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.

So report her

i live 7 milies from Wethersfield air base. There is a lot of resentment about the free dentistry and bus services that they are getting.

There is a range of sensory disabilities, which may be standalone or a part of another disability. The most common sensory disabilities include hearing and vision related disabilities. Thus, when people refer to sensory issues - it usually referring to these types. Autism and sensory processing disorder is can be classified as a sensory disability but usually referred to as neuro-divergence.

Starting from two weeks time the national minimum wage for those 21 or older will be £12.21 per hour.

For those working in a typical blue collar job (round here that means working in one of the big distribution centres) then that is typically a 37.5 hour week.

Minimum wage working full time is £23,809 per year or a take home of £1,721 per month or £397 per week (excluding any pension contributions, if you included pension contributions then you're looking at £1,663 per month or £384 per week).

Most employers around here are paying slightly above the minimum wage at around £13 per hour. So that would be a take home of £1,814 per month or £418 per week.

This is the reality for very many workers in this country.

Stuff like the right to try to work is good I think but it depends on the fine detail. Many sick and disabled people who are unable to work a conventional job could perhaps do some work from home but realistically its unlikely to provide a consistent living wage and I imagine for many people and the government this wouldn't be good enough as it would still require ongoing financial support for people, giving them the dignity of work they can do wouldn't be enough.

As for the rest of it, it does seem designed to make as many people as possible ineligible for support regardless of whether or not they actually need it. Be that by making it impossible to get PIP or by telling people they are too young. PIP is paid to people who work, I know Doctors how get it! There will be people for home their PIP enables them to work and if they lose that then they will likely lose their access to work.

I agree its shocking and depressing to see so many young people go out of school and straight on to benefits and stay there. However if the issue is mental health then we need to be honest about what is causing that. Young people are now in a position where working hard, getting a degree or working your way up doesn't really pay off anymore. Owning a home, having a family and a reasonable quality of life if out of reach. Its already the case that the biggest deciding factor in your ability to attain a home is the availability of parental help so if that's not something you have access to, its hardly fair is it? It is depressing to think you will just work, and work to keep a roof over your head and nothing more. Council tax goes up, mortgages and rents go up, bills and food go up and house prices keep shooting up out of reach.

Not everyone can be a lawyer or a doctor or a salesman. We need people to work in the service industries, to ring up our shopping, to empty our bins, clean our offices and so on. These are all vital contributions to society and yet they are looked down on and your seen as a failure if that's your job by many. Then their are parasites who sit at the top and cream money off of society and funnel it out of the country where they don't pay tax, who buy up "assets" like family homes and then extract as much rent out of tenants as possible are admired and respected. It doesn't make sense to me at all. So no wonder people give up on having a life their parents would have thought was normal, basic even.

My view is that we should listen to the millionaires who are saying "Tax me now" and tax them, many other super rich will moan about it but in reality the extra amount they pay will be negligible to them. For those that do leave, may will leave their assets behind that can be taxed. Its all very well saying these people are wealth and job creators and investors but look at how rich these people have become in recent years and how greatly inequality has grown. Trickle down economics is a lie. We need to reduce inequality by taxing the very rich an amount of money that will not stop them being super rich but might stop them buying up every asset not nailed down and leaving your children with no hope of a home.

We talk about the benefits system being unsustainable all the time and yet we never talk about endless growth and profits is unsustainable but they are and dangerously so. Similar to "corporate welfare" by giving public money to private business as grants or as wage top ups to their employees all while evading tax where they can but when the government asks business to pay more by increasing the minimum wage or NIC there is outrage at the unfairness of it. Why is their always sympathy and public money to make someone who is already very rich, richer and never the money to support the poor, the sick and the disabled?

No way are cleaners looked down on.
Lots of people running successful cleaning businesses.
Cleaning will always be in demand.
Houses, offices, hotels end of tenancies.
Your wrong there...

Maybe I misunderstood but the post I replied to didn't mention work so I thought it meant bring in £7k in benefits.

I agree that it is in demand work but I worked as a cleaner and most certainly was looked down on, laughed at and harassed. My mother was also a cleaner and experienced this so unfortunately you are wrong on this, I wish you were not.

Tightening up Disability claims is just ONE PIECE of a very large & sh1t jigsaw.

The whole welfare system is a mess tbh & unaffordable as is. In fact the whole country is a mess let’s be honest.

Country is £3 trillion in debt

So yeah, tighten up disability claims by all means, that might save a few quid.

But whilst you’re doing that we’ll have to do things like ditch the pensions triple lock & also increase the retirement age to reflect increased life expectancy over recent decades. In fact, this should already have been done but Lab/Con are spineless as they want those grey votes.

We’ll probably have to get used to only a bare bones basic service from the NHS & Social Care for the foreseeable & no more. It’ll be doing amazingly well just to stand still. I expect it to go downhill.

We could try another right wing strategy & cattleprod the genuinely feckless into work and slash their benefits but what are the chances they just turn to crime instead knowing 15 years of (right wing) austerity means no prison spaces?

Whole country is a mess & I really don’t see things improving anytime soon. In fact, I can only see things getting worse tbh

An obvious solution is tax those who can afford it more. That means globally agreed minimums on taxation & the ostracisation of tax havens and those individuals & companies who use them, so fleeing & avoiding tax simply isn’t an option.

Apart from all the other reasons (which were well discussed on here when it was proposed), not all aids come from the same place. The admin to sort out all the different sorts of companies would be ridiculous. It's not just mobility shops, it's taxi companies, and supermarkets (pre-made food is more expensive, for example, and how do you quantify that?), it's energy companies when your electric bill is higher from charging your powerchair and your stairlift.

One example of how it doesn't work even for basic aids: some disabled people run small businesses (all legal and declared, I'm sure, before someone jumps on me) that sell disability aids to other disabled people. For example, NotYourGrandmas sells compression socks. They're designed to be soft and non-irritating, and come in a variety of fun patterns. They don't cost any more than buying boring old beige or black ones, and you're supporting other disabled people at the same time. And for something you have to wear all day every day, you don't have to look medicalised. If a voucher scheme came in, or the catalogue scheme that was proposed briefly, we'd be stuck with large suppliers, the sort of place that sell to the NHS. They'd probably pump up the prices because there would be a captive market. We'd all be reduced to beige or hospital grey compression socks, with no options to try another brand if the allocated supplier's version was uncomfortable. And a small business providing an income to disabled people (after all, they want us working) would no longer be able to turn a profit.

Haha. Sometimes but definitely not always. A lot of pensioners have plenty of expendable income. My point is that the rules were no doubt relevant when introduced but are no longer so. I think this will change again as the boomer generation pass on as the younger generations are and will clearly be less well off.
That's the thing about the free prescriptions rules. They are out dated. The hypothyroidism one is also ridiculous.
Anyway, probably straying off topic a bit!

I describe her lifestyle as it frustrates me that some people will go all out to deny that fraudulent claims are being made. If I reported her I would also have to report two school friends who play the system shamelessly having never worked a day in the 20 years since leaving school.

Disability benefits went up massively under the Tories, by the time the £5Bn of cuts come into effect they will be less that 10% of the budget at that time.
They cannot keep growing at the rate they did under the Tories.
We have fewer and fewer net tax payers in this country hence lower living standards and poorer services.
I don't have the answers but there seem plenty of Gen-Z on TV interviews saying they have anxiety etc and can't get by... yet waste money on pink hair and tattoos! These changes need to get more money to those who cannot help themselves and less to those happy enough to be interviewed in TV studios but too anxious to get out of bed to go to work.

Different experiences.
My friend has her own cleaning business, never looked down on. Admired actually for running a business. Running a business isn't easy.

Well perhaps the difference is she runs her own business most cleaners are not in that position.

A one woman crusade to save the country money….sounds good!

If you raise state pension age you'll likely just have even more people claiming PIP. Then if they are on PIP when they turn state pension age they could potentially be on both components of it costing almost twice as much per week as Attendance allowance. Those that have a decent private pension might be able to support themselves but the rest won't.
I agree things are a mess and I don't think most people appreciate how much of a mess. I've worked in benefits for around eight years now and just amazed at how much money some pensioners are getting in disability benefits/ pension credit premiums etc on top of state pension. Even the claimants are genuinely surprised. I know I'll likely get shouted down on this but I also think the threshold for Attendance Allowance being awarded is low. I wonder if tightening up on this will be next on the hit list?

Girl with autism on radio today saying she can't work because she would be off sick a lot. She was bloody 17, articulate and perfectly happy to face the interviewer. Appalling lazy attitude. No intention of working!!!

I am from an area where a lifetime on benefits and families with multi generational benefit recipients is not uncommon. It does not shock me . However I find people denying that benefit fraud goes on frustrating.

But is that the full story how do you know she'd be fine all the time and is just being lazy, do you know her? Know the full extent to which her condition affects her? I knew a woman with a benign brain tumour who was trying to get work, when asked about adjustments she would need she told them she often would feel fatigued and would need a small dark space to rest in some days due to the fatigue or the headaches she often got as a result of her brain tumour she was told by both the job centre and employers that is requirement was unreasonable and couldn't be met. So she ended up on unemployment.

Or there was the woman with MS who was effectively bullied out of her job because her fellow workmates got fed up with the fact that she would be off work so often and they'd have to carry the load for her when she was having a relapse or a bad day. Her colleagues resented her and in the end it created such a bad working environment for her she ended up leaving much to the relief of her bosses and colleagues.

Its all very well saying everyone can do something but in reality its not as simple as that. Most business rely on people who can do the job consistently, who aren't going to be too ill to work multiple times a month for days at a time.

OneBrightBiscuit
Brexit, on the other hand, has caused tens of thousands of very high-paying jobs to go to European financial centres

According to one man and a headline - whereas the article in your link goes on to say that the estimate from consultants at EY is considerably lower. The article also reports that the number of people working in the City of London has grown from 525,000 to 616.000 since 2016 - due to growth in other sectors such as data analysis/insurers.

Brexit is the elephant in the room. Rejoining the EU and/or common market would stimulate growth and raise revenue.

Rejoining the EU would mean net contributions of £9 billion a year plus - with no guarantee of growth, certainly in the short term, would expose the UK to more tariffs from Trump, prevent a potential US trade deal and potentially damage one of our biggest growth areas (tech/AI) with the EU's over regulation (the UK is already diverging here).

Ah but I his one had NO intention of trying to work. This is nothing new however , we had the workshy amongst us since time immorial.

Completely agree. I know LOADS of people like this. My next door neighbour for one.
The whole family is / was enormously fat, the mother gave up work and played the system and got benefits based on fibromyalgia. Daughters claimed to be caring for her. She had the lot, hospital bed etc.
Got the benefit the after a few months 4 of them jetted off to Turkey to get gastric sleeves.
Fast forward a year, all considerably smaller. Still claiming. Not working. Plenty of childcare by the grandmother, she cooks for the whole family regularly making 10/11 meals. Cleans, dog walking, summer days are spent sat outside the pub, lots of alcohol drink, big family BBQs.
Socialises, eating out and takes 3/4 foreign holidays a year.

All with such debilitating fibromyalgia that she cannot feed or dress herself.

How would that help DS? He's autistic, we get DLA at the moment, most of it goes on the weekly swimming routine which is the only way he will wash or change his clothes - there has been times he's refused to go in the past and it's been a month or six weeks between washes and changing clothes. How would authorised, regulated suppliers get him swimming and the food afterwards that is the only routine that currently works? Pay for the travel? Or pay for replacement swimming gear as he regularly causes accidental damage to it?

I can see us not getting to the point of him getting PIP, I'm incredibly worried about this year as the DLA is up for renewal a month after I'm going to be made redundant. Hopefully I can get another job with no or very little gap, but I feel like I'm looking for the impossible. No job and if the DLA is removed means DS will not wash or change his clothes for who knows how long. Months.

What concerns me is the proposal to use the PIP questionnaire to determine whether someone is capable of work, particularly when it comes to MH. In my experience, the form is unsuitable for assessing the impact of mental illness on daily functioning.