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.

Easy....stop the government spending 8 million a day in hotels and food for people who shouldn't even be here!!

As usual the first response nails it!

What the…..are you talking about 🤣

you have spent a lot of posts misunderstanding what people are saying

I’m not explaining again, can you be bothered @Ccsvs

We are going around in circles. My question was do the taxes you pay cover the services you use.

There is no way any government would shut down pensions at such short notice. There are far too many people who dont have any kind of pension and will rely 100% on the state pension. In order for the government to stop paying pensions, they need everyone to build their own pensions and/or for automatic enrolment to be in place long enough to guarantee that employees will have a pension. AE only came partially into force in 2012 and fully in 2018. I can imagine they may start to wind them down for anyone that entered the workforce from 2018 onwards (which is why you should never ever not take up your auto-enrolment pension) but thats 30 or 40 years away.

They could also push the retirement age back but they'd need to give the public enough time to prepare to fill the gap. We have learned from the waspi women debacle that people need decades to prepare.

It would be almost impossible for government to stop pensions in anyone who is a current employee's working lifetime. Which means that anyone who is actively asking for them to be reduced is cutting their own nose off. (AKA naive/stupid).

Most of us will rely on the state pension when we retire. Every single person should be fighting to keep the triple lock as you are literally doing yourself out of money if you don't.

It is a pretty simple concept. I myself fully support a government that looks after everyone. But if you want to move to a self suffiency model and make statements like 'don't have kids you can't afford' 'work harder to earn more' we need to discuss removing expensive services like state schooling, the NHS etc.

People who earn more money will be spending far more than those living on benefits. They might even be saving the tax payer £8k a year by paying for their own kids education and an unlimited amount for paying for private healthcare….imagine that

It’s not all invested and squirrelled away and used to buy super yachts 😐

Health is far and away the biggest expenditure (18.3% in 2022-23), followed by pensions (12%). That's unsurprising as 80+ cohort are the biggest users of the NHS and they are predicted to double in the next 20 years.

The best way to tackle the crisis is;

• Rethink the break-fix model of care in the NHS. We've got people living with multiple illnesses for much longer. We need to have more specialist outreach clinics where problems can be investigated in one go, instead of across multiple appointments.
• Rethink housing. We need more social housing (90,000 a year). Abolish right to buy in England, let the councils build more homes and set a target for more local authority sheltered housing and village care hubs, to erase loneliness. The right built environment keeps people at home instead of a hospital and enables people with physical disabilities more independence.
• We do need an assets tax and I suspect that will come in when the social care commission makes their report. I can't see any other way we could fund it. We have 400,000 - 500,000 people living in care homes at the moment, with an average yearly cost of £66,000 per resident. It's going to be eye-wateringly expensive.
• Pensions triple lock won't be protected beyond the lifetime of this Parliament. They were very careful about their language on that in the budget.

Less welfare spending on working age people and a full rethink and cutting down on PIP ( as per previous study recommendations) along with a full review on tax fraud
will put more money into the coffers to pay for education, defence, the nhs etc

If everyone takes personal responsibility to fund themselves for the basics there would be far less need for it to come out of the funds that are needed elsewhere.
Its not rocket science

Yes the £100k cliff edge is totally ridiculous. SO many GPs work 3-4 days a week now to avoid it especially when their DC are small. By the time you have lost the free hours you are often working for a negative amount of money. THe idea that you disincentivise some of the most productive members of the workforce from working is insane.

The government should stop paying benefits to all foreigners, then there would be more money to help pay for our own. Other countries do not pay through the nose to folks who come here from abroad and then get council homes (or hotels!) and benefits, when we have British people on the streets and children living in poverty. I am not for a second saying foreigners shouldn’t come to our country, not at all, but they should be working and providing for themselves, and if they are students, they should not be allowed to bring their families, unless they can support them. With the proviso that when they suddenly ‘can’t support them’ (because they want benefits), there are absolutely no benefits paid out. That would stop the piss takers.

We should also get the feckless UK workshy to work - people who have generations of family who have always been on benefits but never worked. They all know how to play the system, and it’s shocking. Genuine benefit claimants should remain, but I understand how difficult it must be to differentiate. However, if you are not disabled and you’ve never had a job, they should stop your benefits and get you working. Why should people like that leach off others who work hard?

I’m a higher rate tax payer, I work hard and I do think that we should pay tax but it should be to benefit our own country first and foremost before helping others. Once homegrown is sorted, then fair enough but we have so many UK people suffering and all we do is throw money at people from other places instead. Shocking.

As an architect I paid to work for several years when mine were tiny because of the cost of childcare. None of which I got for free.

I really wish I’d not bothered

Pension increases should be capped at the median public sector payrise.

If its enough for working teachers, nurses etc, its enough for older people with lower costs.

I think you're wrong unfortunately. We don't have the luxury of giving people time. Demographics are very different from the WASPI debacle. It will simply become entirely unaffordable sooner rather than later. We're one disaster away from it all collapsing.

This is such a bizarre way of thinking about it, who wouldn't work 3-4 days a week when their kids are small if they can afford to? Loads of people work reduced hours when their kids are small.

Then Swedish disability payment is indeed great. It is based on past earnings. The more income tax you’ve paid in the past, the more benefit you get. If you’ve never earned you get a basic subsistence amount.

Lots of European countries have this approach to benefits and pensions. Our blanket rule is stupid

@HoskinsChoice what age do you think retirement should be? You know healthy life expectancy hasn't increased.

they need everyone to build their own pensions and/or for automatic enrolment to be in place long enough to guarantee that employees will have a pension.

Private pensions are much less generous today vs the past, so any final salary schemes exist still? 4% employer contribution auto enrolment is not going to make up the difference.

Have you went through his benefit entitlements with somewhere like citizens advice? You say he would get full benefit entitlement and mention a mobility car therefore I'm assuming he'd be on enhanced rates of disability benefits (as you can only get a motability car on enhanced/high rate disability).

PIP - enhanced daily living component = £110.40 per week.
Enhanced mobility component = £77.05 per week.

Totalling £187.45 per week /£749 per month (in a 4 week month,more in a 5 week month).

There's also top up benefits in addition to this for severe disabilities.

He'd also be entitled to £400 per month UC standard allowance taking that up to £1149 per month.

That's not including getting his rent paid and council tax benefit, which he would get on top of this.

It may be worth looking at the figures again to see if living independently is a possibility - if it's something he wants, of course.

Do we need a Mumsnet Rachel Reeves Advisory thread? Specifically to post budget suggestions....

There are millions of women here, from all walks of life, with countless excellent budget suggestions. Why don't we put them all in one place? We can't guarantee it but I'm certain people in the government notice what is posted on major social media threads.

Everybody wants Amazon or the Elon Musks of the world to fit the bill. Not possible without global initiatives. People want to rich to pay but who are the rich? The GP on 100k renting or the pensioner in the 1m home and on the state pension?

They do. Would people vote it in here? I’m not sure

I don't think we should be cutting Personal Independence Payments from the most vulnerable members of society.

UK state pensions are one of the lowest in Europe, at least in developed countries.

Again this isn't true. Private pensions are not so common in other European countries and people pay higher taxes for a higher state pension. Far more people here have a private pension.

Older people don’t have lower costs though do they?

many still rent
most need warmer homes
many need help around the home - painter, gardens, housecleaning, even if they don’t need “care”
many need to spend more on transport especially since no one wants them to drive

there is a huge difference between an early retiree who is self funding and the person in their 70s who worked all their lives and could barely save anything

take your blinkers off - don’t put generation against generation / that’s what they want you to do - focus on the wealth , follow the money . you know the German government basically said “the Jews have all the money” in the 1930s - don’t fall for the same hate driven rhetoric today . Follow the money not the pointy finger ( although of the if you follow the pointy finger back you wil find it )

Don't rely on state pensions.

I suspect the government will take the triple lock off state pension and allow it to inflate away, but will leave pension credit with inflation linking. This will leave "state pension" as an increasingly worthless universal amount, but will essentially leave pension credit as a means tested pension/top up.