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.

Have you anything analytical or substantive to say on the subject?

WHY do you think the criteria need changing? For that matter, why do you think the existing criteria aren’t being implemented properly?

Do you realise that for most people who work, their wages also haven’t gone up every April, they are still earning the same amount and dealing with increased prices? That is a country wide issue in the cost of living crisis, it’s not something specific to those who are claiming benefits?

"I disagree. Benefits need to be cut. Absolutely ridiculous the amounts some folk are raking in."

Yes profoundly disabled people ( the people that are receiving the highest benefits ) are so lucky aren't they.

Tell me you read the daily Mail and have no grip on the actual reality of living on benefits without telling me you read the Daily Mail and have no grip on the actual reality of living on benefits.

Do better 🙄

Benefits are significantly less than wages. I still have to pay my bills. I don't get free utilities. I don't get a subsidy at the supermarket. Everything costs exactly the same for me.

A good start would be allowing carers to claim allowances without being means tested or punished for working as well as caring.

Where will they work? Morgan Stanley?

Agree with the poster who said that supporting adult children will fall onto families. My adult DS lost his PIP but he is not magically cured and in full time work so I now cover his costs at detriment to the rest of the household. If I had a big income it would not be a problem, I'm his mum, but I'm on universal credit top up myself and basically having to make the allowance cover an extra person. I have to take him to appointments etc plus my younger child also has SEN and no suitable childcare is available so working more is not an option for me at the moment. We don't like being in this situation and viewed as scroungers but I didn't ask for a disabled child or for my husband to decide to bow out of our family.

There are so many jobs out there - I struggle to believe people cannot find jobs.

I'm honestly just curious what the disability is? (I completely understand if you don't want to say)

Like? If they chop the lettuce in Subway they will still need top up benefits in order to pay rent and bills. We manufacture nothing so there are no factories. Mrs Thatcher decimated whole generations in mining communities. Any ideas?

You can put all the onus on employers you want, but unless the people using the services that are being provided are willing to accept things done a little differently, it won't work.

I've got some diagnosed issues that mean I'm perhaps a little slower than someone who doesn't, and although deliver the service well and timely, there's as many people who think my delivery is too poor and I shouldn't be in that job, because it's different to their expectations, who shout at me, call me stupid, personally insult me, as there people who are absolutely fine with it.

It's not like I'm in a life or death role, or those few extra moments have a lasting and traumatic effect, I'm in a low paid service role that unless you get in dramatically and criminally wrong, is not even a minor inconvenience. Yet people increasingly won't tolerate it.

I used to do jobs away from the public, however I now have physical issues that mean I can't, so what do I do?

Gotta be out working because I'm able, but just not anywhere I might slightly inconvenience someone with my issues.

If we want disabled people, people with mental health issues, people with conditions like autism out working because they can, then society needs to actually accept that instead of thinking it's a great idea until it affects them ever so slightly and then it's all 'they shouldn't be doing that job!'.

A media effort of some sort would be good.

Moat if the people chipping into this debate have no idea who they are discussing beyond a conjures vision of a “shirker”.

I met a woman recently who has been fully dependent on a wheelchair since birth. She’s around 30. Thanks to DEI efforts in the HETV (High end television) sector, she’s built a career as a TV production coordinator, freelance, over the past three years. She manages this, not only because the industry has essentially put pressure on itself to hire from a wider pool of humans, but because her PIP, funds a WAV (wheelchair accessible vehicle) - a van with drive-in wheelchair access to the driver’s position, through the Motability scheme. So she can get herself around the country to shooting locations as anyone else can.

I also met two women, a couple of years apart, who were both suddenly disabled by cauda equina that wasn’t identified in time. Both had sought funding for a wheelchair, because the NHS, in most areas doesn’t fund electric wheelchairs for patients who have even minor ability to hobble around on sticks part of the time. (One was suing the NHS, which I suspect will have eventually left her in a much better position, but that’s a side issue. Meanwhile they both needed support finding chairs and help accessing work again). These are the kinds of people who need their PIP. There are other cases that come to mind that illustrate things perfectly but I can’t talk about those because I know about them through work. There does seem to be a sub-issue that lack of NHS care has recently been permanently disabling more Brits than normal. Can’t see any good statistics available on that, though.

In the meantime, we are told PIP assessors have perversely created a class of “shirkers”, “NEETs” etc who have been given PIP for essentially feeling a bit sad. Again, no good data publicly available, but if it’s true, why has been allowed to happen and what has it got to do with the far larger claimant group who need PIP for serious established disabilities?

I am astonished so many people are falling for this manipulation.

Benefits are not always significantly less than wages.

If you work full time on NMW then your take home pay each month would be around £1500.

If claiming then potentially you have

• £400 for single person over 25
• If assess as LCWRA then an extra £423
• If renting you can claim housing element of UC, amount depending on your area, but in my area for a 1 bedroom that is another £448
• If entitled to PIP then roughly £295 for lower rate

That’s £1566, so actually not vastly differently.

If you can claim enhanced rate PIP then £1711

If you have a child then another £292 per child for the first 2.

Who do you think is getting free utilities? Subsidy at supermarkets? Everything costs exactly the same for everybody?

If 90% of people lose their daily living award then we'll see a lot more families having to help out. Many on PIP do have working spouses/ partners and will likely be ok although obviously on a lower household income. Many will have savings, assets and will be ok. Many currently claiming PIP will be working also and whilst losing PIP will de a drop in income they will still work, Hopefully if they rely on a mobility vehicle to work then that will not be affected. many scenarios that I see through my work are people getting PIP themselves whilst also caring for another so have other benefits coming in too. the ones who will be drastically affected are single people getting both PIP and LCWRA and they lose them both plunging them into poverty with no safety net to fall back on.

And all those who were whinging about disabled people who didn’t work will then be whinging about their disabled Co workers getting more breaks/more time off/ questioning any reasonable adjustments……

It's reasonably rare so it would be outing. But it's a degenerative disease that has been diagnosed by a specialist. It's very painful and limits my life significantly.

I just want people to know that it isn't some teenager with anxiety they're proposing starving into good health so they can get a job. It's older people like me who will never get better they think they can starve into work. I'm already going hungry most days and it hasn't cured me yet.

It's actually made me more ill because now I have digestive issues and vitamin deficiencies to boot.

Exactly and working people have all those extra costs of actually working too, like travel costs, clothing, paying for parking etc which can hugely add up. I honestly don't know how single people live independently on nmw, they often have to take on second jobs or live with family to get by.

If you think you'll get more money if you're disabled, you can always ask someone to run your legs and arms over so you can be rolling in it too.

Yes because there's endless jobs out there at the moment

That is an extraordinarily naive statement.

69% of appeals for PIP are successful. That means a LOT of wrong decisions are being made - and the whole claiming and appeals process are so difficult that many, perhaps most, people don't get what they are entitled to in the first place.

Which “people”?

A large slice of disability claimants, for example, are those with profound learning disabilities. Do you see many of that group in retail jobs or similar where you are? Where I live, there’s a project with a shop that trains profoundly disabled special- school leavers for retail and gardening jobs, but I don’t often see that reflected in other businesses locally.

Or are you talking about the mobility impaired? Do you see many employees using mobility aids in your organisation, your town? It’s not even that common to see wheelchair users out and about in town, but that’s not because they don’t exist.

Or are you talking about people with ADHD? How would any of us recognise that group if we saw them at work?

Etc, Etc. It’s a lot of different subgroups,

All these disabled people exist, but I know where I come across those with visible disabilities, and they’re not evenly sprinkled across the jobs market. Do you really think employers are offering them all jobs and the disabled are turning them down?

Can you please point out where I said you get more money by being disabled?

What I’m pointing out clearly and with the numbers is that actually for lots of people there is very little difference financially between claiming & working full time, whereas you claimed wages to be significantly higher than claiming. Your other point was that you didn’t get an increase in April, neither did most people who earn a wage, that’s not specific to you or those on benefits- we’re all essentially worse off every year due to cost of living, I don’t know many people who get a payrise every April to cover the increase in costs.

And all of those people still have to pay for food, utilities, etc, they aren’t getting discounts either.

Very well said.

Every single time politicians institute one of these new bogey-man campaigns, people line up to fall for it.

Agree. We can’t keep going as is so what’s the alternative? The only solution at this point is to make a lot of people work through necessity. It won’t be pretty for 10 years but it’ll eventually turn things round a bit.