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 LCWRA (UC health element) will be linked to PIP so if you're claiming due to MH conditions and therefore likely to not score more than 2 points in any one activity for PIP, you won't be eligible for the UC health element. Just reading it now it's actually a lot worse than I was expecting

@Andwhoisasking I know 4 senior academics who have all taken redundancy/severance deals at the end of last year. All mid to late fifties all higher rate taxpayers and top of their game, just had enough. I know this is about benefit cuts but your comment about reducing hours or stopping working as HRT struck a chord.

Completely agree. I said on here pretty much the thing when the election was taking place and no one wanted to pay attention. It was all there for those who wanted to see it. I grew up in a Labour supporting household, always told ‘Labour good for the people/Tories bad’. It was highly evident that wasn’t going to be the case if they were voted in and I didn’t vote for them because I could see they were determined to come for the most vulnerable. All these threads on here with horrifying ignorance about neurodivergence showed and still shows that the majority don’t have a clue about how to move forward with a balance of lowering benefits and helping ND people in work and education. It’s going to backfire horribly.

And the changes are coming into force in 2026 not 2029 as first planned ..

Personally I’d like to see a crackdown on pocket money for people in prison.
I really don’t think we should be providing these or any type of luxury
I believe all prisoners should work to pay towards their keep.
It costs over £52,000/ yr to keep one person in prison! x 88,000prisoners in England and Wales alone = £4,476,000,000 / year.

Will they look at what other benefits you may get? eg I get Access to Work, so would they look at what I get it for when reassessing PIP eligibility? I can't even remember what I scored last time for living but I know I got high scores for mobility.

If the tories were doing this, there would be a meltdown on here. Labour are a disgrace. Now way should they be going after disabled people

Who will decide that you’ll ever be able to work?

The PIP assessors who are asking amputees if it’s likely ‘their condition will improve’? The assumption is ALWAYS that people will get better. Even when they’re suffering from stuff that has no treatment/recovery.

So many people claim that don’t need it, just too bloody lazy to work

If you can call cutting their income so that even more can be pushed below the poverty line and needing food banks “protection”

Access to Work is in meltdown.

Many people who WANT to get back to work are waiting months and months fir their initial appointment…..

But I’m sure they’ll look at it to find way to show you dint need PIP

Statement from Kendall on PIP

“Social and demographic change means more people are now living with a disability, but the increase in disability benefits is double the rate of increasing prevalence of working-age disability in the country, with claims amongst young people up 150%, for mental health conditions up 190% and claims for learning difficulties up over 400%, according to the IFS.
Every day there are more than 1,000 new Pip awards. That’s the equivalent of adding a population the size of Leicester every single year”.

Regardless of your views on these latest changes, surely it’s clear that the amount spent on benefits is just not sustainable?

We genuinely need to investigate why so many young people feel they cannot work due to mental health conditions. I’m in my 40s and when I left uni and started work 20 odd years I didn’t know a single person my age who was not working and claiming benefits due to anxiety or any other MH condition. Was Streeting was condemned for suggesting MH issues are over diagnosed but might he have a point? One young person in my team was sat at her desk in tears recently. She was panicked and anxious because she’d forgotten to bring in her Rescue Remedy spray and was concerned about what might happen if she had an anxious moment before a customer presentation. In the end she went home early and was signed off work for the rest of the week. I mean…this to me is a normal, every day worry (feeling a bit nervous before a customer meeting) but it now merits being signed off work.

Before hand people who didn't get PIP were getting the UC health element. I wasn't given it even though I was on enhanced mobility and scored 4 in one daily living activity. When I was reassessed 3 months ago I got awarded it. I never understood why people who don't get PIP were getting it but I wasn't?

Same. I scored 4 points for 1 daily living question but got 2 in every other and 12 in one question in the mobility section.

I'm worried what this will mean for me when it comes to renewing my application or whether they'll just strip me anyway and make me reapply.

I can't find it now but someone made an excellent point about the insistence on returning to the office.

We're constantly trying to get my epilepsy under control (losing battle at the moment) and I regularly have seizure clusters. If I could work from home, I could work in between the seizures and then make up any lost time at the end. If being in the office is mandatory, my sickness record will be a mess because it'd be time off work every time (not to mention relying on colleagues to help during/after seizures as opposed to my husband, who knows what to do).

I'm applying for lots of work from home jobs, but there's such a push to get back to the office that I just don't understand.

And many like myself who work full time but receive PIP and pay much more back into the system monthly in terms of tax and NI who without support may need to give up their job and claim even more benefits

Shall we change the term to 'public funds' because at the end of the day, that's what it all is.

If you're not earning it/paying for it yourself, it's coming out of the public purse.

I probably sound very naive but how on earth can you claim PIP fraudulently? In my case I claimed for my son and had to provide a mountain of medical evidence in the form of letters from consultants that he sees, who confirmed his various disabilities and how they are managed.

I just don't get how you can be awarded PIP if you pretend you have an illness/disability.

It seems we are ok with our current scores I think?

The government report I read on fraud in the benefit system said that a large random sample of claims were picked. They then assessed the evidence on file from the original claim, then had a telephone or face to face interview and asked for extra_additional medical evidence to back up thier first bit

It said the main issues were people improving and not updating the dwp that they had improved.

Illegal immigrants are not entitled to benefits.

Yes but those ‘some people’ ought not be 25% of the workforce should they?

No because it doesn’t apply to the mobility element.

Claimants can be eligible for the daily living component as well as the mobility component. Just because the proposals don’t apply to the mobility component doesn’t mean those with physical disabilities won’t have their award cut. Those with physical disabilities who receive 1/2/3 points on several daily living activities will lose their PIP.

For example, someone with 2 points for being unable or cook a simple meal using a conventional cooker but can use a microwave, 2 points for needing assistance to cut up food, 1 point for needing an aid to manage medication, 3 points for needing assistance to get into or out of the bath or shower, 2 points for needing a aid to managing toileting and 2 points for needing an aid to dress would under the proposals not be eligible.

Those people saying it’s not too bad for claimants or won’t actually save the government much money - you’re very very wrong.

This is my job, and the requirement to score 4 points in a single activity will be impossible for most claimants to achieve.

Anyone who has scored for needing aids due to their physical issues, gone. Anyone who needed prompting due to mental health issues, gone. Even people with physical and mental issues, gone.

The only way people will score is via assistance, supervision, social support or help with basic things. These are not very common choices for an assessor to pick. Disability has to be severe, enduring and/or for all other options to have been exhausted before they’ll be given.

Don’t underestimate the significance of this announcement today. Some people will still qualify, sure, but I am absolutely certain that this will save the government a fortune.

Never dare do?

The Tories made changes to claiming disability benefits that were so bad people were killing themselves.

It's their ideological attitude to cutting spending on public services which has got us into the fine mess we are in.