To wonder if all those gleeful about PIP cuts are going to welcome people with serious mental health conditions as colleagues and employees?

[Somethingthecatdraggedin7]

Given the amount of ableisism I see on MN I think the likelihood of people welcoming people with serious mental health conditions into their workplace is pretty low.
And yes, these people will very likely now be forced to try to work even though their condition makes it impossible. We are not just talking about some lazy twenty year old who expects to sit at home gaming due to his “anxiety” as many people seem to believe is the case. It will be people with significant impairments to social functioning.
Even if they get support to apply for jobs, and even if they then get the position (doubtful) how accommodating will colleagues or customers be if the person seems a bit odd, or gets adjustments workmates deem unfair?
This is going to be a total shit show.

Due to changes in how schools are run now. Children are under more pressure and many can't keep the mask on. Also SEN funding has been slashed so more children with SEN are in mainstream schools.

Why can’t people be angry about both?

@Whammyyammyat least you’re admitting to being gleeful. It’s not so easy to be flippant when yourself or someone close to you goes through a life changing nightmare situation and has to rely on support trust me. There for the grace of god go I and all that.

You need to think about the assets these people have. It's not about just taxing high earners. There is untold wealth that they manage to hide from the tax man. Its truly staggering

👏

Thank goodness for some common sense on this thread.

Don’t knock Benidorm until you’ve tried it 🤣

You’d have thought that with the WFH jobs available now the workplace suits people who get anxious in commutes or around people. In my industry it’s almost impossible to find a job that isn’t WFH at least 60% of the time, most are 100% WFH

Tax assets or riches only works to an extent. What happens when the so-called rich decide they don't want to work and generate said riches? Or would rather live elsewhere - like the 10,000 millionaires that left the UK last year. What then?

We cannot run a society where a quarter of the working population are not working - and the elderly and children also need taking care of. The numbers just don't stack up.

It is all of our responsibility to contribute to a functioning society - to the best of our ability. Much of the issue is mindset and access. For many grades of physical and mental disability, you will find people who are supported to work and contribute.
And those who cannot shouldn't and should be looked after. But that is not 10 million people and counting.....

Because focus and attention is a finite resource and one problem is vastly bigger than the other.

They can also rearrange the deckchairs on the titanic if they want to. Or fix the taps while their house is in fire. Stupid though.

The problem is, the number of people on disability benefits has increased so much over the past 30 years. In 1995 there were 2.8 million people claiming SDA as it was then - it equated to 7.5% of the working age population. By 2005 with the improvements that had been made to health systems and workers rights it had fallen to 2.7million - 6.8% of the working age population.

By 2015 it had risen to 3.2million (7.8% of working age population) and it is now 4 million which is 9.4% of the working age population.

While there may be some additional people whose disability has been exacerbated by the crap state of the NHS, there must also be something else going on.

With two points per section being the requirement, it does put people into the bracket of receiving PiP whose conditions may not be as severe and who, with the right support could become independent of benefits.

I personally think benefit support around disability has become too wide and too shallow (too many people claiming / qualifying and payments being too low). This is view that I have formed based on both personal and professional experience.

I'd prefer to see fewer people claiming but higher levels of support for those who are most in need (including the removal of the bedroom tax - which was much more punitive for severely disabled people than these changes).

BUT - it does come with the huge caveat that the right support needs to be put in place to support people to become independent of benefits.

I was quite shocked at first at the announcements yesterday, but looking at all the other things that are being announced that go alongside this, it could all come together to make a really big and positive difference in time e.g.

• Not forcing people whose conditions will never get better to go through re-assessment.
• Making above inflation benefit increases permanent
• The 'right to try' work without losing benefits straight away (I particularly like this one as it may give people the confidence to have a go without worrying they will have to go through the hell of reclaiming if it doesn't work out)
• Reducing the number of benefits to simplify the system and save money in administration and make it easier for people to be able to understand what they are entitled to.
• Making requesting flexible working more difficult for employers to turn down.
• Expanding mental health services and increasing the number of MH professionals
• Investing £1 billion in tailored employment support for people with MH difficulties
• Investing in HMRC to reduce tax avoidance and closing loopholes.

I'd like to see more carrot / stick support for employers to encourage them to employ disabled people and huge changes to adult social care to support the aging population (personally I think responsibility for it should be taken off councils and it should be part of the NHS). I'd also like to see education reforms which move the curriculum back towards something that better supports all children and offers more flexibility around learning styles which would reduce the number of young people suffering with mental health issues and enable ND children to cope better.

It is inevitable that some people will be negatively impacted by the changes - but millions of people are negatively impacted by the system as it is now.

I'm still keeping an open mind that what they are doing will make things better for a lot of people eventually. You can't rebuild something overnight that has had a wrecking ball taken to it for the past 15 years - under the last Labour government the NHS improved, the social safety net was pretty robust, children were lifted out of poverty and the gap between the rich and the poor was reduced. But it all took a good 5-7 years and the state of things in 1997 wasn't nearly as bad as it is now - this government have been in for less than a year - it ain't going to happen overnight!

So the answer to ops question, according to most, is that none of these pip claimants who are going to be helped back into work actually had mental health issues, so the workplace doesn't need to adapt or change to accommodate them and people don't need to expect to have to work alongside more mentally ill people.

This doesn't affect me personally, but I'm terrified of how bleak our country will look after this reform. My father in law has been unemployed after the company he worked for folded and he's applied and interviewed for countless jobs for 18 months. In reality no one will take on someone nearing retirement age and he's had good interview feedback and is clearly a reliable and loyal employee looking at his history. He'd planned to work until retirement age and now is panicking over how they will continue to afford their modest lifestyle.

Food banks struggling to cope with demand, the ever rising cost of living and interest rates on mortgages crippling people who were previously comfortable and living within their means. It's all very very grim.

Billions is spent every year on fraudulent benefits cases. Thats not small fry. It’s not a few people doing it.

We should all be concerned.

Those who are able to work absolutely should. Why wouldn’t they want to. I agree too many have been allowed to jump on this disability bandwagon. Well shame on them because now this review is likely to involve (or at least give worry to) those in genuine need. They’ve brought the whole thing crashing down. The irony

There are some awful personal accounts on this thread. It makes me feel so sad for people.

I have worked in Sweden for a while which has excellent public services. It also has very high participation in the Labour market, i.e. people work to pay for it and only use benefits when they need to. Some really good support services are available in terms of paternity leave and childcare generally. It is not moral or helpful to the individuals involved to have a large section of people who can work not working.

The question is, why are the numbers of sick and disabled rising all the time?

I think they need to sort out NHS waiting lists first . So many people are off work waiting for medical care.

But ultimately there is an issue with people who think it's fine not to contribute anything to society. I don't want anyone to starve or be homeless but nor do I think it's fair to pay people to be off work to have a similar lifestyle to those in work.

Most young people are in good health, maybe you shouldn't get benefits until after you've paid in for a number of years. Or maybe benefits should be as vouchers for essentials rather than cash.

The fraud for PIP is close to O%. This is not about fraud

I'm getting really bored of this narrative

taxjustice.uk/blog/wealth-taxes-will-cause-the-rich-to-flee-12-wealth-tax-myths-debunked/

I'm 100% gleeful. But just for the ones scamming the system having their lifestyle changed, actually over the moon if it happens.
The government aren't stupid and aren't targeting the genuine people that require additional support, and I hope that they continue to receive it.

The ones that simply choose to live off the state I hope the rug is pulled from their feet ASAP
Is that so wrong?

Well we have to try. The solution is not to run the country into bankruptcy by spending the ever reducing tax revenue on maintaining rising percentages at home. If some of them can be supported to work

We still have children and the elderly to look after....

Even if they stay - there is a reducing number of them. The UK is not producing the super wealthy at the rate of other OECD countries.

So however boring it may be - the maths is simple. If you are producing fewer wealthy people and exponentially increasing your economically inactive - bankruptcy is very near.

Labour and the Tories were happy enough to stress how ill and vulnerable disabled people were beween 2020 and 2022 when they were using them as tools to emotionally blackmail others to follow Covid rules and restrictions.

They were fucking sick and disabled enough THEN when it suited both main parties.
Labour were the ones calling for longer harder lockdowns and IMO these cuts are to pay for said lockdowns.
There are plenty of hypocrites on this site who were only happy to cite the vulnerability of ill and disabled people during Covid who are now cheering on these cuts. Sickening.

That's a choice. Austerity economics was an ideological choice, plenty of the world's top economists explicitly outlined where it would lead and they were right. There are reasons we can't look after our sick, poor and old as well as most of our neighbours or as well as we used to and they're all down to choices made by successive governments & the people who voted for them.

We had a choice between making the most vulnerable pay for those decisions or the most able and chose the latter.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_fraud_in_the_United_Kingdom#:~:text=Benefit%20fraud%20is%20a%20form,state%20in%20the%20United%20Kingdom.

Please see the section on disproportionality.

I haven’t seen anyone “gleeful” about cuts to disability payments but many people do recognize that they are becoming increasingly unaffordable.

I have a disability and manage to work. It’s definitely a struggle at times but it’s worth it. Being on benefits long term is no life for anyone unless there is genuinely no alternative