Welfare spending to rise by £73.2bn to £406.2bn

[topicalaffair]

Over the next five years, the OBR is forecasting that UK welfare spending will rise by £73.2bn to £406.2bn.

How does everyone feel about this? I’m livid because I pay lots of tax. I don’t mind paying tax to maintain a civilised society - but this? This is surely taking the piss and will result in weaker and weaker services as the amount of £ available reduces day by day.

YANBU - it’s totally deranged. The every growing uk population can’t function effectively on such a benefits for all basis.

YABU - this welfare spending bill is truly representative of need.

Ironic isn’t, given the lengthy post poster / AI poster starting by saying my post wasn’t accurate and that’s ’the problem with this country’

👀👀🤷🏻‍♀️

@Motheranddaughter
Also the way people don’t want to work more hours as they will get less benefits

This was stopped with Universal Credit, brought in well over a decade ago. It was specifically designed so you always have more money by working more.

People may still think it's not worth the extra money to work more, of course. But the general idea of UC is that the more you work, the more money you have.

People spouting the claim that people won't work more due to losing benefits show how woefully out of date their knowledge of the benefit system is.

Several points to take up here. The first is that your description of the diagnostic procedures for spectrum disabilities is bullshit. As is the notion that a slew of state support will follow. I’ve worked with parents who literally have to barricade themselves into ‘safe rooms’ in their own homes to protect themselves from violent adult children with these conditions because state support is simply not there.

Secondly, you don’t need a diagnosis to claim disability benefits. The assessment is on actual need - based on how the condition actually affects the claimant, not just the fact that they have it. And anxiety and depression generally don’t qualify for disability benefits like PIP unless the claimant has input from secondary care, consultant led mental health services. The bar for stand alone PIP mental health claims is very high.

To qualify for carers allowance you have to be caring for someone disabled enough to be in receipt of middle or higher care component of PIP. You also have to be caring for them for at least 35 hours a week and be earning less than £196 per week after tax and allowables.

This is not the 1950s. Generally the care of elderly and disabled relatives fell to women. That’s no longer the case because women are in the workplace and generally you need two wages to afford a decent standard of living. Care is mainly community based and the demand for it is ever increasing. The system is broken and in need of reform, but simply pushing the responsibility for it back on to families doesn’t work and would inevitably not only have a knock on effect on the economy, but would unfairly impact women and the vulnerable themselves. In a decent and caring society it would be a backward step.

What's your point?

People are living longer so of course this means more spending on pensions, disability benefits (because people will always develop health issues as they age).

We also have a broken housing system with a lack of affordable housing so again money goes on helping people pay their rents.

The job market is not good at the moment and AI means many people will rely on state support.in the future

So basically it is not about the simplistic "benefit scroungers" that parts of the media and some politicians love to peddle.

so many people not being able to survive on their income
This is what the media want us to believe. What is correct is 'so many people not able to enjoy the lifestyle they want'. A bog gap between this and actual survival.

The problem is that we believe that life should be fun and if it isn't then society needs to make it fun. Life is just that...life, with some good times and bad ones. Yes, looking after your elderly parent is shit. Having a disabled child is unfair. That doesn't mean that the responsibility for looking after them should be shifted to someone else or paid by others.

The welfare system should be for those who cannot do it alone, not don't want to.

That doesn't mean that some should accept to live in austerity all their life whilst others thrive in prosperity, but we also can't keep on thinking that life should be made easy for all.

Isn't that a below inflation rise? I've just used an inflation calculator to track the rise from £333,000,000,000 in 2020 to 2025, and it says it would be £414,666,070,933.16. So if they are only expecting it to rise to £406,000,000,000, then that's below the inflationary rise that was seen from 2020-2025.

In other words, you should be upset about inflation, not benefit recipients.

I’ve worked with parents who literally have to barricade themselves into ‘safe rooms’ in their own homes to protect themselves from violent adult children with these conditions because state support is simply not there
That's exactly my point. These are the parents who do need help because they genuinely can't do it alone.

Not those whose kids struggle to make friends, are too anxious to sit exams and don't want to.go to school because they can't cope with authority.

I know very well that you don't need a diagnosis to claim benefits but it's the route to get them. It legitimates the claim of needs.

The threshold for diagnosis has changed in the last three decades. Kids assessed with autism would never have received that diagnosis in the past. Nothing wrong in itself to extend the criteria but it is what people do with the label and use it to describe it as a disability when it is very possible to suffer from autism and adhd without being disabled or at least not enough to expected the state to take over any responsibility of support.

the income thresholds for Universal credit are still ridiculously low though so it hasn't really been addressed. If one of a couple earns something like £1400 a month the other can get away with no requirements to job search.

@LookingforMaryPoppins I agree with what you say here “The "Rich" are those that earn a decent living from their assets / investments whether they get out of bed or not.”

If I remember right, taxes for these things have gone up a little, but nowhere near equal to the tax you’d pay on paye. If taxation were more equally based on income - no matter where from - this would reduce situations like Sunak’s where he paid correctly but proportionately less than I do in basic rate. If people working whether at basic or top rate saw fairness, surely that would help.

Say that number out loud again, Because it includes rent. Could you live on £1400 a month?

I hear you OP, and you are so right, and I’m sorry for what you’ve been suffering with. People are quick to judge mental health conditions and often unless you’ve been there yourself or seen it in a loved one, it is hard truly to understand. That anyone would choose your condition or begrudge quick help and support is beyond me. .

No one knows what’s round the corner and unless you are already wealthy enough to be ok, being sick at the same time as worrying about money, and not getting the support needed without huge waits, is a nightmare but one that happens.

Youre also right about health at all ages. If people don’t get the medical help to get them back to work, they can’t work (as well as the individual impact, how many employers really want sick or injured people at work - they need to deliver for their business! I knew someone in his fifties who loved his grounds maintenance job - he had to give up because by the time he was called for his hip operation, the condition had got so bad that it wasn’t possible. Because of the delay.

And the constant raising of the retirement age will exacerbate this. As humans it’s a fact that - generally speaking - age brings conditions. Cognitive and physical. The human race hasn’t evolved to allow effective working and later onset of age related conditions yet anyway. Yes there are many people who are fine and want to carry on working, but many can’t and the older the pension age becomes, the more that will happen. A root cause being lack of timely medical care.

I am not talking about the amount of UC that a person or couple receive. I am talking about the minimum amounts that people are expected to earn on Universal credit to avoid being expected to look for any additional hours of work. My answer was in response to a post about people on UC working as few hours as they can and still receiving benefits.

Who said that?

Poster is talking about minimum a couple have to earn jointly to qualify for UC, not what UC are giving them.

And the constant raising of the retirement age will exacerbate this. As humans it’s a fact that - generally speaking - age brings conditions. Cognitive and physical. The human race hasn’t evolved to allow effective working and later onset of age related conditions yet anyway. Yes there are many people who are fine and want to carry on working, but many can’t and the older the pension age becomes, the more that will happen. A root cause being lack of timely medical care.
Personally I think we have a problem with accepting that quality of life deteriorates for many people as you become elderly. There is only so much that medical care can do for someone and arguably it is often just delaying the inevitable whilst someone's general health and therefore quality of life worsens. My 85 year old grandma is terrified of getting dementia so is almost hoping for a physical ailment to come before she inevitably begins to lose her faculties. This is the harsh reality of being old. Something will get you and it can feel like a cruel and terrible wait to see what it is and what it will take from you.

This is why I don't understand why we seek as a society to preserve life at virtually all costs. We then complain that we have insufficient money to fund paying out pensions for four decades and to fund the expensive care for people that have a very poor quality of life and absolutely no prospect of regaining any real quality of life. I think our fear of our own mortality and death drives us to do crazy things that are in absolutely nobody's interests

Back-of-envelope calculation says that's about 26hrs a week on current minimum wage.

Seems reasonable to expect someone without childcare commitments or disability related restrictions to do more. I was surprised by this when I was getting top-up UC. (I was actually restricted by disability but on paper that wasn't registered so was treated as any other low hours worker.)

What exactly should they be expected to do to prove they're trying to get more work though? And what is the cost of monitoring this?

The jobs market is terrible atm. Zero hours, yet expecting full flexibility. Hours cut, or chopped and changed last minute all the time. It's got so, so much harder in the past 10 years even.

I currently live on £1083 per month. Rent and council tax come to just over £600. I live alone and pay bills alone.

Yes, it's really tough.

Am reasonably intelligent and educated to degree level if anyone wants to offer me a job! (Unfortunately can't do anything too physical.)

And you wouldn’t be entitled to £1400 unless there were at least two of you in the household.
Probably one of those people are children that need clothing replacing every year as a minimum.
But the fact that you manage is testament to you and impressive if not what we should all be aiming for

No it’s not. That’s the threshold they have to meet to not be harassed and then they deduct 55p for every pound. The person earns.
Even with rent included, it’s still not enough to survive on.

Well, what exactly is ''motability cars for young people'' supposed to mean in that context? Why single out young disabled people?

Just done the calculation - £1400 would be what I'd get with one child - that's UC including housing element (assuming full rent paid, which it often is not), council tax support, and child benefit.

It's all very difficult. Because there are people who can't budget and moan they don't have enough when they do (funnily enough this includes an awful lot of people with reasonable income who look down on benefit claimants!) but there are also people scraping by in dire circumstances because the system overlooks them or messes them around somehow. Unfortunately the latter group get punished whilst the former group get all the airtime as they moan louder!

It’s not even about that though I mean again say it out loud 26 hours, £300 a week
£1200 a month £200 topped up by universal credit
Who is living on that as two people?
I spend £200 a week on food shopping at the moment
I had to take a job on minimum wage many years ago 2015. We couldn’t manage on £400 a week plus rent paid and council tax under tax credits plus I think it was about £150 cash element to it.
We went hungry. It was awful

If those 35 families aren't tax resident in the UK, how do you propose we tax them?? Answers on a postcard please!!

Well those of us also holding US citizenship are taxed in America on our world wide incomes.

Monitoring is probably labour intensive but for 35 families - a few hundred taxpayers, probably - it could be done.

Forcing compliance is trickier but non-resident Americans in severe breach of tax law can be, and occasionally are, barred from entry.

PS More accurately they would be subject to arrest at the border.