Benefit cuts proposal

[Charliechoosecarefully]

I just wanted it to have a specific thread:-

Kendall says government to consult on merging JSA and ESA benefits.

Kendall says WCA being scrapped, with Pip assessment process being used instead - will be scrapped in 2028.

Kendall says 'right to try' will let people on sickness benefits try work without immediately having benefits cut.

Kendall says UC payments being rebalanced, with standard rate going up, and some health top-ups frozen or cut.

Kendall says reassessments for people on universal credit with health top-ups to be beefed up

Kendall says universal credit claimants with most severe disabilities will not face reassessment

Kendall confirms Pip eligibility rules to be tightened, and assessment process to be reviewed - 4 pointed needed in one descriptor.

Kendall says under-22s could be prevented from claiming health top-up for universal credit

Sourced from the guardian.

Of course fraudulent claims can have this evidence. If I go to the GP tomorrow claiming to have symptoms of anxiety and continue down this path with intention of getting benefits then I will have a whole wealth of documented evidence within a few months. I know the right things to say about how it's adversely impacting me life and the doctor can't accuse me of lying unless that have very good reason to believe this is the case. I wouldn't give them a reason.

@nearlylovemyusername

Genuinely curios, not in a judgy way at all - was you DD part time in the office before covid or was she WFH?
Can she continue the same number of days in the office as before covid and WFH the rest?

She worked 2 days a week and was mostly wfh. Generally she was in the office once every 5/6 weeks for training or team meet ups.

There's now a mandated 60% office time so she wouldn't be allowed to go back to the same terms. Also the office pre Covid was a 10/15 minute walk from home, it's now 1h 15min away on either two buses or a train and a walk.

It's incredibly frustrating as the people who see the work she does (her boss and their boss) completely want to let her wfh as she needs, but they're not allowed.

thank you for the info!
I missed “ before the course” moments already but this info would be really helpful this year as her course coming to its end.

This is going to be one of the biggest issues that I can see, and I’d hope that of the money that will be saved at least some of it will go to employers education & even financial help for employers in having staff with disabilities.

It is so difficult, especially for small businesses, to be blind to disability even if they want to be. Most businesses really rely on their staff to be reliable, and high levels of absence can be difficult to manage particularly in small businesses where 1 person being off makes a huge difference to that day. Perhaps if the government could offer some form of financial aid to company’s to make it easier to have say 1.5x staff for the role it would make a difference.

Exactly.

My son is still a child but this makes me worry even more about his future. No one knows what it holds or how much, if any, he will improve.

Right now I can't work at all because I care for him full time.

As if coming to terms with the unexpected cognitive decline of someone you're close to isn't enough. Those people were supposed to be making all the day to day stuff involved easier for you, not more frustrating 😕

That doesn't say anything about new claims only? Sorry I am a bit confused on this.

I'm absolutely fine, just doing what you and nearly everyone else on this thread wants.

I've gone full circle, from being a burden when my mum abandoned me to be raised in care, to working and paying my taxes to being a burden again. You've woken my eyes and today I've put a stop to it. I'm glad you're happy now :-)

@pizzaHeart you can establish LCWRA now via a credits only New Style ESA claim.

But there are so many healthy people claiming benefits, when they should be working, so I can see why they have chosen this - yes.

But they’ve chosen to increase out of work benefits for healthy people and cut benefits that are not out of work benefits for disabled and terminally ill people.

I have mental health issues due to childhood neglect, childhood emotional and physical abuse, the isolation that caused and continues to cause, having to leave home at 16 and live in poverty, the effect it has all had on my ability to form and maintain relationships, and also delayed diagnosis of a neurological condition. There are minimal or no services to help me for each thing, because my situation is too complex.
Rightly or wrongly I have been viewing the payments as a form of compensation for what I have to deal with day to day as a result of what I went through. I can’t appear to sue anyone for anything that I have gone through, so if they take it off me then it appears I have fallen through the net.

I would imagine most jobs are filled by people looking to change jobs, or having just left education, rather than employers taking on the long term unemployed.
That frees up more jobs, which are then taken by those already in employment, or newly leaving education, and so on.
It will be hard for unemployed or sick people to get a foothold.

lol, you think you can be on PIP with only a few months of saying you’re anxious to a GP.

Oh they didn’t want to make it easy at all, they were absolutely adamant they were right and fought tooth and nail to section my parent. Bit them in the backside when they had to pay for years of care/end of life out of their own budgets because of they decided it couldn’t possibly be a physical brain condition and put them on a MH ward. But that’s whole other story, the fact is demanding a disability/health condition is ‘just mental health get on with it’ (which many people with MH issues need high support with anyway) will have a huge fallout regardless.

how does someone who is here illegally claim benefits?

There may be that many jobs but are the people out of work qualified to do those roles? Probably not………

“Longsummerdays25 · Today 16:02
At the moment there are nearly a million job vacancies that could be filled. You can’t second guess what might happen in the future. At the moment the jobs are available.”

But aren’t there 2 million healthy unemployed people actively looking for work?How will telling millions of disabled and long term sick “get a job” create the millions more jobs needed?

It it’s important in the sense of leaving nothing to chance - nobody can argue with black and white evidence. I’d absolutely encourage people to send the best they have.

My point is, though, that it’s not essential. You can still be successful without it. There was a shift to not placing so much weight on the physical evidence during and after the pandemic. People couldn’t get copies, couldn’t get them scanned, GPs were only seeing emergencies etc. Even when we do get evidence from a GP (known as a GP Factual Report), consideration has to be given as to whether the GP has written everything or maybe missed something out.

Stop subsidising fossil fuels and energy price extortion?

Just on energy support packages the cost of UK Government support amounts to £78.2 billion across 2022-23 and 2023-24 (1.5 per cent of GDP across the two years or 3.1 per cent of this year’s GDP), of which just over half (£39.9 billion) is recouped via windfall taxes on energy producers over the medium term. That's without the billions in tax breaks and subsidies given to big oil and gas over the years.

Tax wealth more and work less? billionaire wealth has increased by almost £150bn in only two years, between 2020 and 2022, but revenue from wealth taxes has remained stagnant at around 3.4%

There are hundreds of ways in which we can fund better pensions and better welfare, plenty of other countries with less wealth than the UK manage.

None of those things should stop you working! All of those things have happened to me and more, and I have still worked for decades. It’s just bad luck, hold your parents responsible of course, but no one owes you anything. Working will be good for you, and your self esteem.

From my reading it will affect new claimants or when people are up for reward renewal.

Agree completely. What staggers me is the changes we’ve seen in such a short space of time.

20 years ago it was unusual to have a disabled child.

10 years ago it was getting more normal to have a disabled child.

5 years ago a lot of families had children had children diagnosed or awaiting assessment.

Now, in 2025, we are seeing families with (for example) 4 kids, 3 of them diagnosed and in receipt of DLA. With the parent on UC, carers and sometimes PIP for themselves.

In fact, the latter is a really common scenario around here - there are multiple families locally who claim for all of their 3+ kids.

How has this happened?

Many hundreds of thousands of them are entry level jobs anyone can do…they just don’t want to.

Also when the population of the uk is going on close to 80 million people, a million jobs available is not many at all in the grand scheme of things…….

It is plenty and equates roughly to those healthy benefits claimants. We have millions of children and elderly people, so they can’t count in the numbers. Every adult unless severely disabled should be contributing.

Our population is not 80 million either so that is not accurate.