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.

The unclaimed pot of benefits is around £30bn.

The problem is that non-working and benefit-receiving households vastly outweigh households in which people are working and not receiving benefits.

We live in a democracy. The majority will vote for what they want.

Does that include pensioner households though?

No, the problem is that employers, including companies making huge profits for shareholders, have become addicted to cheap labour subsidised by the state. It's corporate welfare that needs addressing.

I agree with this. It’s shocking that profitable companies like Tesco pay such low wages that their FT staff require UC to top up their wages. It is a subsidy to shareholders and that’s not right.

At a certain point that balance tips and people will vote as such but it doesn’t mean the funds will appear so what happens then not sure.

Upfront investment be it housing, asbestos removal or even putting air cleaners in school to reduce viral health burden pretty much always shows it’s worth it. We live in a society where things are always kicked down the road.

People often assume it’s easy to access practical, medical or financial help…until they need to.
Irrespective of whether people think the economic impact of Brexit is worth it or not, the cost is huge.

It is not just Musk, though, is it? He is just an extreme example in a broken system where the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and those in the middle are looking to take from those below them instead of looking up.

Which is exactly what the rich i.e the media, the politicians, etc., want you to do. Don't look at them and ask why they are taking expenses they don't need and using tax avoidance schemes, that benefit claimant wants your money.

Don't look at them and ask why they are taking expenses they don't need and using tax avoidance schemes.

But people did look at them re expenses they don’t need. Don’t you remember some years ago when MPs’ expense claims were made public? There was uproar.
Re tax avoidance, that’s up to the government to shut loopholes.

You clearly do not know what PIP is, or what it is for.

It is pathetic seeing people getting in a froth over things they know nothing about. I mean, just look upthread where a PP said people who attend day centres should get jobs. Total ignorance.

Indeed. Not so much how do we tax them but - if they are not uk tax payers anymore, who pays the bulk of the benefits bill instead? Perhaps it just becomes a much smaller benefits kitty, meaning no benefit cash available.

This point cannot be made often enough. I’ve no idea how they would fix it though as private enterprises are there to make money and so most likely just put up prices rather than reduce profit for themselves or their shareholders. I think highly of Gordon Brown but the proof of this policy pudding is not tasty. I wondered about starting by clawing back the value of these low wage top ups on companies with a certain profit level, as presumably HMRC knows where people are employed and what the employer makes in profit

In the same way as those who are saying many physically disabled people could work, where are the jobs ? How do you persuade employers to take on disabled people who they see as potentially unreliable. It’s no good applying the stick to vulnerable people being forced to look for work under threat of sanction, if employers aren’t on board first. Successive governments are putting the cart before the horse.

And for the more severely disabled, who are being brought into the area of compulsion, who is going to finance the considerable cost of getting them into the workplace and supporting them there. MN posters liked to use Stephen Hawking as the example - ‘if he can work, so can you’ without a second thought to the team of people and the expense that went into keeping him working. Where are the funds to provide that same support to people similarly disabled ?

Were there two people in your household? And do you mean you had £400 a week between you after rent and council tax was sorted? If so, £200 a week should have been manageable, especially at 2015 prices. And considering bills were shared, not 2x single person's bills. Even now, £200 a week on food for two people in insane.

Sorry if I've got that wrong and you're including children in that.

I'm confused as to what your point is re. UC. Working 26 hours with UC top ups isn't loads of money, no. It's enough to manage (*depending on whether housing costs are properly covered) though. The PP was pointing out that people should be expected to try to find more work, especially if only one of a couple are working. Again this seems reasonable. Or are you trying to say they will naturally be trying to get more work rather than be so poor, so don't need any pushing?

If I could do something radical, I'd make it illegal to privately rent out a home. Huge upfront investment from the government/councils to buy every single rental property (the owners wouldn't be forced to sell them, but they couldn't rent them out), and then all of them become council-administered, with transparent, consistent rent bands and maintenance standards. It shouldn't be possible for people and companies to profit from other people's need for housing in the way that has taken hold in the UK over the past few decades.

Agree. Corporations using the tax payer to help foot their wages bill via UC has been mentioned upthread. Greedy landlords are profiting in the same way. There was an article in our local paper recently about local landlords who introduced rent rises every year in line with UC rises. It needs to be stopped.

For disability benefits - PIP, child DLA, AA etc, a diagnosis is irrelevant. It’s not awarded on whether you have a specific condition, but how that condition affects you. Ask any disabled person who has been through a PIP assessment. A diagnosis doesn’t legitimise anything. If you don’t fit the criteria, you don’t get benefit, simple as that.

Also agree strongly. The circumstances that allowed this - lack of public housing sinceThatcher - landlords know that people need housing so have basically been able to charge what they can. If we had properly affordable and available social housing then private landlords would have to be competitive. Today’s situation was entirely foreseeable and avoidable and every successive government since Thatcher introduced it is responsible for not fixing it. Makes me so angry.

We also have a looming scenario as more and more pensioners rent and don’t own their own home. I’m lucky my mortgage will be paid off but I often think if I were renting and affording it on a full time wage, how the hell I would do so on state pension and small private one, I couldn’t!

I don't even think it is necessarily greedy landlords anymore. They exist, I know, but I also know a few landlords who barely make ends meet. They have high mortgages because property prices are so grossly distorted in comparison with wages. They have maintenance, tax, insurance. There's very little left from the monthly rent. Good landlords who actually maintain the property really well may be making almost nothing until they sell up.

The problem is the obscene hike in property values - triggered by Thatcher and left to accelerate by Blair. Unforgivably bad government that has left the country in real crisis.

Why should he get extra money because he was addicted to drugs? People who never did drugs who do the same job won't be getting that extra money. That's not right.

Yes, FTSE All Share - UK Companies - at record highs.

Many, not all, businesses in the UK are doing very well, despite their never ending stream of complaints.

If we abolished in-work benefits, wages would have to rise to their natural level.

If we abolished housing benefit, rents would have to fall to their natural level.

Not true, i'm doing very well - no mortgage.

If you took out a 90% to 100% loan to finance your business, well, it deserves to go under.

65% of people claiming UC do not work.

My dh has lived here since he was 25. Now 52. He has worked all these years, earns over £100k so makes significant contributions, won't have a pension from his home country because he's never worked there as an adult to contribute. He also has a significant private pension here from employment contributions. You don't think he deserves his state pension here?