To be sick of all the newspaper articles saying lies about DLA and PIP

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To get any DLA or PIP you have to be significantly disabled. To get the higher rate of either part you have to be severely disabled.

A motability car is not free, it's rented. To get one you need to either be unable to walk 50 metres or have a severe learning disability, which is very difficult to get.

It's always happened but since the stuff in the news about changes to PIP it's got worse.

Articles in the newspapers claiming you can get a free car for bed wetting, which just doesn't happen. There will be children like my ds who get DLA because they have a number of problems including bedwetting but nobody gets high rate mobility for bed wetting on its own.

There are other articles about people claiming PIP and DLA for various minor sounding conditions and I am so fed up with it. I know from experience that the newspapers will have talked to people claiming PIP/DLA and twist everything they say to make them sound like a scrounger.

All these articles are giving off the message that anyone with any minor disability can claim loads of benefits.

The cost of disability benefits is enormous spiralling ever higher. For someone that loves evidence then you should absolutely know that this hasn't been fabricated by the Daily Mail. It is a real and pressing issue that we need to get a grip of.

So perhaps the government needs to look at what’s going on in the country that’s setting people up to need to rely on disability benefits (I mean, their disability aside 🤔) instead of this incessant propaganda that pits people against each other.

Perhaps they sort out the messes (education, NHS, corrupt systems that no longer work) that are putting more and more people into feeling helpless and hopeless. Education has a huge crisis on its hands with a growing mental health epidemic, rising rates of SN, and no one seems to want to look at why. Plenty of parents could tell you why, but the rest of the population, so used to SN and disability being othered and not part of the problem, are so keen to discount them as real people and therefore deserving of equality and dignity. This, and threads like this, are part of the problem. Anyone smugly posting about “why should they have luxury cars” whilst naming cars that are not luxury, and spouting nonsense about “my aunt’s neighbours uncle is claiming high rate pip for his twisted ankle” are falling for this propaganda and are letting fellow humans down. We’re all in this together, whether we’re disabled or not, and as soon as we can all stand together the sooner we can make something better than the pitiful state that the governments of the last 20-30 years have left us in!

@SpidersAreShitheads
I'm not at all angry about seeing a disabled person driving a flashy car. What an odd thing to suggest! I just don't think it's a good use of tax payer money to part fund luxury cars for anybody. Disabled people can fund luxury cars privately like everyone else and that's none of my business.

I also think it's important to remember that poverty is more common amongst households with a disabled person but the majority of these households do not live in poverty and a reasonable number are relatively wealthy. The same is true when you look at the statistics around disabled people with professional careers. Of course this the majority of disabled people aren't working in handsomely paid jobs but it certainly isn't some teeny tiny minority either.

@IWonderWhereMySharkPantsWent
Your post is just as biased as anything you would read in the Daily Mail. I don't believe that successive governments has some strange conspiracy against disabled people. I also don't think that this huge spike in claims for disability benefits is either because people (especially young people) have suddenly become a hell of a lot more disabled or that it's the total fault of the government.

People are cynical about people abusing the system because they understand human nature and know that it is open to manipulation. The incentive is clearly there for some people that may well feel like life doesn't offer them many attractive alternative options.

I'm sure you will deny this and insist that each and every claim is legitimate but the general population know this isn't the case. We don't live in a bubble. We all have anecdotes and examples from our life that inform our views. You insisting that it's all the government's fault simply doesn't tally with what many people believe.

I don’t think I mentioned a conspiracy?
In the last few months there has been a boost in articles about disability benefits - costing the country too much, getting free cars (which has been explained over and over to be wrong).

Cutting disability benefits would be great for the government, so they’re currently pushing this narrative, just like several years ago it was a slew of propaganda about benefits scum. Conveniently making the country’s money problems about the most vulnerable in society sucks in those who do not see disabled people as human, or think deep down that they should not have anything like a decent life. You see this attitude in threads about education too - often thinking that SN should be taken out of the equation because it’s not real life, when it is. And if you do take the disabled and SN out of it where do they go, and where do the government draw the line next?

People have explained over and over that the cost to the country to means test pip and to investigate the fraud (which is known to be very low) would be far more than would be gained back, so apart from making people like you feel good, what would it do? Fuck all!

I know so many families with disabled family members, most claim DLA or pip, every single one provided a huge amount of evidence. Many were turned down.
It is not the case, despite what you read here and in the daily mail, that millions of people are fraudulently claiming.

And like someone further up said - the country is losing more money to wealthy businesses owners finding tax loopholes, setting up parts of their businesses in other countries with very low tax rates. Why are we not seeing weekly threads frothing about that? Why should very wealthy people not pay their taxes? But no, week in week out we’re getting these awful dehumanising posts about disabled people 🙄

@IWonderWhereMySharkPantsWent
Disability benefits are controversial and something people feel passionately about. This is why there will be always articles on this and asylum seekers etc. I know you are convinced that there is no alternative way to do things and means testing is impossible/expensive but this simply isn't the case. Whether the means testing will be as sophisticated as you would like or the alternative approach will be something you would endorse is another question but there are obviously different ways of tackling the rise in disability benefit claims. You will never prove that the current system is the only way to do things because it factually isn't true.

Tax avoidance is a completely different issue and a red herring in this discussion. It is totally possible to tackle more than one thing at any one time. It's not an either/or situation.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czd3n22qz21o.amp

Been reading this thread and posting on others as I'm extremely worried about the current propaganda and dehumanisation going on around the subject of the vulnerable and disabled.

This BBC article came up and thought it's nothing to do with "luxury cars" I thought it worth sharing. On another thread that has filled up there was some scorn directed at carers who probably weren't really carers at all, allegedly, so this article is a balance.

There will of course be cries of "but we don't mean those genuine cases" however, the reason I'm sharing this is because I'm worried about the mindset being encouraged by the deluge of articles encouraging suspicion of anyone in receipt of any kind of benefits. The current zeitgeist is extremely unhealthy.

But the massive flaws in your proposed system have been repeatedly pointed out. Means testing simply isn’t feasible.

Throughout the thread people have pointed out the flaws in your misconceptions about how things work but like many a daily mail reader you aren’t interested in that preferring to carry on your ableist rhetoric.

I'm guessing many of you who want to means test haven't actually thought this through? My pip letter is evidence of disability and means I can get a carers ticket, it's access to things like disabled persons railcard, blue badge, bus passes, etc

It would just create more admin. Currently certain groups of people on pip are automatically entitled to a blue badge and bus pass. But if it was means tested that's extra admin for them and their council.

And where do you draw the line? Average disability cost is around £1000 a month and maximum pip is £749 every 4 weeks

Disability benefits are only controversial because so many people would rather they didn’t exist.
Disability itself is a taboo - but why? People seem to think they are immune to it and stick their heads in the sand, praising their good genetics.
People complained when my friend (whose dd has a genetic disorder that means she is entirely dependent on carers yet intellectually very clever and capable and has a very bright future ahead of her) has to buy specialist equipment that will give her dd a better quality of life, things like a lift in her house, a hoist to help turn her several times through the night. Several people have suggested that she should have been euthanised at birth, that it would have been better for her to die. Some have suggested that their quality of life would be better if they had a really nice car - comparing their selfish wish for a snazzy car to this child’s need to have equipment that helps her breathe properly!

Means testing has been explained so many times to you, I don’t think it could be spelled out any more clearly, so why are you still banging on about it?

I think there are many ways to improve things, in terms of benefits, schools, people’s quality of life, but they rely on people seeing disabled and vulnerable individuals as human and deserving of a life/education/dignity, so with people like you around I guess we’re going to have to stick to the current system 🤷🏻‍♀️

Tax avoidance is not a red herring at all. It’s high earning people fleecing the country out of billions of pounds. It’s not an either/or situation, but when there’s a tsunami of anti-disability info being spewed out and literally nothing about the billions lost to tax loopholes it’s very clear who people hate. Disability benefits in this country are under claimed because they are so hard to get. Research has shown that rates of fraud are very low. That should be the end, in lack of anything more meaningful, inclusive and effective, because too many people would rather have the glee of seeing these “scroungers” suffer. That’s what it boils down to, because currently that’s the only option that would save money.

Seriously, at any point in time you are one accident or illness away from being disabled. You could very easily become one of those people, scrounging off the decent tax payers. I’d willingly bet my right arm that your tune would change if that happened.

Disabled people are part of society. Anyone not seeing this has major issues and should have a very hard look at their values.

Seriously, at any point in time you are one accident or illness away from being disabled. You could very easily become one of those people, scrounging off the decent tax payers. I’d willingly bet my right arm that your tune would change if that happened.

I think a lot of people forget this. They categorise people as either hard working taxpayers or grabby scroungers without realizing quite how fluid those categories are.

Two years ago today I was a hard working taxpayer; I was a teacher working full time. Two years ago tomorrow, I got the phone call telling me I had a brain tumour. No more hard working taxpayer - I became a grabby scrounger basically overnight.

If it happened to me, it could happen to anyone else on the thread.

@IWonderWhereMySharkPantsWent means testing hasn't been 'explained' to me. People like you are adamant it isn't worth doing despite there being easy and cheap ways of doing it. It might be done in ways you don't like and might have consequences you don't like but it absolutely isn't unaffordable or impossible. It is just weird gas lighting to pretend that any post on this thread has proven otherwise. You attach it to pre-existing mechanisms already in place for other forms of means testing.

Disability isn't taboo. The controversy is around the escalating costs of disability benefits and whether the system is being manipulated by unscrupulous people for personal gain.

Tax avoidance is a red herring as it doesn't address the core issue of what is going on with disability benefits and whether the system and processes currently involve place are fit for purpose.

Of course disabled people are part of society like everyone else. Nobody is denying that.

But that is exactly what people aren't doing on this thread. There is recognition that disabled people can work in highly paid and skilled professions and actually earn a lot of money. They also can be part of wealthy households. This is why there is discussion of means testing.

I actually think the complete opposite to what you suggest. The distinction between the disabled and non disabled is a lot less well defined than people on this thread would have you believe. 40% of working aged people suffer from a long term health condition. Many people will be existing in a grey area between being disabled and being in perfect health. Some will be on a trajectory towards disability and be very close to whatever arbitrary threshold has been put in place. The world isn't black and white. This is why resources need to be allocated carefully and it is misleading to pretend that even the so called able are all operating on a level playing field.

Means testing and the costs of it has been discussed several times in the thread.

Yes they could find a totally new way to do it, but do you honestly think that this government is able to find a low cost way of finding all these scroungers (when research repeatedly shows that’s not the case!) when we know full well they’re not capable of it, and if they are then they’re capable of fixing education and the NHS, which would in turn mean fewer disabled people.

The situation is that the government do everything in their power to avoid addressing the very real issues that are disabling many people. But for healthy people disconnected to this it is too much to understand, until it happens to them, or their child, or someone they have to put themselves out for in order to support, then they are the ones feeling pissed off and horrified at the dehumanising and othering that you can see all over threads like this. Until then it’s the same old story.

There is recognition that disabled people can work in highly paid and skilled professions and actually earn a lot of money.

Some. That doesn't mean all of them can, or that all of them should be expected to.

This is why there is discussion of means testing.

I'll be fully in support of means testing once PIP and DLA are only tied to the amount of money you receive. Currently, it's too deeply tied to eligibility for other services and meeting other needs - until that is dismantled and an alternative found, I won't support means testing.

Of course disabled people are part of society like everyone else. Nobody is denying that.

Maybe not, but plenty are not happy that some disabled people are entitled to a benefit that helps them improve their quality of life.

Plenty would rather see disabled people only have access to an invacar that marked people out as different and didn’t meet many disabled people’s needs, even though the motability scheme doesn’t cost the tax payer any money.

Plenty begrudge the expensive and specialised equipment that’s needed by some severely disabled people and feel that the person would be better off dead (not said on MN, or is deleted quickly if it is, but beyond the MN community it’s common to read these opinions, and in rl).

Disabled people are part of communities, but are mostly not valued, are treated as other and not as real people, they’re not wanted in schools (just look at the multitude of posts with the same old posters begrudging any funding going on SN, when arguably the growing numbers of SN are caused by the schools themselves!), and then when they can claim things that make their often shit lives a little more bearable, people complain and call them scroungers, wring their hands and proclaim “there must be a better way!”.

There is so much the government could do to improve things and longterm save money, but the recent demonisation of disabled people in terms of schooling and benefits shows exactly where their solutions lie, and none of it will improve things for disabled people, and then they’ll move onto the next group who are deemed to be an economic drain.

I think if it’s means tested the assumption will be that we don’t need access to those discounts.

Why is it you are convinced there are “cheap and affordable” ways to means test it and yet the Government, OBR and independent economists disagree with you? What is it that convinces you that you know better?

For example, a member of DWP staff on this thread told you that the DWP estimates means testing PIP would require 7000 to 8000 additional staff, the cost of whom would far outweigh the savings that they estimate of £2 million per year because so few people who are severely disabled are higher earners and those who are generally don’t claim the PIP they are entitled to anyway because it is such a humiliating and invasive process. This £2 million saving as a result of means testing would fund only 50 of those staff’s salaries, less in fact as that doesn’t cover employer NI, pension contributions etc. Then all of these extra DWP staff will need offices to work in, computer equipment, heating, insurance, HR functions, IT support functions etc.

That’s the ongoing cost every year, before you factor in the cost of putting an IT system in place. Just to give you an idea, HMRC estimates that the recent change to child benefit eligibility thresholds is going to cost them £2.7 billion to implement. That is just for changing the threshold of an existing system, with the IT infrastructure already in place (and doesn’t include the ongoing costs of them doing the extra work annually i.e. processing all of the additional tax returns, processing forms to stop child benefit payments/ restart them, eligibility, investigations, complaints, corrections of errors… etc which is roughly £1.5bn per year). And for child benefit this is relatively simple because it is administered via the existing HMRC IT system. Means testing PIP would be much more expensive because PIP is administered via DWP IT systems which are totally separate and not linked up to HMRC IT systems. Integrating these two would be almost impossible and require effectively replacing both in their entirety with one unified system because the only means-testing system that the DWP has at the moment is the functionality to receive monthly earnings reports from HMRC (that’s the extent of integration they could achieve), the rest has to be done manually, e.g. checking of bank statements for assets etc. Replacing the DWP and HMRC systems would cost tens of billions of pounds even if the Government had competent software engineers (newsflash - they do not). To give you some idea of scale, Reeve’s tax rises in the autumn statement came to a total of only £4 billion. So how do you propose this is funded?

This is just to give you any idea of internal costs to the Government of implementing your bright idea. It is extremely obvious that the costs would far, far outweigh the savings even looking only at the internal costs of simply setting up and administering the system.

Then you have to consider the economic effects of such a system. As has been explained to you, means testing PIP would create another cliff edge in the tax system which creates a disincentive to work, therefore lower employment participation. It would make it impossible for many of the people who do claim PIP and work to continue to do so, forcing them onto universal credit so rather than saving the PIP money they currently receive, they would then receive PIP and have to claim universal credit for their living costs (which they currently cover themselves by working) and lower overall tax revenue because they’d no longer be paying tax.

This is why Governments are now realising that means testing is counterproductive and that such cliff edges need removing from all levels of the tax and benefits system, and why the Government proposed the recent reforms to universal credit which were designed to try to remove just such a cliff-edge. There are plenty of economic studies on this. For example, Jeremy Hunt commissioned independent economic research on why UK productivity levels are so low (the main cause of falling living standards) and it noted that there are significant disincentives to work built into the tax system at various levels for example, the universal credit taper rate being so high it is barely worth people working more hours, the child benefit withdrawal having the same effect at that threshold meaning marginal tax rates can be as high as 80%, the withdrawal of the personal allowance and childcare funding at £100k which raises marginal tax rates for people with children to over 100% i.e. if they earn more their net income goes down. Obviously nobody will work more when the incremental increase in earnings is so low, or even negative. So you end up with people cutting their hours, or retiring early and dropping out of the workforce entirely, or emigrating. HMRC data shows bunching of earnings just below each of these thresholds so the effect is demonstrable from the data, that people obviously change their behaviour as a result of the perverse disincentives, so it lowers productivity and overall tax revenue meaning less money is available to fund services, growth is lower and everyone is poorer as a result.

Why are you convinced that all of the ONS data, OBR data, HMRC data, DWP data, and all of these independent economists are wrong and you are right?

Can you please share with us all your “cheap and affordable” way of means testing that would solve all of these above issues, costs and negative effects and actually result in lower costs to the taxpayer?

I mean, we’re talking about a Government with IT systems so advanced that during Covid they were using excel spreadsheets to record Covid test results. And then “lost” personal data from thousands of tests because they didn’t realise that excel spreadsheets have a limited number of rows. 😆😆😆

But literally nobody is suggesting taking benefits away from somebody with a brain tumour.

I’ve never seen a post saying, ‘you know what, let’s just scrap the welfare state. The scrounging leeches can just fend for themselves.’

What people are rightly objecting to are people who sit around on benefits for years if not DECADES due to ‘anxiety’ or ADHD, which seems to be the new bad back. It slightly vexes hard working people that somebody can take in 2k a month through claiming they’re too anxious to work despite being able to go on holiday, socialise and do anything but work. 30 years ago everyone would’ve laughed if told in future we would be ordered to take seriously claims where people can socialise, holiday, go clubbing, do as they please but are ‘too ill to work’.

Before you say ‘oh that never happens…’ yeah it does, here is an example. 8 years on benefits and counting. And yes I’m well aware nobody just says they’re anxious and gets the money, you need a paper trail blah blah, but to me, it’s immaterial - we cannot afford to sustain this many anxious or ND people, and we are tired of having our intelligence insulted that the ONLY thing they can’t do is work.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn0ry09d50wo.amp

Yet a poster up thread said 'it's their own fault' in respect of non disabled people who are not on benefits and are struggling to get by on low wages.

There is a sense on this thread that non disabled tax payers should just suck up how their tax is spent and not ask whether it is spent as efficiently as it can.

There is no denying we should help the most vulnerable in society. What that help looks like, and who gets it should be subject to reasonable scrutiny.

The welfare state is great in principal but it is open to abuse. It has also created a financial trap and a situation where wants are confused with needs and where any effort to rebalance the books is seen as unjust.

It’s not just “the disabled” that are being targeted though is it? It’s the most disabled. The group receiving high rate mobility and the group on Universal Credit who receive the additional payment for having limited capacity to work or for work related activity. This group is not “borderline” or particularly hard to identify. They are particularly vulnerable and voiceless. The idea that you could blag your way in to this group is slightly bizarre.

How we treat these people should be a source of pride. They and other vulnerable groups (like small children or the very old) should be the very last to feel any impact from the current financial situation. I just don’t believe we are there yet and I don’t believe we want to be a country that takes from the weakest first. Sometimes you just have to decide who you want to be.

In effect the government (mostly regardless of party leaning) makes rubbish financial decisions probably after too much in the way of powdered stimulants if some reports are believed, panics when it goes sideways, looks round for an easy target, then pits the rest of the population against them through media manipulation.

It's a softly softly version of Stasi tactics. Tried, tested but dressed up as "for the greater good". Anything to avoid addressing their own self serving activities, and then everyone's surprised when people feel victimised.

Take the anger about the right to buy scheme. People did as they were told, but now are being blamed for doing so because it contributed to the skewed property market we currently have, and it's hardly their fault that the government just stopped building council housing with the proceeds. Partly law of unintended consequences perhaps, but also an incredible lack of foresight, planning and accountability from government.

This is a similar issue, and it's being driven by unchecked wealth transfer and the protection of corporate and shareholder interest at the expense of all else.

And the fact you have to replace the car every three years. There’s absolutely no need. Inevitably, you also get people taking the piss by adding a bunch of additional drivers who aren’t the person receiving PIP when it is meant to be for the person receiving it or on their behalf.

Unfortunately I know a couple people who's had a new car financed and they can walk. A fair bit. I'm not entirely sure how they did it. I honestly think people play on a medical condition so it comes across worse than what it is.

Hi Jeremy..