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.

The benefits bill is ridiculous.

People suggesting means testing pensions-what sort of annual pension would you suggest is reasonable to take £12k off someone every year?

People need enough money to live off, not part time jobs, or zero hours, a hours here and there is not going to work. Tax needs to rise, it's obvious that's how we pay for defence, not cutting benefits, why attack the poorest? It wouldn't be enough anyway.

Expenses are not income. They are to cover costs which MPs have to spend. Their job is quite unusual in that they have to spend significant amounts of time in two locations and are also expected to employ their own staff all of which cost a lot of money and so are reembursed as expenses.

Historically politician's expenses were a gravy train but they are much more tightly controlled nowadays. If you remove MP's expenses the only people able to do that job would have to be incredibly wealthy to even stand for election.

It really is. Labour should be cutting it. Not increasing it! When I skim-read the headline a while back, I thought they were getting rid of child benefit. Not the cap. Why not? Children from poor backgrounds get their breakfasts and dinners paid for by tax payers already.

Then some disabled people will be worse off. Many of us find that pip doesn't cover our costs already

Lord Robertson? The lobbyist for US defense contractors? That Lord Robertson?

So many people don’t get this at all. My husband and I both work. We live in the same house and share bills. If he had to work in London (and arrange accommodation and bills etc for that housing) I would expect his work to pay because that’s an extra cost associated with their work.

As for their pay? It’s less than a hell of a lot of my social circle earn for a way more stressful job. Senior manager in a bank or big 4, doctor, actuary, senior engineer, quango head. All earn much more with no one emailing them night and day expecting them to fix Palestine / SEND crisis / child poverty / the NHS / potholes / dog poo etc etc.

This one pops every time there is a thread like this. Nobody ever seems to remember that in the following 13 years of a Labour government, they did not revoke the right to buy scheme, nor did they build new houses to replenish the stock

Adult social care is an enormous cost as is the public sector pension bill...both of these need to be tackled somehow... God knows what the answer is though

Yes the answer is to hit everybody so I would add housing benefit to that - how much do people get in places where monthly rent is £Ks a month -this was a major fault imv . If people couldn’t afford to live in London then the businesses would have had to pay their cleaners much more, hospitals would need to provide accommodation for their staff and so London would pay for its high costs -not everyone else in the country funding it.

@TigerRagwe are all poorer and seeing our costs going up. I don't get why disabled people must be exempt.

"UK public spending on the NHS has increased substantially in both cash and real terms over the past 30 years, rising from roughly £30-40 billion in the mid-1990s to over £240 billion by 2024/25. Health spending has grown at an average of 3.6% annually in real terms over the past 50 years, often exceeding the growth of the wider economy and population needs"

NHS really isn't "slimmed to skin and bone"!

Like defence and other government spending areas, there's a huge amount of waste and inefficiency.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn00724/#:~:text=Expenditure%20tables%20Expenditure%20tables%20(45,5%25%20in%202024/25.

Something's going horribly wrong in this country and I am fearful as to what the government are going to do next to the people propping up the country - the workers. This talk of taking the state pension off the slightly better off is horrifying to me.

Perhaps let very frail, elderly and often dementia riddled patients pass away peacefully rather than blue lighting them to the nearest overcrowded A&E to be dumped on a corridor for 3 days, pumped with medication and sent home for another few weeks of misery before it happens again.
Where is the dignity in that? My mother foresaw this and had a DNAR put in her medical notes. After a 8 year battle with dementia her heart started to fail, she was put on morphine and died peacefully in her sleep. Exactly what she wanted

Yes thats what I mean.
Nothing stopping them fighting with our enemies. Or any other country trying to take over the UK.

Can you imagine if Russia or any other country invaded and they sided with them?

Blair/Brown had 13 years to reverse that if they'd have wanted to.

Don't forget, despite nearly everyone blaming Thatcher, the voters in the successive general elections gave her the mandate to do what she did, whether it was selling of council houses, or privatising utilities, etc. The voters voted for it!!

The average disability cost is £1000 a month

Many of us are already worse off because we're disabled. Why do you want to plunge more disabled people into poverty?

Because its not just that we are paying people on benefits too much. Its that too many people are classed as "disabled" and are receiving benefits packages that allow them to not work at all for years on end (pip is technically an in work benefit but a vanishingly small % of pip recipients work).

This means our economy is short of productive workers. We are already funding the pensions of the huge boomer population, we can't afford for another huge chunk of working age people to contribute no work at all.

We need a greater proportion of working age people to work, and people won't while their benefits provide what they need financially.

Presumably because the spend is greater than income tax revenue.

“We can’t afford bombs so we must make poor people poorer” Says Lord Robertson who used his political connections to amass his wealth, including a 2 day a week job with Cable and Wireless where he was paid over 400k PA plus bonuses.

False equivalence right there.

We already do that. Its called income tax

@TigerRagbecause taxpayers shouldn't be required to subsidise all your costs and because everyone should work, disabled or otherwise, unless they truly cannot.

we already take a huge amount from people with "loads" and the middle classes are so squeezed there's nothing left

Exactly right.

He is absolutely correct. When a Labour grandee is saying this, surely they can’t just dismiss it……