Benefits v Defence Lord Robertson

[Wednesdayschild87]

Lord Robertson’s Speech… seriously does anyone care?? He’s laid out the fact that as a nation we can’t carry on like this… he said we can’t afford to keep throwing money at benefits whilst leaving our country defences I’m actually shocked no one has come out and spoken on this matter before. I’m incredulous.

if we take pensions out of the equation then, we have no issue as the welfare bill wouldn’t be anything like the value of tax receipts

Exactly! 😆

The biggest component of the official tax gap is the black economy which is basically our neighbours, friends and family who are doing "cash in hand" foreigners, or who are tradesmen doing cash in hand to avoid VAT, or those buying illegal duty free alcohol and tobacco products, or knock off perfume and other "Sunday market" counterfeit items, those who use drugs recreationally fueling the money laundering and modern slavery industries, those buying Just Eat food deliveries who get their food via asylum seekers often driving illegal cars/bikes, etc., none of whom are paying the right amount of tax on their incomes!! Very few people will be entirely innocent of benefitting from the black economy when it suits them!

I know people always go on about the triple lock on pensions.
I don't think any of us want to go back to the days of pensioners being unable to heat their homes or Edwina Curry advising pensioners to wear hats and coats indoors.
I think people are forgetting thats why we have the triple lock.

Pension age is going up, people will ultimately spend less time recieving pensions.
A third already end up on incapacity benefits before retirement. So I'm just not sure how pushing retirement age up will really help the welfare bill.

But their is also an element of people staying in work longer makes it harder for young people to get a start.
I know far to many graduates pulling pints. Something seriously wrong there.

Think back 100 years. Slums were rife in cities. Families of 10 in a two up, two down. No benefits to speak of. Rife prostitution and untreated venereal diseases. Massive child poverty. It was awful.

I guess we really thought a very generous welfare state, state paid housing for all, universal healthcare and all the add ons like DLA, free school meals, cost of living payments, discounted everything etc would mean these issues would massively decrease to the extent they were almost obsolete - why hasn’t this happened? Why do we still have so many children ‘living in poverty’, obese, neglected and claiming DLA?

We have never done more for the public than we do now, yet the more we do the more helpless and needy they become, the more they see every small life task as the responsibility of the state and if it doesn’t happen they’re ’being failed’.

Tbh we’ve done all we can and it’s time to row back slightly

@Chocaholick benefits aren’t as generous for families today hence why more dc are in poverty.

Tbh we’ve done all we can and it’s time to row back slightly

I agree & already said I would stop the triple lock & means test the state pension.

I would also remove the tax cliff edges, I still work p/t in part because of the tax situation.

UC is hugely generous to families with children, very very very generous where there is no cap due to disability, and child benefit is now not capped either. They’re doing very nicely compared to families with 2 low paid parents.

@Chocaholick you post doesn’t make any sense. Why would a family with 2 low paid parents not qualify for certain benefits?

I have children, where can I access some of these benefits?

Child benefit was never capped!! It is the child element of UC that was capped at two children. Which has either gone or is going!
poverty is relative to living in a home receiving or earning 60% of median income! It is for children in UK.
My DP’s only receive the state pension ( DF full and DM less as didn’t work after children) on paper they are in poverty but they live comfortably.
But they don’t have a mortgage, run a small old car, no holidays and their house decor looks like from the early nineties, but everything is in great condition. They waste no food and my DF was repair make do before it was trendy.

Child benefit was never capped.

Yes, and in the 1930s, the indignity of the Means Test, when someone would literally go to your house and calculate the value of your belongings to see if you could get the dole.

I think the level of expectation people have of the state nowadays is ridiculously high. A safety net is essential, nobody wants elderly people to live in poverty, and we all know that there are serious issues with housing in much of the UK, but the basic assumption should be that people work to support themselves. The risk of a welfare state that tries to meet every need is that people become emotionally as well as financially dependent on it, and it’s really bad for people. Generally speaking, work is good for people. No young able-bodied person should be receiving benefits for anxiety - it is literally an incentive to remain anxious.

Christ, now The Sun wants people to gather their own evidence of benefit cheaters and send them the information so they can shame them. What an absolutely vile thing to do.
Is this what the gutter press resort to now?

I don't think poverty in 2026 is anything like poverty in 1926 or the grim living conditions. Multiple people in tiny houses, sharing toilets with the family next door. And massive families.

MN always makes noises about houses being smaller.
Really when were houses big for the majority of people?

But then they consider poverty is taken as an income lower than 60% of the median which means they'll always be people in poverty.

Sadly, until attitudes change we are forever stuck, a unpopular opinion but social housing shouldn’t be for life, you shouldn’t be able to get so much in benefits that you can accumulate thousands in savings, home swaps pop up my fb all the time but with luxuries I can’t comprehend, one with a games room and an outhouse as an office for £700 a month. Not to mention the entitlement of their need for there next move

i won’t lie, I am bitter, I get up at 5am every day to travel into London home after 18.00 just for a ok standard of living, we collectively earn too much for shared ownership but can’t save due to rent and cost of living but honestly, what bothers me
most is the lack of work ethic, lack of self respect. There are thousands of people that can work, can better themselves but just don’t want to, I also know plenty of people in social housing that can afford to buy or rent privately but why would they when their rent is half the price? Instead, let’s make the government and the taxpayers pay thousands to the private landlords to provide housing because ‘it’s their home’

there is plenty of free/cheap training courses out there for people that want to better themselves but
choose not not to. Companies that choose to pay NMW rather than a living wage should be held accountable

I can’t believe it’s got to the point where I’m saying this, but if so, then at least someone is bloody doing something.

What happened to innocent until proven guilty?
The Sun could well be posting pictures of people who are not committing fraud at all.
The articles you see about fraud are people that have been caught and prosecuted. The Sun is not the DWP, and is not a judge.

The basic assumption is that people work to support themselves where they can. That’s why UC works on a taper system & has caps and sanctions for those that don’t engage with work.

Being able bodied has nothing to do with mental illness.

Yes, let's give any foreign national who wants it access to our military weapons and insight into our military programs. What could possibly go wrong.

Agree completely. What a security disaster that would be

I think we are going to have to do away with all but benefits for the most mentally ill aka people under section or with zero grip on reality.

Paying people to stay at home and think themselves up their own bottoms is helping nobody. I mean when was the last time you heard of somebody coming off benefits for MH and going back into work?

So you'd remove pension from people who can't change their situation anymore but leave benefits to working age adults?

If you means test state pension, which over UK average life expectancy is worth over £200k, but keep benefits, what do you think will happen? will people continue working and saving or better drop from work, have anxiety, get benefits and move to state pension?

Why would means testing the pension means everyone qualifies for disability benefits?

People get pension credit, housing benefit, child benefit now. That hasn’t stopped others saving into a private pension, taking out a mortgage, having dc etc.

I don’t understand the attitude that it’s ok to means test everything else but if you do that to the state pension everyone gives up? Is it an older mentality? less used to means testing? I am used to everything being means tested so it’s not a deterrent.

If you means test state pension, which over UK average life expectancy is worth over £200k

This perfectly illustrates the financial constraints though.

200k

And yet an average worker on 30k pays 1.4k a year NI

As I said up thread people don’t pay in anywhere near enough for what they take out. This matters when demographics change…

Absolutely this . People need to wake up!
The country is on its knees economically, socially, culturally and now also defensively. 30 years of bad governance and now we are at the point of open heart surgery.

2.6 jobseekers (people who are looking for work) to every vacancy.

Where are all the disabled people going to get jobs if they were thrown off benefits? Also, employers are reluctant to take on disabled employees. That is a massive barrier.