - didn’t even go to the trouble of spelling out what areas in the uk benefitted from the eec grants -I still don’t know).
Then there was the Thames Water rip off of the public, extortionate covid enquiries, and failed promises on immigration - it went up!!!!!

people voted Labour in desperation -I still feel they are doing more for the country than a Tory gov would. remember 10 + years of austerity.

The unsustainable rise in disability and sickness benefits are the entirely predictable consequence of the Tories defunding the NHS from 2010 to today. The government is gaslighting the public to blame those unlucky enough to get seriously sick and now need to claim benefits.

Just like the hit to the economy, our import/export trade,tax receipts, immigration record increase, and cost of living crisis were the entirely predicted consequences of Brexit.. the “project fear” was project realism.

Exactly this!

Why aren't there lifetime awards? For example, someone I know has an autistic adult son, non verbal, screaming meltdowns, etc needs round the clock care. Why would DWP reassess him? Nothing is going to get better.

Of that 6% around 40,000 are on bursaries, which pay an average of £11,000 of the fees per year. Families who can’t afford full school fees obviously can’t now afford the vat on top of that. Any private school parent will tell you that it’s not just the very wealthy who send their dc to private school.

Many schools are now also having to reduce the amount of bursaries in future in order to reduce the school running costs. As a PP said, this will make private schools truly only for the more wealthy.

Those who prefer to look anywhere bar Labour policy if they cut benefits will you be impacted?

It is always very telling when people come on with stories like that, but seem to not understand how Motability works. You 'd almost suspect they are making them up.

That’s another stupid idea from a clueless politician.
GP surgeries don’t have room to house the local mental health teams. GP surgeries were also privatised by the Tories, while the mental health teams are still within the NHS. It would add complex costs to have the NHS lease rooms within a GP (even if there were room) so a mental health HCP could see patients there.

It wouldn’t help anyone who can’t bring themselves to see a GP by being ‘located under one roof’ because you have to see the GP first, get a referral to mental health and then wait 2yrs or more before you can see anyone anyway.

Yes it's crazy. they could save huge amounts by not re-assessing people whose condition is never going to change. This would free up manpower to further assess those who don't report improvements to their condition and just carry on claiming, or to reduce some of the waiting time for re-assessment which are currently in excess of 15 months past the expiry date of the award in some areas. The whole system is one big mess. I currently have a client I helped to claim PIP 2 years ago , he was very ill at the time and was awarded higher rate on both components without an assessment (not special rules). He is now almost back to full health bar few minor problems, he has not reported he has improved despite me asking him to three times now, because he knows he will lose the £750 every four weeks. This kind of thing is rife. I am absolutely all for those who need PIP to be awarded it swiftly and through a smoother process and in my job I come across a lot of people who absolutely qualify and it's really satisfying helping them get the support they receive but the system has to be tightened up.

Brexit was, and still is, a complete shitshow, but it's worth remembering that Jeremy Corbyn did nothing to support the Remain campaign. He stayed neutral and many on the hard left supported leaving the EU. JC could and should have done much more.

As for austerity, I think we will see austerity 2.0 in the Spring. It will be given a different name of course, but if it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck....

Quite! It is so transparent.

I’m not sure there is any evidence for this protective factor as every report on poverty in the U.K. it is households with a disabled member are the most likely to be in absolute or relative poverty. Households in work are less likely to be in poverty. Although the figures used are from the census, these reports were all recently published or updated within the last year.

Scope 2019- 2020
”After housing costs, the proportion of working age disabled people living in poverty is 27%. Which is higher than the proportion of working age non-disabled people at 19%.” https://www.scope.org.uk/media/disability-facts-figures

Joseph Rowantree
Disabled people 2-4x more likely to be in poverty compared to working people:

• ”Disabled people – in 2021/22, 31% of disabled people were in poverty. This was even higher (38%) for people with a long-term, limiting mental health condition. Higher poverty rates for disabled people are partly due to the additional costs associated with disability and ill health and partly due to the barriers to work they face.
• Part-time workers and the self-employed - amongst people in work, the poverty rate for part-time workers was double that for full-time workers (20% compared with 10%) and self-employed workers were more than twice as likely to be in poverty as employees (23% compared with 10%).

https://www.jrf.org.uk/uk-poverty-2024-the-essential-guide-to-understanding-poverty-in-the-uk

DWP
The measurement – which aims to provide a more accurate way of calculating deprivation – shows that nearly half of all individuals in families with at least one disabled child and one disabled adult in the UK were living in poverty by 2021-22, according to a DWP report published quietly last Thursday.
The new measurement, which calculates “individuals in low resources”, found the proportion of people in families with disabled children who were living in poverty increased from 33 per cent in 2019-20 to 43 per cent in 2021-22.
The rise was even higher for those in families with disabled children but no disabled adults, increasing from 25 per cent in poverty in 2019-20 to 38 per cent in 2021-22, a rise of more than half in just two years, according to the new DWP progress report and consultation.
https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/dwps-truly-shocking-disability-poverty-stats-are-terrible-indictment/

Laugh if you want, but all of the millionaire/billionaire non-doms were paying an absolute fortune in VAT on all of the millions they were spending in this country. Every hotel bill, restaurant bill, clothes, jewellery, cars. ….. until they left due to Labour’s idiotic non-dom policy.

Exactly this. Most people with severe mental health needs aren’t offered anything to turn down anyway. Next to nobody is. A generic online CBT course from poorly trained staff is not going to cure complex mental health needs and will instead make things worse. This is why numbers have risen so dramatically. Patients are offered nothing and there is gate keeping away from treatment with highly qualified staff. Patients then get worse, descend into more damaging coping strategies and dangerous situations which makes need worse and so it goes on ….

In my area they have been advertising already for back to work type heath coach jobs ( sorry can;t remember the exact name) to be based in GP surgeries but with a specific role to help long term sick to develop skills to get back to work. I guess by basing them in a GP surgery rather than a job centre, they are hoping maybe people will engage with the service. There were numerous posts advertised recently all at the same time in GP's across our county. I'm guessing this is a countrywide initiative.

@HelmholtzWatson no one comes and gives you a "free" Motability car. You have to be on enhanced mobility PIP, apply and be approved by Motability, choose a car based partly on upfront cost (most have an upfront cost as well as the monthly lease cost) and repeat process every time the lease expires. But you crack on with spreading harmful misinformation eh.

GP surgeries were also privatised by the Tories

This is 100% wrong. GP surgeries were turned into 'fund-holding practices' under Labour! It was Gordon Brown as Chancellor who did this, not the Tories!

It's because apparently some with life time awards were improving and not informing the DWP. I don't think I know anyone who got a life time awards who has suddenly improved.

As usual with threads about disability, there is a lot of frothing on this thread. A lot of fibs being told. A lot of smugness. A lot of ableism. A lot of glee that the government are "coming for" the disabled.

If the green paper turns put to be less harsh than the Tory proposals (probable) and/or not as draconian as some people hope, there will be much gnashing of teeth.

There is a lot of frothing about "free cars". The Motability scheme actually provides thousands of jobs and puts millions into the economy (in 2019/20, the Motability Scheme supported a total
contribution to UK GDP of £3,427 million)
and provided £576 million in tax receipts).

It is a really succesful scheme in so many ways. Yet people want to see it end because of spite over the fact that some people use the benefit they are legally entitled to lease cars.

Yes there was an exodus
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/eu-migration-to-and-from-the-uk/

and you trade in the money component of the enhanced mobility for a car. The money coming in is then significantly reduced. People don't get the car and the PIP mobility component payout. It's either or.

I guess the same could be said about any disability benefits. For the most part they are going back into the economy. As I've said before I help a lot of people to claim Attendance Allowance, it's not means tested and many of the older people I help to claim it are pretty wealthy. Some of course just save it into the bank but the most common reason these older folk tell me they want to claim it is to pay for a gardener or a cleaner. So yes it does filter it's way into the economy and keep people employed . Of course on the other hand you have people getting huge amounts of Universal credit and it going to pay off rich landlords mortgages and I actually find this the most distressing part of using public funds.