PIP isn't fit for purpose

[Ljcrow]

I made this comment on another thread and thought I'd start a separate thread purely on this topic. This is all from my own personal experience rather than from reading/hearing anything, I'm only going off what I see day to day.
The people I know who claim PIP do not need it financially. One works full time and earns more than me (and I'm not at imminent risk of homelessness or starvation) and the young people I know literally tell me things like their PIP's come in so they're off to get a new tattoo, which they then do. They appear to have much more disposable income than me.
These are all people who can function in society by the way and as far as I can see, all PIP does is give them extra spending money, which I'm sure we'd all like.

I'm aware this won't be the case for everyone who recieves PIP but it is for the people I come into regular contact with. Which is why it needs reloooking at so it only goes to those who actually need the money for a specific purpose related to their disability.

We're not in a position as a society where we can afford to give people money who do not actually need it.
Things like this should be means tested, both in terms of whether people have enough income to live a decent life without additional benefits and in terms of what the money is actually going to be used for.
PIP is not fit for purpose and needs scrapping or totally changing.

Did you ?

So a billionaire needs a view extra quid?

The cost of means testing it will end up costing the taxpayer more money than it saves by cutting out the 1% from claiming pip.

Joe Bloggs and John Smith are coworkers and they are both paid £100. They both want an £80 tattoo. But John Smith has a long term health condition and has to pay for prescription meds and therapy costing £40. He can't afford the tattoo, despite doing the exact same job as his coworker John Smith.

John Smith recieves his PIP to cover the cost of his treatment and therapy, which he hasn't spoken about because it's his private medical information and nobody else's business. He and his friend Joe Bloggs can now go together and get their £80 tattoos.

Hope this helps.

Does seem a bit suspect though! Mobility scooter and sticks in daylight hours but appears physically able once it’s dark! Interesting. I know someone who only uses her sticks when she’s got a medical appointment, if you see her around town she never has them. No idea if she’s on any benefits although I know she doesn’t have a job.

Cars, via PIP, are leased through the Motability charity.. If someone is entitled to the mobility component, they can choose whether to lease a vehicle, and hand over the component, or to just have the cash for taxis, whatever.

Not all motability cars need extra adaptations, it depend on the disability. Someone either severe breathing issues, who couldn’t walk very far, wouldn’t need adaptations - an amputee may well do.

Taxpayers wouldn’t save a penny, if the car lease scheme was abolished.

This is all very lovely and I hope they both enjoy their tattoos, but that doesn’t address the fact that the country is broke and we can’t afford to pay as much out in sickness benefits anymore 🤦‍♀️

And Elvis works in my local chippy.

I am an occasional wheelchair user, so you might see me in or out, depending on the circumstances, it doesn't make me any less disabled because I walk into a reasturant or shop.

I would like some extra money, but is it that easy?

I think it's a case of 'no size fits all' Some really need it.

However, the only person I know who gets it, I'm not sure they really need it. He retired early on a good pension and received an inheritance of around £150k at the time. He doesn't need to buy anything that comes under healthcare/aids. He can't get around so easily, so does get an online shop once a week, so obviously pip could be used for delivery charge. He often has hospital appointments, certainly never offers petrol money /parking fees to us. Recently I pointed out that's what pip is for, ie a taxi to the door! He doesn't need a cleaner. He likes the heating on quite high, but this was before he started struggling.

He can't get around so easily, so does get an online shop once a week, so obviously pip could be used for delivery charge. He does subscribe to something or other for sports, which again you could argue pip can be used for as he spends a lot of time on his own. That's all we can see that he spends his money on.

Apply and report back?

This. Sometimes people are only seeing a snapshot of a person's life. Unless they are living in the same house, or have extensive access to a person's life, it is best not to assume anything.

Its really easy, all I had to do was get cancer, then have a stroke, then get declined, then go to appeal, then get declined again, then go to an independent tribunal, and get accepted, only took a couple of years of being unable to feed my children and BAM im now rolling in an extra £400 a month after losing use of my left arm and being unable to walk half the time. Talk about a get rich quick scheme.

This is what I was trying to say.

😢

You could apply that to most topics that affect our lives. I think there is a need for discussion about benefits generally. As older pensioners on a fairly low income, DH and I would be affected by the removal of the triple lock, but that doesn’t mean I should only look at our situation.

I've got two at work.

One drives a mobility scooter and claims can barely move. Seen her on the CCTV lifting enormous sacks and swinging them over her shoulder.

The other is a fucking useless lump, faking mental health problems because he can't be arsed to work and acts like a victim if you point out he's done fuck all all day. His whole family are on PIP and he's about to join the family income scheme.

Both absolute low life's, but that's the culture "easy" PIP creates, and the means testing won't help here.

They're both low intelligence. No qualifications. Bone idle. So what are their options? They won't ever be on anything more than minimum wage. Too fucking lazy to work a second job, and brought up on the mindset that rent is paid by benefits, not hard work. Get on the PIP! It's a no brainer. Fuck all effort required, and it's not like they can get more money anywhere else.

These are the people that defraud pip. They wont be affected by means testing.

I receive pip and it doesn't even cover my gas bill for all the extra heat and baths I need for my conditions. I also get tattoos or hobby stuff with my OWN money, guess you'll judge that too.

Pensioners aren't usually asked to provide receipts though.

That's the issue. People almost always end up spouting out things that will affect genuine disabled people too without much thought to them as the focus is on attempting to punish those who may not be genuine.

People who want to cheat the system will always find a way. I think the question is, how many genuine people do we want to punish in an attempt to out those who cheat the system?

It’s actually really hard to get PIP for a mental health condition that’s treated at GP level, so I suspect there is probably far more to it than you are being told. Meeting the criteria with simply GP input is unlikely.

You could get cancer, go through chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant and then be left with balance difficulties and heart problems. Then you might get low rate mobility component (only) like my husband.

He said so on LBC.

I usually stay off these threads because I'm not British and don't understand all the details of the various benefits being discussed. I agree that society should support people in genuine need. What I find surprising and hard to understand is why spending on these benefits has grown so dramatically in recent years. And it does seem to a lot of competent observers that it's not sustainable, but politically it seems impossible to do anything to restrain it. And why are disability claims so much higher in Britain than in other industrialized countries? I don't know how this ends, but it seems likely to be painful. This ran in the WSJ yesterday:

The Welfare State Is Crushing Britain - The soaring number of people on disability and sickness benefits is blowing up the country’s welfare bill and imperiling its long-term financial stability

A few excerpts:

Some seven million people—more than 10% of the population—now claim at least one or more sickness or disability benefits. The numbers are growing fastest among working-age people who should be powering the country’s economy, surging more than 60% in the past six years to 4.7 million from 2.9 million in 2019.

Not including healthcare, the country will spend more than £100 billion this year on all types of welfare benefits for the sick and disabled, about a third more than defense spending. The tab has surged by a quarter in just four years and is on course to hit £130 billion in the next four, according to the government’s fiscal forecasts.

Many of the newer disability claims are for mental-health issues like depression, anxiety and ADHD, which can be harder for the government to verify than a physical disability. Between 2017 and 2025, disability claims for cancer doubled. But benefits claims for all psychiatric issues surged fourfold.

One benefit, created to help those with disabilities be more mobile, allows people to give up part of their welfare cash handout in return for a new car lease every three years. It now accounts for around one in every seven new car sales in the U.K. Among those who got new cars last year: 40 people whose primary medical condition was tennis elbow, 50 with wheat intolerance and 320 with dyslexia, according to government figures.

The scale of the payout has become a scandal. No other western country has seen such a rise in disability claims. In the U.S., the number of people getting federal disability payments has fallen in the past 15 years. The most recent figures show some 10.6 million working-age people in the U.S. claimed one or both main Social Security programs for people with a disability, in a country with a population five times bigger than the U.K.

I don’t disagree and agree it is unlikely that many in that category do claim it, but certainly with things like pensions/winter fuel etc that will be true