UK benefits 'manifestly inadequate' says Europe

[HeeHiles]

Well look what I stumbled across on Twitter - apparently IDS thinks it's lunacy that Europe says he has to increase welfare payments as they fall below 40% of median income of European states. No wonder the Red Cross want to send us food parcels! In fact Romania and Albania treat their unemployed, pensioners, sick and disabled better than we do in the UK. So much for their Romanian Benefit scroungers rhetoric!

I hate what this country is doing to it's most vulnerable - isn't that how a society should be judged? I wonder what the outcome will be? Thank heavens for the EU I say!

article here

Table of EU countries

I think this is a case of lies, damn lies and statistics.

It seems they're looking at unemployment benefit alone and I can't see any mention of taking all benefits as a total. So for example typically in the UK you wouldn't just get JSA on it's own. You'd also get tax credits, council tax benefit, housing benefit, free prescriptions, school meals etc.

I guess if you are a single guy/girl without children then yes it'd be incredibly tough. But then you'd also hope that if you've nothing stopping you from getting a job that it won't take you too long.

Also we have a really weird JSA where we pay a piss poor rate for however long the claimant gets it. In some other countries you get a high percentage of your last salary but it tapers off over time to zero. So for example if my wife's home country you get nearly 100% of your last salary but that tapers to 0% after a year. That of course also skews the figures and you'd be utterly destitute after a year if you couldn't get a job. They've also no concept of all the other benefits we have and their equivalent of child benefit is something like £8 per month.

I'm not saying our system cannot be improved but I think we have to take these figures with a huge pinch of salt. Given nearly a third of all public spending is down to welfare, it's really hard to believe that we're not spending enough and that we somehow should be spending more.

I bet the government are livid. They have spent ages trying to vilify benefit claimants and cutting the welfare bill for those under 65.

This will mean they will have to reduce the deficit another way .

More than half the welfare bill is pensions, not payments to people of working age.

To be perfectly honest I can see IDS being absolutely delighted by this. The European Committee of Social Rights can't, AFAIK, do anything other than criticise. I dare say the government would be delighted to be further criticised by [the Council of] "Europe" (not the European Union BTW).

It's obvious that the government are making life very difficult for the most vulnerable. Otherwise, there would not be a huge increase in the use of food banks and security tagging of everyday foods like cheese in supermarkets.

I was under the impression that benefit claimants can bring the government to court over the issue now.

I am very pro-benefits, but I agree it's hard to compare across countries. In France, for example, we had a much higher rate of child benefit, but only until our son was 3. (Here in Germany, child benefit is £184 a month until they are 18, but that's because they are desperate to increase their birth rate.)

Unemployment pay is higher in Germany, but you can't claim it unless you have been paying into the system for at least 12 months.

The UK might look better if you took housing benefit into account -- but housing benefit is only so high because rents are so high. I just think it's really complicated to compare it.

To me the biggest difference is that childcare is so heavily subsidised over here -- it's a godsend. I think that's where they should recommend some changes if they want to bring the UK in line with Europe.

You see other than those with disabilities that is where I agree with the government, over housing benefit. If you don't have a disability where you would loose your support system, I can't see why the tax payer is paying huge amounts of housing benefit, it would save a fortune.

If housing benefit is not paid, then what?

Landlords reducing rents to an affordable level or mass homelessness

I believe that any complaints brought to the European Commission on Social Rights have to be done by an NGO, trade union or employers' association. Not all NGOs are able to lodge complaints. A complaint may then be investigated and recommendations made. I don't know whether individual claimants are able to pursue claims against the govt in UK courts.

I understand the policy at one point was to move people to cheaper housing area's which have a lot of empty property.

It would appear, that not everyone agrees that the UK is the poor benefits cousin in Europe.

“British spending on welfare grows faster than European neighbours, while other major powers cut back, according to figures from the OECD”

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10574376/Graphic-Britain-outstrips-Europe-on-welfare-spending.html

"Welfare spending in Britain has increased faster than almost any other country in Europe since 2000, new figures show.

The cost of unemployment benefits, housing support and pensions as share of the economy has increased by more than a quarter over the past thirteen years – growing at a faster rate than in most of the developed world.

Spending has gone up from 18.6 per cent of GDP to 23.7 per cent of GDP – an increase of 27 per cent, according to figures from the OECD, the club of most developed nations.
By contrast, the average increase in welfare spending in the OECD was 16 per cent.

In the developed world, only the United States and the stricken eurozone states of Ireland, Portugal and Spain - which are blighted by high unemployment - have increased spending quicker than Britain.

It means Britain has risen in the developed world rankings for welfare spending from 20th in 2000 to 13th in 2013 – leapfrogging Norway, Luxembourg, Hungary, Poland, Greece and New Zealand.
Despite Mr Osborne’s promise to get welfare under control, the benefits bill is due to increase rapidly in cash terms, from £180bn this year to £203bn in 2018-19.

Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, last year admitted he had given up trying to cut the welfare bill and was instead “managing growth at a lower level”.

Other countries have seen lower increases in welfare spending than Britain: 2 per cent in Poland, 12 per cent in Australia, 10 per cent in Canada and 15 per cent in France.

And in Britain since 2010, when the Coalition came to power, spending on welfare as share of GDP has barely moved – falling by just a quarter of one per cent over three years, according to OECD data.

By contrast, more than a third of developed nations have cut their welfare bills steeply in that period. Germany has cut social security spending as a share of GDP by 3.4 per cent, Canada by 3 per cent, Iceland by 4.2 per cent, Switzerland by 7 per cent and Estonia by 11 per cent."

Isit that's looking at two different things though, I think. It's possible for the UK to pay lower levels of benefits to individuals but still have higher spending overall, if they are paying out to more people (compared to countries who are doing better economically).

Dreamingbohemian…..I think the following paragraph answers your main question;

“In the developed world, only the United States and the stricken eurozone states of Ireland, Portugal and Spain - which are blighted by high unemployment - have increased spending quicker than Britain.”

If only the likes of the European P.I.G.S (Portugal, Ireland Greece and Spain), the real economic basket cases with 20% plus unemployment rates have increased faster, there was something initially wrong with our economy.

I would suggest that our benefit bills should NOT have been RISING through the good times, it hasn't through previous times of 'record' employment - and like it or not, I suspect our immigration policy had a lot to do with that, as just look at our long term unemployment and under 25-year old unemployment in 2004, when we allowed between 1.5 to 2 million new citizens in.

See this is what scares me. People read the headline and think "wow" and don't delve into the detail nor think about it for more than the 2 seconds they read the headline for.

You cannot just take JSA and compare that across Europe because benefits are so different across member states. Ask someone in Poland what a tax credit is or housing benefit. They'd look at you blankly.

As Dreaming points out, unemployment benefit is much higher in Germany but you don't get it unless you've been paying in for a year. In other countries as I pointed out unemployment benefit are tapered.

No doubt the haters will use it to vilify the Tories when in reality the way we've been paying JSA has been going on for as long as I can remember. In fact I remember claiming the crap amount back when I was 18.

Housing is a whole different issue - we should not have to subsidise rent payments if there was still council homes - When I was living in temporary accommodation the rent was £500 pw!!!!! Yes PW for a run down damp one bed flat in the same London borough I was born and raised in - a similar flat would have been about £280 on the same estate, if private - or about £98 if still council.

Tax credits should not have to be paid if companies paid their employees proper salaries. I agree that small businesses may need help with salaries - but why are we subsidising huge multi million pound companies?

I work in recruitment and I'm working with the same salaries I started with back in 1994! So a PA with a few years experience was paid approx £25k in 1994 and today the pay is the same - how is that right? have profits fallen? No they haven't, but profits aren't going in to the right pockets!

I work full time and the rest - I work weekends and evenings and all day (should be working now but thought I better comment on my own thread!) Yet I still have to claim WTC and HB to survive - it's crazy!

Also I know my gas bill has shot up, electric has gone up, food has gone up, petrol but how much have benefits risen? Don't forget the tenants aren't the ones charging the rent - that goes straight to LL's to pay their mortgages!! They have bought ex LA homes and now rent them back at an astronomical cost!

Benefits are rising due to housing costs but the individual money has hardly risen at all over the years.

Build more council houses, not luxury apartments which stand empty for long periods of the time.

Robin Hood Tax needs to be introduced I believe

Wages need to go up - Tax credits need to come down

I had another point but have forgotten it now!

*"Welfare spending in Britain has increased faster than almost any other country in Europe since 2000, new figures show.

The cost of unemployment benefits, housing support and pensions as share of the economy has increased by more than a quarter over the past thirteen years – growing at a faster rate than in most of the developed world*

But this is because of more people needing to claim - the actual benefit itself has not risen - in fact a friend of mine says her benefits are abit less than she was getting a couple of years ago.

Also don't forget that a lot of benefits are claimed by Working people - to top up low salaries and high cost of housing - the actual amount I think is about £71 per week? That has not gone up.

The info with the stats says
'Indeed, workers who have unemployment insurance in non-EU countries sometimes score higher. For instance, in the top 10 one finds Ukraine, Algeria, and Taiwan, while Russia, Tunisia, Romania and Hong Kong make it into the top 20.'

So people in some countries pay unemployment insurance, thus gaining them higher unemployment payments.

And in one of the comments it says ' In some countries (e.g. Italy) you are often not eligible for unemployment benefits, you must meet some strict criteria like having been employed on a specific type of contract for at least 3 years etc...Do the data you posted show the average for all unemployed workers or only for unemployed workers that are eligible for benefits? I doubt Italy would rank highly if all unemployed workers were considered.'

So looks like these stats could be tosh.

Unless immigration into countries such as Ukraine, Algeria or Spain was higher than here - which I'm pretty sure it isn't then we must be providing good benefits or good services eg nhs, either way it is coming out of our taxes, so it looks like tosh to me.

and the comments in the linked page are dated April 2012 so it's out of date anyway.

I understand the policy at one point was to move people to cheaper housing area's which have a lot of empty property

I understand this is still happening - I don't know what I would have done if I had been shipped out to a place I didn't know and where I knew no one - As a single parent with a 5 year old and a baby and suffering a bereavement I needed my family and friends around me. I needed their support then and I need it now otherwise I wouldn't be able to work the hours I do - so would need more benefits! It's a false economy!

I also care for my elderly parents so I wouldn't be able to do that so they would need a carer to help them clean and shop and deal with issues etc.