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.

Binning PIP would mean many, many disabled people having to be re institutionalised, which would cost infinitely more. And involving an NHS already on its knees isn’t the way to go to cut costs - it just shifts them somewhere else Anyone with a working understanding of disability wouldn’t even think of ‘binning’ an allowance which supports so many genuinely disabled people. The cut the government has made is an intelligent one. Very hard to score four points in any category of PIP unless you’re significantly disabled so low level claims will be cut off, thereby putting PIP back in the hands of those for whom it was intended- the significantly disabled. Isn’t that what we want ?

And if your comment was based on the BBC interviews you might want to remember that these claimants are selected to support the narrative of supporting the cuts - they’re not representative of all PIP claimants.

But nobody terminates pregnancies because of the cost to the state. They do it because they don’t want to raise a disabled child, or feel they can’t manage it. If autism can be screened, why shouldn’t women have the right to choose?

Still doesn’t alter the fact that Cameron claimed DLA for him, despite being very rich. Means testing is a race to the bottom. How do you apply a benefit designed to cover the cost of disability - where do you make the cut off ? There will always be those who miss out on significant support for the sake of a few pence.

"I’m baffled that young adults 18-22 won’t be able to access extra funding on UC though"

They can get standard UC but not the extra health premium but that is of course a significant drop from what they get now. The green paper talks about looking at putting something in place for those that will obviously never work but there is no detail on this. The idea behind removing it is to encourage young people into training or employment and to spend the money saved on a scheme to do this - a scheme that my son for one will never be able to access.

We are applying for PIP for DS2. He may use some of the money to buy a newer larger phone. Would the vouchers see that as an appropriate intended purpose? I doubt it. However, he is Severely Visually Impaired (legally Blind) and uses his phone as a magnifier, needs to be able to zoom in substantially to see things on the screen etc. So he could spend the money on a range of visual aids that he would probably get vouchers for or upgrade the one device that can act as a visual aid, communication tool and a means of payment.

Surely he is best placed to decide what works best for him.

The government is proposing to spend £1bn of taxpayers money supporting people off benefits and into work. It’s money wasted if they’re still waiting for NHS treatment and employers aren’t brought on board for the much heralded ‘right to try’, which is only a mish mash of various similar schemes which have gone before it. You can beat disabled people with the looking for work stick all you want, but you can’t force employers to take them on.

The proposal is for young people to stay on child DLA until age 18 and then migrate to PIP. The age 22 rule doesn’t apply to PIP, only out of work benefits that attract a health related premium.

If we can loosen the fiscal rules to invest in infrastructure, why not loosen them to invest in people? The fact is, as a society, we are in a hole. We have cut services to the bone, created a society in which two parents can be in full time work, yet still be unable to live well, created a school system that can only function by severely limiting ‘down-time’, offers few opportunities for creative expression and denies huge numbers of kids an education suited to their needs and interests. The labour market is broken, the health system is broken (believe me, I have a daughter with stage 4 cancer and a step-daughter with the same cancer waiting surgery for her tumour before it spreads: the health system is a mess), the housing market is broken, the legal system is broken. As a result of all this, and various scandals like MPs expenses, the Covid VIP line, even party-gate and the way kids and education were an after thought during the pandemic (and much more), the social contract is disintegrating. We can either keep on digging that hole, or we can take stock and say, something is going badly wrong. I’d say, taking PIP and other benefits away, before sorting out the mess that has been decades in the making, is continuing to dig and I dread to think what sort of society my kids and grandkids are going to be living in if we carry on as we are.

"I think we can agreed that a 18 disabled 18 year old is highly likely to be living at home with minimal expenses. I’d like to see this factored into claims, so for instance care leavers don’t have restricted claims due to age, and others do."

You are risking teenagers moving into supported living or residential care, sooner than they otherwise would have done. Those placements are very expensive, often thousands a week.

I agree. Of course having a disabled child comes with additional expenses.

Usually involving private therapy because what the NHS offers is either a super long wait or the therapy isn’t consistent enough to make any difference.

If you have run a business then you will know that there is a huge difference between OPEX and CAPEX spending in terms of of how you should finance it and what it means for the long term prospects of your country.

We have been investing an enormous amount of money in people over the past two decades and have accrued a huge debt to show for it. Our interest payments are cripplingly high. We have to bring down the operational costs of running our country as we are spending more than we are bringing in. If you think services have been cut to the bone then imagine what it would be like if we actually tried to live within our means. Think of a family that was living from pay cheque to pay cheque with a huge credit card bill and interest payments that were taking up a significant proportion of their income. Would you really be telling them to spend even more money on day to day living expenses?

I think a lot of people can't accept that we don't have a god given right to a certain standard of living. This is true if you're disabled or not disabled. If we can't afford something then it doesn't matter how much you need it or want it. We need to direct our resources to where it can make the most difference and accept that many will have a worse standard of living whilst we pay down the debt. Using the family with a credit card example, you would of course expect them to reign in the spending and live a much more frugal life until the debt was paid down. This is what we need to do too now. We need to be honest and open about that and stop this talk of bending fiscal rules that are there to protect the long term sustainability and safety of our country.

Still doesn’t alter the fact that Cameron claimed DLA for him, despite being very rich.

Giveb he was very rich the monetary award for DLA would be a drop in the ocean, but it’s a qualifying benefit for access to other supports and services that are very needed for disabled children. Things like access to accommodations at activities and attractions that enable disabled children to participate in wider society, that don’t have a financial cost but can’t be accessed without proof of disability.

It's only childcare businesses though. They know when they set up a childcare business that they'll be paid in vouchers. And they register with Ofsted as a childcare business. How do you regulate which businesses count as 'disability businesses' and therefore can use the voucher scheme? There's no existing structure to do that, unlike with childcare businesses.
Not to mention the supermarket or the taxi company or the swimming pool where you do your physio etc etc etc. Bad enough trying to get an accessible taxi as it is, nevermind if they had to accept and faff around with vouchers.

The “right to try” is one of the proposals in this bill - to allow people to try and work without having to stop benefits straight away.

Given that pretty much every taxi round here is booked up at school drop off and pick up time for SEN children, it would be a no-brainer to make taxi companies register. That way the PIP mobiliyt payment could go straight to the taxi company, the children get to school and the LA doesn't have to foot the bill. At the moment the LA gets an enormous bill for school transport and PIP also supports a car.

Then how does the child get around outside of school runs?

If we can loosen the fiscal rules to invest in infrastructure, why not loosen them to invest in people?

I understand where you’re coming from but some would argue we’ve been investing in people and in doing so have an ever increasing welfare bill and fewer people contributing to pay for it.

I get the dichotomy and can’t pretend I see a way to resolve it without people being impacted.

My DD benefits from the safety net for disabled children, and I know the difference that money makes to improving her quality of life. I also know in future she could easily fall into the benefits trap, being reliant on the state for basic living costs. It will take work and support to try and avoid that and even then she may fall into the population who can’t work. I don’t think thats a way for anyone to live but if that happens I’d like to think she could have an ok standard of living, but the reality is that comes out of the public purse which isn’t a bottomless resource. All I can do is try to help her be in the best place possible to access opportunities that come her way and provide as much financial stability as I can.

Of course being disabled comes with additional expenses. As do many health conditions that don't meet the threshold to be a disability. I mentioned my son's speech issues already but there are loads of kids with all sorts of individual difficulties that need parental investment in terms of money and time to overcome. There are also other aspects of parenting that can cost more money too. If you have a child that needs more help academically then you may feel that they need tutoring to stand a chance of getting enough qualifications to get a job in the future. You may have an extremely talented and able child that needs additional support to meet their potential. We are all dealt uneven hands.

The question is when does the state intervene to try and even things out? The threshold is always arbitrary and can be moved to reflect what we can afford and societal attitudes. There also is a huge relationship between poverty and one's ability to access things generally. You may use PIP to jump queues for your disabled child but another parent stuck in the queue without PIP will be unable to do this even though objectively the children's needs are the same.

"Then how does the child get around outside of school runs?"

That poster won't care about that.

Hmm, running a country and running a business, or a household for that matter, are very different things, and whilst economists differ, I believe the general consensus is that managing a country’s finances in the same way as a household’s is ill-advised and part of the reason why the last government’s approach to the economy failed to bear fruit. However, for the sake of argument, I absolutely would advise a family to put even more debt on their credit card in the short term, if that was the only way to improve the welfare of all family members, and secure their financial future in the longer term. If we really can’t afford to do that, then we need to look at redistribution through a fairer tax system and one that ensures we all contribute more if we are able to (and l please let’s ditch the rhetoric about hard-working tax payers; no one, not even the most economically inactive amongst us, avoids paying tax entirely, though they might not pay income tax, I grant you). There is huge scope, but no political will, for doing this. As for the god-given right to a certain standard of living, not sure what you mean or what others think they are entitled to, or what standard of life you think someone who is too ill to work should be entitled to? There’s a balance to be struck, sure, between supporting people to live well and with dignity, and wasting money, but I don’t really think someone who is totally reliant on UC and PIP is living the life of luxury - though there is certainly a problem with the level of wages for the lowest paid amongst us - and even those classed as middle-income earners - relative to the cost of living (especially where housing is concerned) that breeds the kind of resentment towards benefit recipients that I’m seeing in some of these threads recently.

I'm not a child at school! How on earth would that work?
Should I pay a flat rate of my PIP to a taxi scheme as some kind of bizarre insurance for the times my wheelchair packs up and I need an emergency taxi to get home?
If I paid a flat rate of PIP, would taxi companies actually be obliged to send an accessible vehicle when I request one? Or could they keep saying things like 'oh dave's not working today so we can't send you the one with the ramp' or 'does it fold? we can't take it if it doesn't fold? And how are you going to regulate that?

Of course there is a difference between running a country and a household/business but there are some commonalities. The OPEX and CAPEX distinction being one of them. It is simply not the same to raise money to fund a large infrastructure project and to raise money to fund daily living costs and a bloated welfare state. One can be a sound long term investment and the other is accruing debt for things that ultimately wont drive growth or increase national wealth in the long term.

I completely disagree with you about raising taxes. There is no appetite for this amongst the general population and our economy is showing that businesses cannot afford to pay more without impacting all important economic growth. We live in a democracy and ultimately most people will not stand for increased taxation so that it can be spent on disability payments.

Put simply, lots of people don't think that benefits should pay more than work. Currently in lots of cases they do. There are also clear incentives to claim disability benefits vs unemployment benefits. This is what people resent and what needs to be reformed. Raising wages isn't the golden bullet as this fuels inflation and leads to job cuts. We are past the point of easy solutions and being #kind. We need to get real.

I’m going to be blunt because I have the high achieving gifted children and a severely disabled child. The costs are VASTLY different. We are not talking about slightly more expensive activities, clothes, equipment, tutors, medical stuff, wear and tear, etc. I’m very on top of our finances and it’s eye watering. The financial impact on families is horrific. On a bad year (usually because of hospital admissions) I would estimate 8 times the cost, on a good year probably 4.

Try to get your head round the reality of that.

How would your household manage if you had 8 times the outgoings for one of your children for the next 12 months?

What does it actually look like?

These benefits are to allow families to have at least a chance of staying afloat. That old idea that we are all weathering the same storm but some of us are on rafts and some of us in nice comfortable boats springs to mind. We can do better. We can throw a life jacket to those who are sinking.

If the child's needs are the same then they would also be able to qualify for DLA or PIP and use it to pay for therapy. If it doesn't meet the threshold then I wouldn't say that the needs are the same.

I definitely wouldn't compare it to a child getting tutoring in addition to going to school. My child's disability currently prevents him from going to school at all, we're waiting for his EHCP and crossing our fingers that mainstream will take him.

But I don’t think things like DLA and PIP are investing in people - they are sticking plasters for a society whose services are so inadequate that many are ceasing to be able to function, so are having to fall back on benefits to survive. I actually agree with the premise that too many people are in receipt of them, but that’s because we’ve created a society in which they can’t function, not because they just don’t want to work (obviously, there are exceptions who play the system, just as most work places have the person in them who’s isn’t exactly earning their keep).