Cap on benefits to 26k- am I missing something?

[buggyRunner]

As far as I can gather it's the normal benefits ie housing/ cb and wtc. This seems like a large sum. Is it accross the board or does it include disability related benefits? Are the figures misleading?

Mme, yes I agree.

The 'transitional arrangemants' are LAUGHABLE. Your level of income will be protected until your family has a change in circumstane. Which could be something as simple as your child having their 1st birthday, their 5th birthday or their 12th birthday, change of address, (Hello! All those who move to CHEAPER housing will LOSE their transitional protection), TAKING A JOB classes as a change in circumstance that will make you LOSE your transitional protection, (THAT'S going to make people want to take a job, isn't it ??), moving in with a partner, your partner movng out, one of your children leaving FT education, one of your children moving out, one of your teenage dc commencing employment.

ALL of these things will trigger the LOSS of the 'transitional protection'that IDS talks about in the Gruniad article linked to by MmeLindor.

Oh - and the reason that IDS claims that there will be no extra cases of child poverty is because he conveniently, last month, surreptitiously CHANGED the definition of what being in child poverty IS, to 'massage' the figures. Even Banardo's and Save The Children have issued VERY strongly worded protest statements about this.

People NEED to do their research!

Lily How do they afford it though? I was on full benefits and could barely afford the bus most weeks let alone holidays abroad! I shopped for essentials and if my children needed clothes or shoes I couldn't pay the gas bill that week and had to cut food budget to afford essential items. How do long term unemployed manage holidays and shopping? I won my TV in a raffle (yay) but before that I had my dad's old telly - no Wii's or nintendos either - honestly how do they do it? I want to know!!

Full benefits.
Bank of Mum and Dad.
Crime.

Total scrounger imo. And this is in my own family.

lily,
in central London rent can easily be £2000 for a small two bed flat, so even if someone earns £54K per year they would not even begin to cover their rent after they paid income tax. If the councils stopped toppign up these high rents, it wuld force landlords to lower them.

starlight, can your friend move out of westminster?

kelly, I know, it's horrific isn't it.

My thinking on central London is that if there are people working in low paid jobs in Central London, they shouldn't have to move out of London because of the cap. So a solution could be an exemption, could be an allowance, or could be to build some dedicated social housing.

I do think it's interesting on this thread how receiving the equivalent of a 35k salary is seen as being punitive and impossible to live on, where on other threads, people are very disparaging about the loss of child benefit to people on HRT, because 'anyone on HRT is very well off indeed'. The threshold for HRT is going to be 42k before tax. Not so very different from 35k imo, and certainly not the difference from abject poverty to untold riches.

Kelly, She can only move out of Westminster by social housing transfer which is similar to going on a forever waiting list. No new Local Authority will take her when they have so many of their own residents to place.

In addition her ds is doing his GCSEs there and her elderly mother lives there and needs a lot of care and support.

Ciske - Under the previous, Labour Government, someone with epilepsy AUTOMATICALLY qualified for disability benefits if they had 52+ seizures a year (one or more a week), as they recognised that gaining AND KEEPING employment when you are liable to take AT LEAST one day off work sick A WEEK is a significant barrier to employment.

Under the current, coalition Government, they have reclassified it so that you only AUTOMATICALLY qualify for disability benefits on the basis of epilepsy if you have 2 or more seizures A DAY, or over 700 seizures a year. Other than that, you have to go through a Work Capability Assessment, administered by ATOS, a private company that the DWP is paying MORE to do the tests than the entire budget for DLA was under the previous Government. This assessment tests whether, on a particular day, you can raise your arms above your head and pick up a pencil from the floor. Which, 5/6 days out of 7, I can do OK on. But they pay no attention to the days that you CAN'T do those things, or even get out of bed, much less go to work.

And it is not just epilepsy that has been 'reclassified'.

Also, ATOS has been BANNED from working in a number of states in America, for being (and this is a quote, from a judge in America) "Disability deniers".

While, yes, I can see your point about 'totally healthy people' claiming XXX amount of benefits while not working - MOST of it will be made up of Housing Benefits, which is ESSENTIAL to house themselves. I know of just ONE person, out of well over 200, that claims benefits and DOESN'T work as a 'lifestyle choice'. There is a MASSIVE shortage of jobs here 600+ applicants for every NMW position and Workfare participants taking jobs that two years ago would have been available, disability benefits are NOTORIOUSLY difficult to be awarded, especially for dc - I know of 12 people that are currently appealing the DWP's decision not to award either them or one of their dc disability benefits. THEN there are MH issues - there ARE no support services, as they are too overstretched here, so no-one to help with filling in forms etc, so no award for disability benefits.

I just wonder exactly HOW many of these so-called 'totally healthy people' ARE actually totally healthy, given my own, and many people I know's experiences of the benefits system. I'd wager that it's NOT as high a percentage as people would like to think!

For me there is a clear ideological difference between the Tory (coalition) approach and that of Old New Labour.

The Tories expect people to go out there and work unless absolutely and utterly unable to. That you work to support your own family and only if you cannot you get the bare minimum handouts.

Labour's approach was to throw money at problems and hope people did the right thing if they wanted to. For me, case in point was single parents.

On balance i prefer the type of government who expects people to work rather than the one which just throws other people's money at problems.

LilyBolero seriously, if you know people who are abusing the system in this way (and I know there are a few, though not nearly as many as the Daily Mail would have us believe) would you not consider shopping them? They are making this worse for the vast majority of honest benefits recipients.

Kelly2000 - As Starlight has pointed out, you can't just up and move when you are in social housing. You are STUCK THERE. You can't even afford the rent on your SOCIAL HOUSING house, much less be able to afford the rent on a PRIVATE rented house.

Don't forget that 80% of these people claiming housing benefit will be WORKING. But not able to run a car, or afford the transport costs involved with moving further away from work. These are people earning just £45.60 a day BEFORE TAX. Possibly even having to pay out MORE than they earn to get childcare (as mentioned above, nursery costs for one day here are £52 a day. Holiday club for a school-age dc costs £50 a day). Where the effing Jeff is the extra money for increased transport costs meant to come from??

So, they move further away, CAN afford their new rent, but CAN'T afford the transport, so can't get to work, and lose their job. OR they stay close to work, where they CAN afford the transport costs, but CAN'T afford the rent. Bit of a Hobson's choice there, isn't it?!

But NiceGuy - does that mean that families like mine should be 'collateral damage'? We are PEOPLE TOO. WE WILL SUFFER, probably MORE than the people your beloved Tories have set out to make suffer.

NiceGuy - Do you honestly believe that it doesn't matter if SOME people are put into hardship, and will be unable to cover all their BASIC living costs, because it is the best thing for MOST people? Do you TRULY not CARE about the people that it WILL hurt? Do you think it is RIGHT that CHILDREN will be homeless or malnourished because their parents have issues? Or simply because their parents are on NMW? I just CAN'T fathom an attitude like that, that discounts the suffering of REAL LIFE PEOPLE.

The 'I'm alright Jack' attitude is breathtaking. Imagine for a minute that you are in a car crash, and are unable to work afterwards, as you are in a wheelchair, and have memory problems too. Do you think the state will be there to catch you when you fall? Because it won't be.

EIghties Chick - there's nothing to shop. They're milking the system, but within the rules. Which sucks imo.

I don't think anyone is saying that people who can't work should be made to. But it shouldn't be a viable choice of lifestyle.

Hunty so how much over the £35K are these people getting and how much will they be earning on top?

I know someone with diabetes, who has had two toes amputated, 3 strokes, now has brain damage due to those strokes, is now suffering from glaucoma and going blind. A PERFECT candidate for ESA and DLA, you would assume? He was getting DLA and Incapacity Benefit under the previous government.

NOT ANY MORE. He has been passed as fit for work by ATOS. Honestly. His appeal failed, and he can't re-apply for another 6 months. So he is practically housebound, cannot go outside without a friend (as he can no longer pay for his carer since his DLA has been stopped), yet he gets NO help with disability benefits.

Oh, and the DWP say that as he is not fit for full-time work, as his Medical Consultants have signed a sick-note stating this, that he can't claim JSA EITHER. So he gets NO income. So ATOS say he is fit for work, so can't get disability benefits, yet the DWP say he ISN'T fit for FULL-TIME work, so he can't get unemployment benefits EITHER.

Right now, he is living of food boxes from the food bank. THIS is Britain under a Con-Dem coalition Government.

Is THAT how you think it should be, NiceGuy? Because if so, then your MN nickname is a misnomer.

Lily
I think there are limits to the amount of support that the claimant can get from family, but not sure about that.

I am actually wondering if you know my cousin cause he lives like that.

We have a reasonably feckless family and there is only one of them who has survived on benefits for a long time, the rest work low paid jobs. And our family are what you would likely call "chavvy". They all work.

They are lucky that they live in Scotland where houseprices are not as high.

IT's NOT £35K that they are setting the cap at, MrsHeffley. It is £26K. Maximum. With reductions for housing costs AFTER that. And any earnings over their 'personal' earnings disregard will be deducted from the Universal Credit at a rate of 65p in every £1. It's complex, but I am trying to write a blog post for Too Many Cuts Blog that will give RL examples of how people will be affected. If you keep an eye on that, when I re-do the figures to deduct the Child benefit from the Universal Credit payable, I will post it.

The maths is enough to make your brain melt though. HOW the Government can say that it is a simpler system than TC's is, I have NO idea. TC's is fairly straighforward with the maths. Though a LOT of people who are claiming TC's wouldn't be able to do the maths required to work out of their award is correct. I can. And I can reassure you that the calculations for Universal Credit are FAR AND AWAY more complex than those for TC's.

But that's my point hunty: your problem is with how your health is being assessed from a work point of view. Unless you feel that healthy people should also be exempt from the cap?

As to HB making up the majority of your benefits, I think you'll find for most people the cost of rent/mortgage is their main expense. You say you will go from £1800 a month (after rent/council tax) to £1200 - I'm not sure if you realise that this is still quite an astronomical amount for most people. Based on your figures, £600 of that goes to utilities/food shopping, so you will have £600 left for clothes and other outgoings. If you rebudget, what is you can no longer afford after these changes? I'm clearly missing something here because it looks like all the essentials are easily covered even after a £600 drop a month?

Mme, there's always ways round that though aren't they - like paying a bill on a car, or paying for a holiday or something like that.

Ciske

Did you miss the bit about her two disabled children?

"They are lucky that they live in Scotland where houseprices are not as high."

That is the key to it all it is house prices and rental expenses that are the major problem in the UK. Ideally no one on NMW should need state help as ideally it should be a LIVING NMW, any subsidising is subsidising the businesses that employ workers on these currently far to low wages. Child benefit in my mind should not be taken into account child poverty is a problem. Raising property prices were the real problem (along with social housing shortage) and should have been addressed over previous years.

I am looking at HB allowances with my post, awful alterations to DLA are a separate matter.

Hunty. The main difference in our approach is that you are looking at the individual family who is living in an extremely expensive part of London whom may not be able to soon, in order to justify why the cuts are unfair.

I'm approaching this from the point of view of the people who actually must fund the benefits system. Common sense tells us that there simply must be a limit somewhere. And that it's perhaps not unfair to expect the taxpayer to fund a family to live somewhere the vast majority of working families couldn't afford either.

As I said earlier, there has to be a balancing act between the money paid to a family and the money taken from taxpayers. It was mentioned earlier about it being 0.26% (i think) of all UK families which will be affected. Not crunched the numbers myself but if that's true, it certainly sounds fine to me.