Benefits explosion- where will it end?

[TheBlueKoala]

"PIP benefits explosion: Anxiety and depression handouts have nearly TRIPLED to £4.3bn since Covid - with autism and ADHD bill hitting £2.2bn and 'back pain' £1.6bn"

Something is not right here. When I have written before on here telling about people I know who claim for anxiety although they have rich social lives (funded by 440£ extra per month from PIP) I've had many people telling me that it's not possible etc. It sure is. How many 16 year olds are claiming PIP for anxiety?

Instead of benefits why not pay for therapy- invest massively in the NHS mental health support so that people with anxiety, adhd and autism can see a therapist regularly to help them. This would make a difference for tje individual and the society. Throwing out money won't.

AINBU- I agree with about
AIBU- No, extra money is always useful

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15510221/PIP-benefits-anxiety-depression-austism-ADHD-pain-Covid-Labour.html

The clue is in the name: Insurance

An insurance risk pool doesn't work when too many people end up claiming because eligibility has been expanded too much.

Thats how you go bankrupt as you have too mamy people taking out vs paying in.

Thank you for sharing. People are not entitled to a full medical history of everyone they know. As your story shows, lots of people their colleagues, neighbours or friends might think “suffer from a bit of anxiety” may be handling major multiple issues. It’s nobody’s business. PIP genuinely is quite hard to claim - not that anyone motivated to attack the welfare state believes that.

we have a highly sick and mentally damaged population currently- what we do about that is not simply force them all into grinding poverty, funnily enough poverty seems to create mental illness not cure it!

Just pointing out, again, that PIP is not an out of work benefit.

Some getting PIP do work. Others don't. 🤷‍♀️

I’ve asked twice the very genuine question of how exactly claimants successfully ‘cheat’ the PIP assessment process.

There has been no answer at my time of writing this post.

Do you actually believe this Daily Fail shite?

I am enjoying your sensible factual contributions to this thread

Factually (despite the inflammatory OP whose Daily Mail link I did not click) claims for disability benefits particularly for mental health conditions ARE rising in 16-30 year olds and factually the diminishing proportion of net tax payers cannot afford to keep that trend going.

Anecdotally I see these people all the time in the course of my work and there are a lot of lost young people out there who need some kind of directed scheme to get them into the labour force before that becomes impossible. They need action before it’s been a decade of NEET and their parents get old, retire and stop supporting them.

Agreed. It’s going to be necessary with routine automation anyway. Within 30 years “work” as we know it won’t exist

I'm so sorry that my dd17 who suffers from cptsd, anxiety and depression after an extremely difficult and exhausting cancer treatment, is such a blight on your society and claims pip
me well I'm just happy shes still here to tell the tale after fighting for her life multiple times, countless life saving surgery that has also left her physically disabled, in time she may recover enough to not claim pip but right now she's entitled to it and she wouldn't get it, if she wasn't

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5480192-welfare-spending-to-rise-by-ps732bn-to-ps4062bn?reply=150080365&utm_campaign=reply&utm_medium=share

I posted this on a thread just a few days ago. I can't be bothered to retype it:

There 69.3 million people in the UK. 43.36 million are 'working age', defined as 16-64 by Ycharts. Of those 9.9 million claim some combination of benefits, with Universal Credit being responsible, at least in part, for 7.4 million of them. 34% of UC recipients are in work. 13 million people are of State Pension age.

So, 69.3 million people. 43.36 of working age. 17% of working age people claim Universal Credit, which is 11% of the overall population.
13 million people are state pension age, which is 19% of the population

So, of the population, 63% are of working age. 11% claim Universal Credit, so 7.26% are working age out of work, and 19% claim state pension.

Overall, then, 63% of the population are working age, 7.26% of the population are working age out of work, and 19% of the population are of state pension age. That means that 36.74% of the population are of working age and don't claim UC, and of the working age population, 83% don't claim UC.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/dwp-benefits-statistics-february-2025/dwp-benefits-statistics-february-2025#sect-6

It's the just going and getting a job that's the hard part. Where are these jobs we can just go and get that earn enough that we can stop getting benefits?

I'm highly skilled in an area that has a shortage of skilled staff and yet I have still had to leave jobs or been managed out because my relatively straightforward reasonable adjustments are considered too much of a problem.

Do you think you could manage your job with a long term health problem?

Part time hours? No, we need full time plus evenings/weekends/bank holidays.
Low stress? No, forget coffee breaks and no long lunch for rest.
Quiet office? No. Big open plan noisy sensory nightmare.
Flexible hours? No. Work 16h shifts.
Work from home? No. Get back to the office.
Comfortable desk/chair? No, you must hot desk.

All the healthy and flexible workplace culture that allowed disabled people to work has been utterly destroyed by austerity.

This. The obsession with being in the office, hotdesking, no breaks, full time is keeping many disabled people out of work, but no one is ready to confront that.

Exactly. It's like when they say women are aborting babies because they have a cleft lip and not mentioning that the babies had other conditions as well.

Possibly basic UC needs to be higher than £400 a month for a single adult. Nobody can survive on that, even temporarily between jobs, so people may well be exploring other avenues to increase to an income they can eat on. I’d be anxious and depressed too if I couldn’t get a job and had to manage on the basic one.

It’s much better post Covid for flexible working. In some sectors anyway. I remember never getting anything bar 5 days a week ft in the office and that’s it. Women found it hard to stay and get childcare. Now it’s more flexible.

Exactly. There no slack in the system. There no room for disability.

To clarify...you think we should pay everyone basic income so that there is no requirement to work? Who is paying the taxes to support this?

Even with automation, there will be roles such as caring, medical, trades, legal - can't see a stage when you have AI barristers.

That is also the rate that people in the LCW now get. No wonder people try to get PIP too. LCWRA is also halving for new claimants this April.

But people with autism, ADHD and anxiety can be helped with therapy Not all of them but I think it's obvious that she's not claiming that all of them can be helped by therapy.

Maybe in your sector. Mine is much worse.

How did people manage 20 years ago? Genuine question, why is it more challenging now, give there are better protections for employees, more productivity aids at home, home deliveries, after school care clubs, all of this makes working easier.

From working in a mental health setting , I know of at least 4 people who have taken extra diazepam before their assessment to alter their communication with the assessor, and others who have gone dressed in 2 different pairs of shoes and intentionally shouted in the corridor while waiting and refused to sit down

I do think a lot of this is environmental - stressful school and work environments along side really poor mental health support in the NHS. It would be more sensible to take really seriously creating a happier society than having all these people off work.

It’s not limited to younger people.

Exactly this... for every person who genuinely requires PIP they'll be many who are taking the p...ss. And don't even ask how I know!

GP's are too busy to actively monitor who's suffering or not. And even then why would they want to fall out with a patient? Far easier for the GP to comply with the deception if it gets the patient off his/her back.

And no face to face interviews for PIP. Assessments used to be much more stringent.
UK citizens no longer feel invested in our country given everything successive governments have done to denigrate our history and dilute our culture and values.
It will take a war to end this dependency culture.

Universal Credit is a payment to help with your living costs. It’s paid monthly - or twice a month for some people in Scotland.
You may be able to get it if you’re on a low income, out of work or you cannot work.

Straight from the first page of the Governments website

Pretty sure that acrylic nails are not a living cost.

HTH