Ok who wants to swap £2500 a month in benefits for my husbands MS and my epilepsy, narcolepsy and fibromyalgia.

[bluebirdblackbird]

Well according to a lot of people on here we are on a good thing.

the 20 seizures I have in a week, chronic pain and night terrors, losing my memory after a seizure, pissing myself, hallucinations. They are all great fun. Not to mention the amount of times I have been accused of being drunk after a seizure.

or there is my husband. Diagnosed with progressive MS. Cronic Pain, shaking, cronic pins and needles, weakness in limbs plus losing mobility. Had to give up his teaching job 4 months ago after gradually reducing hours.

Not to mention the judgement when we use a blue badge because we look ok in that moment. And apparently labour are going to find us both work. Yippee cant wait to meet the employer who is going to take us both on. I am sure pissing my chair on a reg basis won’t matter to them or the losing counciouness at least a couple of times a day.

i am just fed up of yet another they are on benefits and get money and it’s not fair stamp stamp stamp. The bastards have saved up for a holiday- it’s not fair. The bastards have a mobility car but they look fine, OMG- they have got new carpets or a new sofa.

since I am guessing they none of the moaners would actually swap places with us if they could then STFU.

oh and that pip that is easy to get- my husband gets lower rate for both and that is despite providing all the evidence and appealing so we are off to tribunal. He can’t even dress himself most days and he can’t hold a pan safely or manage his medication plus many other things. If he stays on the points he is on he will lose his pip completely under these new labour proposals.

but most people know someone who’s friends, aunts, nephews, stepdaughters, cousin twice removed who lied and got it. I was taking to a lady in a wheelchair who does not get any mobility component of pip at all.

Yet nobody can link it?

agreed.

Disabilities + Benefits are the new single mums on benefits. Everyone knows someone who does this so they don't have to work etc.

For all those on this thread saying that the disability bill needs reducing, how is this reduced without the people who need this being affected? When DWP's own figures show 0.2% fraud rate for PIP? So how can this be reduced without disabled people losing vital funds they are entitled to?

It isn't possible to reduce the 'disability bill' without it causing more suffering to those who need the support.

So the only way forward is to get the masses truly believing that anyone who can no longer claim was never a genuine claimant and therefore did not need the support.

I really don't see how people can't understand this.

Where?

but they always know someone who is fiddling the system of course!

i'm sure many people i know casually would assume that of me as my condition is invisible and i don't particularly want to go into detail with people about embarassing things my body does. yet it never crosses their mind that maybe that person they know just doesn't feel comfortable telling them their full medical history... soz for not meeting your idea of what disability can look like i guess

How do you think DWP have calculated the 0.2% fraud figure? What do you think would sensibly be needed to gain any kind of real understanding about the level of fraud going on with PIP? If someone is intent of manufacturing or exaggerating a condition then it is very difficult to definitively prove they're lying without using invasive surveillance that would be incredibly expensive and breach people's human rights. I hate seeing this figure quoted with any kind of authority. DWP basically have absolutely no idea about how much fraud is taking place.

So again, i ask how do you see the bill being reduced without those who need this support to be negatively impacted? Please enlighten everyone.

It is a very low amount of fraud due to the amount of evidence you need. And considering how many people who SHOULD be able to access this and are rejected its still a drop in the ocean. You don't just rock up on a PIP form and say yeah i'm disabled pay m £xxx per month cos i can't do x y or z.

Yup - people think they know all the details of someone elses life!

My mates dad would genuinely rather tell people he is gaming the system (he is that sorta character) - the truth is, he has some conditions that HE feels are embarrassing and doesn't want people knowing about that. He would rather people think 'Oh, T's a dodgy geezer' than 'Oh, T pisses and shits into a bag, can no longer wash his own feet and needs assistance putting on compression garments daily'.

So whilst those who visit his home know - anyone down the pub would think he's making a dodgy claim.

I know many who claim for one thing and say it's for another, again because they don't feel comfortable telling other people their private medical details.

I am far more likely to reveal I have a serious and deteriorating heart condition, than that I have limited mobility due to spinal damage, sometimes shit myself, and need help washing, dressing and going to the toilet! In fact my claim is for all of those things but I am not telling Joe Blow down the pub that (I mean, if I were go to pubs, which I now do not, in fact I haven't left my house in 4 months.)

agreed.

Like you, i'm not about to tell everyone i work with or am a passing acquaintance with that my PIP goes towards the extra electricity and water i need to wash the clothes/bedding from me shitting myself due to my conditions. Me having to take countless baths. They have no right to know that. None of them are entitled to my medical history.

Ok, and I don't mean to patronise you, but you do realise that yougov data is not comparable with natcen? The former is a quick and dirty, mostly online polling company, the latter is face to face, carefully sampled gold-standard representative survey centre. In addition, and actually more importantly, these are different time series with different questions - combining them to derive trends would be a cardinal sin, statistically speaking. But I'm sure you know that 😉

So let's stay on topic and focus on the data. Your claims were specifically about cutting disability benefits, not increasing them. You claimed that there was a clamour for cutting disability benefits, so strong that it would either influence policy or usher in the far right.

The only robust data we have that addresses that specific question is from natcen 2021, which found that 4% of people support cuts to disability benefits. That's unchanged from the previous wave and lower than 10 years before. In other words, minimal and tending downwards. The authors themselves state that attitudes to disabilities have softened. But I guess they're just bonkers too.

Oh and interestingly, they also write that
"People are increasingly likely to perceive poverty in Britain and their definitions of what constitutes poverty have become substantially more generous"

Which doesn't bode well for your prediction about holidays...

PIP doesn’t need to use surveillance. It requires the claimant to produce robust medical evidence to support everything they say. Where no medical evidence is available, or it doesn’t give a clear picture of the effects of the condition, there will be an interview with a medically qualified assessor who will then decide the overall award of points which determine whether the claimant qualifies, and the subsequent level of benefit. The number of people here who think DWP hand out disability benefits to anyone who asks for them is bonkers.

@CentralLimit Of course I know it's not strictly compatible but as we don't have any recent data from natcen then I would suggest that this represents the closest we have to a snapshot of current opinion. 2021 was a very long time ago and predates the much of the CoL crisis etc so it's not hugely relevant to discussion about attitudes now other than looking at slightly longer term trends.

My claim was that support for disability benefits was decreasing and ultimately this will lead to support for cuts increasing probably through a popularist right wing party (potentially someone like Reform). I think it's a nuanced issue and plenty of people don't support cuts to the most disabled but a lot of people are in favour of reform. This complexity isn't captured in the data but you can definitely see a downward trend in support for disabled people getting more benefits in general but I imagine most people would add more detail to a yes or no response. It's not a black and white issue. You will notice that the polls that have been conducted on the latest PIP reforms show that many more support these cuts than Yougov or Natcen would suggest. This is supported by the fact that there is literally no real wider public outcry. No massive demonstrations on the street or anything really....

PIP is paid so that disabled people can take part in society. It baffles me that people think that can’t include a holiday if that’s what’s needed. There is absolutely no restriction on what PIP can be spent on. And that’s as it should be - disabled people are the ones best placed to decide how best to support themselves. It’s a benefit paid as a contribution to the accepted significant cost of living with a disability - not prescriptive to be spent purely on disability products. And holidays for severely disabled people can cost significantly more because of the disability - again, that’s what PIP is for. The notion that if you’re disabled and in receipt of PIP you shouldn’t be going on holiday is diametrically in opposition to the reason the benefit is paid in the first place. Anyone care to offer an opinion as to what child benefit should be spent on ? Because there’s plenty of evidence on MN threads to suggest that many parents save it towards major purchases, or in fact, holidays. Double standard anyone ?

I think you probably did and that it's worth applying again if you feel up to it. The website 'benefits and work' is great with guides for applications and appeals.

What annoys me is that there is a cohort of people whose disability becomes their identity. They tend to have high functioning autism, mild depression, fibromyalgia. They spend a lot of time online making demands and in identity groups. 'Neurospicy'. 'Fibro warriors'. You know the type- and it's certainly not all the people with these conditions but they are a noisy minority with lots of time on their hands. Some of them are barely out of school or uni.

The people I know with genuine physical disabilities and severe mental illness are just getting on with it as best they can. They work, they have families, they survive. They tend to be pretty stoic.

Society has always been inclined to support the latter. It's the first group who in my opinion have started causing resentment, plus the scammers claiming to be ill with unverifiable conditions. It really angers me that genuinely disabled people are getting caught in the trawl because the government are too cowardly to directly address the people they WANT to target. It is pure cowardice.

OFC DWP use extensive surveillance claimants. Have you ever seen the type of evidence adduced in a benefit fraud court case?

Meh. It’s not what I’d choose, either, but different strokes for different folks. Some people don’t have hobbies to fill the gap when they give up work. The same is often true of old retirees.

I think this is it in a nutshell. It’s too difficult to go after the real fraudsters so everyone gets hammered across the board instead. This government promised a root and branch thorough reform of the application, assessment and decision making processes to make it fairer and more transparent, with the emphasis on a right first time decision making approach to reduce the need for expensive tribunals - which IME is the only way some claimants can get a fair decision.

What we got is a lazy cut in the form of the requirement to score four or more points in any one daily living category to even be eligible for that element of PIP. That’s not going to affect the mickey takers. It’s going to affect the genuinely disabled who have intermediate level needs and who would previously have scored enough points for the standard award. When their benefit is cut, it’s going to cost the tax payer a hell of a lot more when their carers lose their carers allowance and can no longer provide care because they have to work more.

The costs will then fall on local authorities when those people require much more expensive home care, and in many cases will have to go into residential care. And how long will it be, l wonder before government tries to justify this nonsense by suggesting that all those who no longer qualify as a result of that arbitrary change, should never have been claiming in the first place. It’s a joke.

I’m talking about before benefits are awarded, not after. The bar for eligibility is set high and fraud in disability benefits is low. The underlying assertion on this thread is that some people aren’t disabled enough to claim. The plain fact is, that if they meet the criteria and have the evidence to prove it then they are. So the only alternative left to government is to move the goalposts and basically screen out quite high levels of disability to bring down costs. So you have no effective support unless you are very significantly disabled. Which is what this government will achieve with this one change to PIP. They’re not tackling fraud, they’re just reducing the numbers of disabled people who can qualify, by any available means.

If you need prompting you can get 4 points, prompting is just verbally reminding or encouraging, so for mental health issues people should still be able to get the points needed, thankfully.

It depends on whether the assessor thinks that your condition warrants that prompting. Because you can bet your bippy that once this change becomes legal, the threshold for scoring those four points will suddenly become much higher. The significance of scoring four points in daily living is now much greater than it was, and accordingly assessors will be encouraged to resort to lower point scoring descriptors wherever possible. And not a penny will be saved because all that will happen is the number of expensive appeals will soar as a result.

I really hope people do appeal, the judges are very fair, unlike the dwp

If only it were that simple…

Holidays on PIP? Are you having a laugh?

It costs the average disabled person an extra £1100 a month to just exist.

I am on higher rate PIP and get £400 a month and a WAV. I'm not entitled to anything else. That £400 doesn't come anywhere near the average costs of being disabled, let alone anything else like housing, food, bills and other essentials.

My £400 just covers my half of our housing costs. That's all I get out of it. I need a carer, a new wheelchair, adaptations, aids, etc. I can't use the toilet independently, cook, clean, dress myself. I can't do any of the things that might actually help me, like physio or other therapies, because every penny of PIP goes on rent.

I haven't had a holiday since I was a little child. My two children have never had a holiday. I don't even care. I'd just like to have a carer so I don't have to sit in pyjamas, in my own waste, until my husband comes home.