Benefit cuts will cost the economy.

[MistressoftheDarkSide]

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/29/labours-benefit-cuts-will-cost-uk-economy-billions-charity-says

Interesting article which repeats what some of us have been saying about the likely consequences of the proposed measures, including increased pressure on services.

People keep saying that the burden will fall on Social Services.

It won't.

Social services can't even remotely fill the current need.

It means more women giving up work and being dependent on men, or more neglect.

Why can't people see this? Given the number of neglected children already, a few of whom actually die and many more who are damaged for life?

I agree with universal basic income.

I’d also do more to encourage an active civil society through investment in volunteering.

The thing is that people who have no money can’t contribute to the local economy so businesses suffer. They also become sick and need healthcare etc. it’s a vicious circle.

I don't disagree, but mandatory reporting, regardless of outcome will increase pressure on services.

Your other points are valid.

Doesn't that indicate there's something wrong with the lowest paid wages?. Given the tremendous disparity between highest incomes and lowest?

Maybe ask yourself why all the propaganda about the disabled and the poor is constantly being fed to us? Maybe because if we look closely it’s not the poor that’s fleecing the country at all.

That would be too uncomfortable for some people. It is more palatable to believe that it is poor, disabled, and immigrants that are the real problem, instead of looking to the rich, who are creaming everything off, for them, and theirs.

What about those who want to work but can't get a job because so many companies aren't taking on new staff ?
The nmw was a good idea but the rest of it seems to have put employers off and it is damaging for smaller businesses. Not your finest hour Rachel.

Yep. Can't wait for my council tax to go through the roof. Can't wait for the safety net to disappear causing even more anxiety.. I have long term health issues and can only work part time (just manage without claiming benefits)

A recent FOI found that something like 90% of claimants will lose PIP when the changes come into force.

I think some better off people like to believe that the poor are undeserving because it absolves them of guilt at their disproportionality nicer lifestyle and tax avoidance.

I genuinely need them and I'm already dirt poor.

If you genuinely need them then you’re not going to be impacted by the changes to the benefits system.

I'm already impacted by the benefits system. Very, very badly. Do you realise my benefits haven't gone up at all in April? But everything has got more expensive? The same last year and the year before and the year before, with only tiny increases that do nothing to cover the cost of living.

Labour is also planning on changing the PIP criteria to exclude many, many genuine claimants.

So don't kid yourself that disabled people on benefits are living the high life or any kind of life. One of my biggest challenges in life is now preventing myself from malnutrition and a very low BMI. If you want to see what it's like, your budget for food this month is £40.

Oh and please be sure to make your food wearing a thick padded pair of gloves while also stopping to remove them and hit them your hands hard with a wooden spoon before putting the gloves back on to continue, so you can recreate how easy it is for me to make anything from scratch. I can't make it and I can't buy it, means I simply don't eat that mealtime.

People who talk so confidently like this, really have zero clue, of what they are talking about!

What makes you say that?

On one hand I do wonder what is the point of Labour continuing on the route the Tories went down for years without positive results, and think the planned cuts are probably going too far overall in terms of how much individuals will suffer.

On the other there is no economic measure Labour can propose that doesn't result in somebody saying it's bad for the economy. Cuts? Bad. Taxes? Bad. People are very good at manipulating the facts to suit their agenda.

I know people need to reassure themselves that they're crowing for the punishment of only the truly unworthy, but that simply isn't reality.

I agree with drastically changing PIP criteria. Or better still abolish it and replace it with a different benefit.

You have been asked to expand on what you mean before. You keep parroting this, but refuse to say what benefit you think it should be replaced with. So I doubt you have a clue either.🥱

Why are your hands incapable of making food?

"The basic rate of universal credit (the main benefit for working-age people on a low income) is at 40-year low in real terms amid a cost of living crisis."

Apparently that's what Amnesty International have had to say this this April about the matter. The lowest in 40 years and people on benefits are still living the life of Riley?

Make it make sense.

Because I'm physically disabled. Which is why I'm on benefits. But apparently I don't have to worry, even though I've already missed most of my meals in the last 24 hours, and plenty more before that.

I doubt it, they're cutting benefits from people who can't work due to disability, so they won't magically become less disabled and get a job

If we have no jobs, why do we need to import workers?

Cutting support for the truly disadvantaged? No, wrong on so many levels.

But getting the workshy/glass backs into work? Correct thing to do. Shame Labour were always so anti this when in opposition.

I do actually have to continue only eating food I can make from scratch, because convenience foods are way, way out of my budget. The reality of that means a perilous and painful experience in the kitchen as I cry through the pain trying to stir a sauce or end up throwing boiling water down myself because I don't have the grip. Sometimes I'm so tired when I finish, I end up accidentally leaving the hobs on all night. Sometimes I have to sit on the kitchen floor from sheer exhaustion trying to cobble bits together.

When I first became disabled, I could afford a takeaway or a ready meal to throw in the oven. Now all of that money goes on my electricity bill instead.

That's reality.

Maybe we can't get everybody who can work, to work. Accepting there will be a few who slip through the net while we help the genuine cases may be the only thing we can do in the end. Focus on other ways to help the economy instead.

It needs an employer-side effort, and a government-side effort be that compulsion or tax breaks or DEI-led recruitment.

Overwhelmingly it is easier to stay in work or resume work after disability, if you’re a professional or have a skill. Employers seem to feel it’s worth making adjustments for a professional with in-demand abilities or qualifications.

The end of the employment market that consists of many NMW employees is less keen to accommodate disabilities.

Historically, the disabled would have been left at home to rot, depending on the voluntary efforts of family. Which was a waste of skills and labour, a demand on the army of unpaid women who used to run everything, and generally a relic of the Victorian era.

Everybody needs food, clothing, shelter. You either have a system that enables nearly everybody to earn their own. Or you have a system that makes modest provision for those that can’t (or aren’t allowed to by capitalism).

PIP has absolutely nothing to do with work. It’s paid based on the difficulty level
a disability causes. That’s written into the criteria.

What has happened, though, is that increasingly, the third party, private sector PIP assessors have simultaneously become informally obsessed with the idea that disabled people in work somehow metaphysically aren’t truly disabled. That was the Tory-era effort to cut PIP by just denying people entitlement by incentivising assessors to pick holes.

Similtaneously, as part of a general societal move to vaguely “be aware” of MH, we are now paying more PIP for anxiety, handing out blue badges for anxiety, and now the discovery has apparently been made that a lot of those new additional people are NEETS. WHO knows whether that’s true? I certainly don’t trust political rhetoric and tax payers who are suddenly referring to all disabled people as “shirkers”.