The autumn budget should cut benefits before increasing tax

[Leett]

There is talk of Labour breaking their election pledge and increasing income tax by 2p. I doubt they'd do that because voters will revolt. However they need to do something with the state pension due to increase by 4.7% next year.
I really hope they cut benefits / pensions before the deciding to increase taxes.

I don’t think it’s appropriate to use an adult, who is so profoundly disabled that he needs careers to administer otc medication for him, as a model for free otc drugs on prescription for the general population. You must know that the majority of the adult population do self administer medication.
Some categories of people ie hospital and care home residents, terminally ill at home, profoundly disabled people and children are always going to need additional safeguards around medication charges, but that doesn’t mean that a completely “otherwise well” person of 70 should get free otc medication as an “entitlement”. My son is unemployed. Should he get his epipen for free? Debatable - he does need it but it’s only one prescription charge a year and he didn’t when he was a student. Should he get paracetamol for free? Of course he fucking shouldn’t - even if your son should. This sort of “whataboutery” makes it near impossible to run the country in any sort of sensible way.

Well there's one right here so now you know a pensioner who doesn't criticise every little thing young people do.

I'm not aware of your relative's partner's condition, but Paracetamol is sometimes prescribed because doctors are well aware it can only be bought in small quantities. If someone needs to take the maximum dose long term, the permitted 2 packs from Aldi will only last them a few days.

Re means testing pensions - just think about it, current 12k pa for about 30 years is worth 360k during lifetime, let's remove inflation/adjustments for simplicity.

You make it means testing hence excluding middle classes and higher earners from it. Not only this group contributes almost all taxes taken, at 20-40-45%, but you now take them an equivalent of 360k at the end of their lives.

Wouldn't you reconsider social contract in this case? why would you work as a middle/higher earner if you're impacted in this way? at the very top of the scale where 12k pa isn't noticeable you probably wouldn't, but any lower?

We could cut benefits by making companies pay a living wage that didn't need to be topped up by the tax payer. That would be good.

I don’t think l’d disagree with any of this. PIP is a poisoned chalice left by the Tories for Labour to sort out.

When it was introduced by the coalition government in 2013 it opened the door for MH and spectrum conditions to be considered for benefit - previously disability benefits could only be claimed for physical conditions and a very limited number of serious MH conditions such as schizophrenia and those which would then have been described as mental handicaps, encompassing brain damage and birth defect etc.

It was also designed to comply with the 2010 Equality Act which deemed that no formal diagnosis is necessary to be considered disabled, as long as the effects complied with the Acts’ definition of it. So now we have a massively ballooned disability benefits bill as a result. It’s really naive to think they didn’t see it coming. That’s what becomes of policy written on the back of cigarette packets !!

Current FTE at min wage gets about 26k pa. Apart from London it's a liveable wage, esp for a couple. Not luxury by any stretch, but liveable. The problem is so many people don't work full time

You've illustrated my point perfectly - lots of young folk don't drink expensive coffees or eat out much either, yet you're assuming they all do. TBH, the folk I see/hear about going for coffees and eating out and retired well off folk.

The usual deflecting from Labour aside do you want it to go back to just the physical and other things you mentioned?

I can only speak from my own experience. HTH

That is part of it, the other side is that it makes for poor headlines if pensioners die of hyperthermia because they can't heat their homes, plus cost to NHS of treating conditions exacerbated by the cold. Younger people are generally considered and to cope - we have our heating set to 17.5 max, do I like it? No, but it doesn't cause me ill health. My DM would be in agony at that temp and my parents energy bills are huge compared to mine despite them being as active as possible.

Well said. How many 'sad faced' go fund me sites are by people who didn't take any responsibility yet think everyone else should pay for them.

State pension is paid dependent on contributory years. Apply that to other benefits.

Too many expect something for nothing.

Can I just put it out there - does anyone know of a pensioner who has died of hypothermia specifically related to lack of, or reduction in winter fuel payments?

No, they cannot.

UC gives you access to further reductions, free dental care, prescriptions and eye tests and others.
This all helps to lower living costs.

The incentive to pay into a private pension would be the same incentives that make people work, the main ones being better off and not beinh dependent on hand outs to survive!
I understand why some 'boomers' view themselves as being entitled to a pension, I actually explained it to others up there, but in reality they are receiving a benefit that others are now funding.

Err NO. They should be for basic food only.

If you want a comfortable standard of living you work for it.

"This sort of “whataboutery” makes it near impossible to run the country in any sort of sensible way."

I'll speak if I want to speak. You don't decide who speaks.

Some pensioners do die of hypothermia every year, but it's more complex than just lack of winter fuel allowance.
Mobility aspects, dementia, other illness, genuine poverty, stinginess, thinking they're more resilient than they are and so on.

There's a lot of pensioners who will choose to sit in a freezing cold house when they have plenty of money because they are too tight to put the heating on.

Last week a friends’ son was complaining to his mum about how hard it was to save money - while holding a large cappuccino which cost him nearly £7 !! And if we visit our local Costa it’s usually at the request of younger relatives - most of the people in there are well under retirement age. Where we live, the older folk tend to frequent the cheaper cafe’s on the high street. I’m not the one making sweeping statements here. Just responding from experience.

There's a lot of pensioners who will choose to sit in a freezing cold house when they have plenty of money because they are too tight to put the heating on

yep or could downsize, release equity etc

It’s estimated that around one in ten people over the age of 65 are malnourished or are at risk of malnutrition – that’s over one million older people in the UK today.

The End Fuel Poverty Coalition has estimated that 4,950 excess winter deaths in the UK were caused by living in cold homes during winter 2022/23. They wont all have been elderly, the rest were probably mostly disabled.

But fight for scraps from the table and ignore that the table is well laden - at your expense, bailing out the banks for the financial crisis they caused is still costing you billions https://www.ippr.org/media-office/thatcher-style-tax-on-bank-windfalls-could-raise-billions-for-public-services-says-ippr

So you want to make the poor poorer? You want to make those who really need the benefits because they genuinely can’t work so poor they can’t eat?

yes benefits need to be looked at they two child cap needs to stay, they to start looking at families where generations just claim benefits. They need to sort out helping people to get jobs and make it more worthwhile to do so and yes perhaps the triple lock could go ( although year after next if they don’t increase allowances those who rely on the state pension only will be paying tax for the first time)

But again we keep going round and round in circles. The benefit culture has been purposefully introduced because it’s an admission by the government. There isn’t enough jobs for people to live and survive in the UK in 2025

Personally, yes, I think it should only be for people who have to pay substantially more to live with their disability, like having to pay for therapies, carers, transport and equipment. Better yet, make it so that those things can be claimed directly rather than handing out money.