To wonder on the future of generous welfare in the UK

[happybug1234]

It seems increasingly obvious that many middle-income families are becoming frustrated at how squeezed they are financially, while at the same time seeing people on universal credit receive a growing range of subsidies and support — £1 attraction tickets on days out, a 6% rise in benefits this financial year, childcare costs reclaimable through Universal Credit, housing benefit, and so on. I see thread after thread on this on this site and also increasing momentum in the media on this issue (income cliff edges etc)

In my own extended family, 1 unemployed parent with the other on min wage, in social housing appear to have more holidays and more disposable income than we do, despite us both working full time with a household income of around £95k. Once childcare, mortgage, insurances, commuting and tax are taken into account, we 100% have a lower level of disposable income than they do as they do not have any of these work related costs and their rent is paid. They have recently gone on a 2 week holiday whilst the most we can ever afford is 1 week.

Quite a few teachers in my friendship circle are declining promotion opportunities or TLR because the extra pay often doesn’t feel worth the additional stress once tax, pension contributions and childcare costs are factored in. Instead, some are putting more effort into private tutoring, which is tax free cash in hand.

What is stopping the government from addressing this as people seek to be responding accordingly in their behaviour!

If you want to compare govt support on a monthly basis in ascending order, typically it would look like this.

1. Unemployed adult over 25 £424.90
2. Pensioner with no disability benefits on full new state pension £1045.63
3. Pensioner on full new state pension and AA £1542.23
4. Disabled adult, working age, pre April 2026 LCWRA, enhanced PIP & UC £1697.97
5. Pensioner on new full state pension and enhanced DLA, both care and mobility £1888.90

All of the above benefits are excluding support to pay rent. That would be on top of those amounts depending on the LHA in their area.

In comparison, an adult working 40 hrs a week on NMW will be taking home approx £1880 a month and wont be entitled to any housing support.

You’re missing the point. In this case, quoting the % is misleading. If for example I say the profit on my business has gong up by 100% since last year. ….. It could be that Last year my profit was £1, this year it is £2. Impressive-sounding % but the £s are tiny. My statement on my profit is true but incredibly misleading.

Interesting idea. Some posters have said earlier that pensions in Europe are mostly more generous than the British state pension. However, these comparisons don't take into account that in some European countries, pensioners still pay in towards health and social care. Retired people in some European countries also pay towards their prescriptions. In Britain, all scripts are free from the age of 60, six years before state pension age.

Most of my friends work, so I don’t know loads of people on benefits.

The 2 I do know:

A couple. He is on minimum wage working 50 hours a week. She is a sahm but does work 10 hours a week. They have a shared car and 2 children. They get a UC top up. Most of their clothes are from the charity shops, they have very little money left over each month (probably about £100) which gets saved for birthdays, Christmas and emergencies.

The other is a single Mum - 6 kids. Husband had a decent job but then buggered off with a different woman and is still being chased for maintenance. She was on FB the other week asking if anyone had a 2nd hand coat for one of her youngest kids. She lives from one UC payday to the next and counts every penny.

Neither of those 2 families go on holidays abroad unless they get into debt by putting it in a credit card, they rarely go out and never buy themselves anything.

I consider myself to be bloody lucky to earn the salary I do and have absolutely no issues paying the amount of tax I pay. I would never criticise anyone who claims benefits either. I come from a single parent family, who never had any money and used to use the cardboard from cornflake boxes to cover the holes in her shoes.

The benefit bashing on here from the absolute c**ts who earn upwards of £90k a year make my blood boil.

Not to mention the fact if it is your child who is disabled.

Never mind cutting benefits for pensioners who have likely paid into the system all their lives!
Yes by all means assess for eligibility. Very wealthy pensioners could likely forgo their pensions.

It’s oretty inevitable the triple lock will go.

1/ Remove all benefits to foreign born persons who are not in FULL TIME work contributing by paying their taxes.

2/ No housing benefits for foreigners

3/ Remove all benefits from…. any and all the dependents of foreign born workers…..”if you cannot sustain yourself and your family in our country, you have to leave”
When you are of no benefit to our country, leave

4/ The UK is not the welfare state of the world.
……We simply cannot afford to offer welfare to all the underprivileged of the world.

5/ Detain all illegal migrants and incentivise them to leave voluntarily. Hopefully we already have finger prints and facial recognition to ID the boat people. (If Border Force were doing their jobs)

Then forcibly deport the rest back to the last safe country they came from.
Load them onto the eurotunnel trains and drop them back t’other side
Looking 👀 at you France!

6/ No rights of settlement in the UK before 10 years working here and being a net contributor to the economy. We do not want hangers-on.

7/ A wealth tax on the top 1% of the UK residents Much like Switzerland , Finland and others do.
Use this to build affordable homes. We need these for our young people and families.
(People who are never able to put down firm roots are not invested in making this country better or indeed having children.

Wealthy landowners and those with inherited wealth/ assets need to be forced to pay more into the treasury, not use any avoidance scheme they can get away with

I am totally incensed that this shyster
Government constantly punishes British workers, including the professional middle classes,and doles out benefits to people not even born here.
Labour are buying votes!

You can receive UC if you have a mortgage. There is no additional element added for a mortgage but if you qualify for the work allowance its at a higher level than if you claim for rent

I think it’s interesting that there is very little evidence of people trying to make money around me. In countries with lower welfare support people will do whatever they can to make a little extra. Cleaning, selling, hustling. Our poor people are indoors watching TV.

Crikey, leave us alone . I get pension credit of £24 pounds a week ontop of my state pension . If I wasn't really good with money I would be on the bread line .

%s can be very misleading and are in this case. See my PP to another poster 1 or 2 minutes ago.

Those are the facts. The majority of the welfare spend goes on pensions and pensioners.

We have an ageing population and this proportion will only grow in the coming decades.

This means that if you want to make significant cuts to the welfare budget, it has to be pensioners who are looked at. Anything else is tinkering around the edges.

The insurer does yes. One of my colleagues developed MS and it progressed to a state where they could no longer work. Permanent disability. They get 50% of a very good salary for the next 15 years until they reach state pension age. Well worth having.

FinchiePink is merely stating facts!

Is a SME going to offer the same?

The vast majority of individuals in the UK take out far more from the system than they put in. "They've paid for it" is completely false in most cases.

It is a rare person indeed who has fully covered the cost of their state pension and all other benefits from the state (NHS, education etc).

The 16hr hasn't been a thing in years that use to be wtc. You will be expected to work more hours on uc

You only got child benefit if you only earned less than 30k
No free nursery until 3 plus
Shorter mat leave. No pension paid when you weren't working. No Council houses they had all been sold by Thatcher. Women earned less than men, a lot less. Fewer workers rights. No top ups on benefits, that was if you could get benefits. Poll tax paid by all.
I could go on. I had to give up work with twins no free nursery hours. Could not afford to put them in private nursery. Now short on payments into my pension. Heard of the WASPI women?

it is true though....there are many families in the local estate here with the fathers having trades but registered as physically and mentally disabled, it all adds up

If people paid a lot of tax, and saw the benefit of that tax (like in many Scandanavian countries) then they wouldn't begrudge the tax.

But in the UK it sounds like we feel we're paying a lot of tax but not seeing anything for it, and that's pretty soul destroying.

Isn't the issue really that employers are unable (or unwilling) to pay wages that allow workers to live on those wages alone? Universal Credit is really rewarding shit employers by propping up their low wages, not rewarding those who choose not to work (although it can appear like this and is quite possibly being exploited by some in this way). I know that the government doesn't seem to really care about this though, because it's doing more things that make it more expensive for businesses to employ people. But really if you are a business and you are unable to make a profit without paying your employees genuine living wages, then I would say that your business is unviable.

well you know what they say - if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. No one ever does though. Weird that, almost like deep down they know they won't actually be any better off at all.

All major retail banks, pharma companies, oil companies, legal firms, accountancy firms, financial services, insurance companies offer group income protection (as it’s known) to employees. A hell of a lot of the private sector. Standard to get a multiple of your salary if you die in service, you can opt to pay insurance for for a lump sum if diagnosed with critical illness, standard to get private healthcare (again, pre-existing conditions covered, pay extra for spouse and kids) private GP - and a really shite pension.

YABU. If you look at the evidence (rather than your anecdote), welfare (i.e. UC) is by no means ‘generous’. In fact, 5 million people in the UK (one in 15 households) are in a "negative budget," where essential costs exceed income, with 1.5 million children involved. See Citizen’s Advice data.

In terms of your household, I believe the average gross household income in UK is £37,500pa. A household income of £95k is therefore in a v top percentage bracket.

You can claim UC if you have a mortgage. Though not the housing element. https://www.gov.uk/housing-and-universal-credit/property-you-own

Only the ‘standard allowance’ of UC has increased - though not as much as the basic things it’s supposed to help people pay for, e.g. energy, food, transport, shoes etc.

The ‘housing element’ for private renters is based on local housing allowance rates, which are frozen for the second year while private rents have skyrocketed. Families are having to make up huge shortfalls with ‘standard allowance’ money that’s supposed to be for food and energy bills to try to afford rents.

Landlords won’t let to people whose LHA doesn’t cover the rent, which is pretty much everywhere (rates vary locally). Families wait years (decades in some places) for social housing. That’s why there’s record family homelessness.

Not always. DM pays above NMW but she can't offer enough hours (cleaning job), so many of her staff get UC top ups.

There's just no point earning extra money. Everyone talks about the cliff edge of earning over £100000 and they don't talk about how the amount you earn between £60,000-£80,000 is effectively 'taxed' at 50.6% if you have 2 children due to the loss of child benefit.

For me recently I dropped from 4 days to 3.5 days (alternating 3 and 4 days weeks). The difference in take-home pay when I factor in child benefit loss, childcare, school holidays care, increased pension % contribution and commuting costs is less than £1000 in take-home pay for a career where I would earn about £105,000 if I worked full time.

When I factor in commuting time, it's less than £10/hour of work take-home for that extra half day. I'm simply not willing to work an extra 172 hours per year for that amount.

I'd be all for working full time if it meant taking more money home in a meaningful way but at the moment I feel I'm just working extra hours to fund plebs going to attractions that I can't afford to go to myself. Make it make sense.