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.

I don’t know anyone who does that. Nor do I believe a word you say.

You need to get out more.

The triple lock is unlikely to go as pensioners have already been hit by the winter fuel allowance

Removing free bus passes for wealthy pensioners should also mean removing them for kids getting to schools including all free transport to school really. There would be a significant reduction in LA funding there.

Because they are vulnerable, and it is easier to do so without pushback.

You can't earn if you're too sick to work. Full stop. End of story.

You're saying they should starve

The eligibility criteria for a PIP claim entirely based on mental health are very strict and specific - and very difficult to meet. MH problems are usually only considered for an award because if they are treated by second line, consultant led NHS mental health teams. Simple anxiety and depression treated by a GP would almost certainly fail to secure an award because the condition would likely not meet that criteria. I’m no expert but I would have thought diagnosis and treatment of OCD was not within the remit of a GP, so a consultant’s report would be necessary to support a PIP application on those grounds.

The triple lock will be removed when enough time has passed.

Disability benefits were always intended to be awarded for those sick or disabled with care or mobility needs. That has not changed.

What has changed is that in 2010 the government went to war on sick and disabled people and many genuine claimants found their claims refused, had to return motability vehicles, some died etc. Labour decried this at the time and are now doing the same thing. Because it’s cheaper and easier to tackle genuinely sick and disabled people than it is to address the benefits dependency culture in deprived areas of the U.K. with lower education levels, lower employment levels, lower life expectancy and higher sickness levels. That would cost a lot money to fix and would involve having to create jobs and improve education and levels of health.

As a high earner, I can remember in the not too distant past paying up to 52% of the top slice of my income and I didn't think about leaving, nor did my colleagues. Changing the additional rate from say 45% to 47% will cause very high earners a few moments of irritation and maybe make them think about increasing their pension contributions a little bit. It won't make very many of them pull their kids out of school and flounce of to Dubai.
Brexit, on the other hand, has caused tens of thousands of very high-paying jobs to go to European financial centres.
As a country with an aging population and a low-ish birth rate, we need a steady supply of young immigrants, who tend to be healthy and contribute more in taxation than they cost in benefits.

We can do so much better in so many ways.

I replied to this comment upthread. It’s ill thought through because before you can reform UC and end top ups you have to stop employers paying crap wages and landlords charging exorbitant rents - both in the expectation that the tax payer will foot the bill via UC.

Agree. I doubt it will be around forever.
Perhaps when more people have private pensions ? ( employer compulsory pensions for all since 2018…..although I’m sure it will go before then )

There is a lot in the Times which is very scathing about these cuts today. I'm quite shocked by them, the consequences will be terrible for lots of people.

You’re giving Labour an easy ride here by accepting cuts so readily.

They’ve wiped off £9bn since the budget hence needing £6bn back. You’re better off asking for policies that don’t do that rather than all these cuts.

Very difficult to meet, despite what people think here.

You need evidence of current treatment eg therapy and current drug treatment as well as a psychiatric reports. Even then to get enough descriptors to qualify. For people who have jobs and family that would be tricky.

Some people do have very severe OCD that takes over their lives and makes it impossible to live a functional life let alone work - but it’s usually with other mental health conditions and it’s pretty rare from what I’ve seen.

Indeed. It just feels mean-spirited and will widen income disparity even further.

That’s not strictly true though is it, people said the city would die overnight and it didn’t. Most banks and companies just worked around it with hot desks in Amsterdam. We are world leading in some industries and still are today.

We certainly need a skilled work force from overseas, but this should be vetted, monitored and carefully managed. Not a free for all from the EU of mainly low skilled labour. Many of whom were legally claiming many benefits! We simply don’t have the housing stock or infrastructure to entertain the idea of FOM again.

'a simple aid'. Have you actually looked at how much most aids cost? And how often they need replacing? hint: there's always a price hike as soon as something's marked as for use by disabled people. Oh and if you use a cheaper alternative not marketed at disabled people to do the same job, more often than not the assessor refuses to class it as an aid.

She was one of the very few who were caught exaggerating their symptoms. People lie.

Just wanted to put in the actual data.
Ie Not 80million and lower than pp stated

Meanwhile, billionaires continue to rake it in, the banks we bailed out are coining it and corporations manage to gleefully avoid tax. But yet again, we push more people into poverty to meet a completely arbitary set of fiscal rules.

Death by a thousand cuts.

Well that’s an interesting viewpoint @EasternStandard given that kemi cadence said too little, too late- quite bizzare to have the cheek to say it as it was her party in power for 14 years.
im centre left and I think the system needed reviewing and I don’t disagree with much of it at all -

You need to stop blaming everyone else for your lack of ambition, hard work and lack of progress. What are you doing to improve your situation and outlook?

This makes it sound like hardly anyone gets PIP for mental rather than physical disorders - but it's the single biggest category of those claiming. 37% of people on PIP - 1.3 million people - are awarded it due to Psychiatric disorders including mixed anxiety, stress, depressive and mood disorders, OCD and cognitive disorders.

There was a recent thread about UC. One of the posters who responded to give the OP advice was a UC adviser. She got a top-up from UC.
I know quite a few people in the civil service, and Band 2 NHS who work full-time but need/are entitled to a UC top-up.

It's fucked up that the wage for someone full-time employed in the public sector, and minimum wage private sector too, isn't enough to live on, so that, according to the government, you're entitled to a UC top-up.

As for your wishy-washy Best to try and earn enough not to need it. that is pie-in-the-sky thinking.
Like so many on MN who are clearly out of touch on 'I'm struggling financially' threads who say 'why don't you just get a job that earns more?'

BTW what do you mean when you say We've been on it for 30 years now?
Do you mean UC and do you mean you, personally?