What will it take for the Government to enact welfare reform?

[Schlossadler]

What has to break, before the Government is finally willing to enact welfare reform?

I hope so. Piling on debt for the next generation is no good.

Im not sure thats true. And I think R and D is actually something the UK government should be spending on for once.

The PP is plain wrong - I look forward to their admission.

Yeah I don't want the R&D for weapons etc to be in private companies hands. Then to sell to the highest bidder. I want government to have full oversight for anything like that.

UKRI is largely funding of research carried out in universities.

it includes academics doing research on Ancient Greek, the economics of medieval Spain, the music of the resistance in wartime Italy as well as things more normally thought of as R and D like membership of CERN and stem research.

private companies in the U.K. fund a massive amount of research and development particularly in pharmaceuticals, (gsk and AstraZeneca) weapons (British aerospace) and biotech (Wellcome abd similar).

My previous post stands.

i have a friend on pip.

her pip is used for her motability van. It’s a wheelchair adapted vehicle with a lift so that she can get into it and then go (in her wheelchair) to the driving position and drive from her wheelchair.

it’s been adapted because she hasn’t got any sensation or motor control in her legs at all.

she’s hoisted into her wheelchair each day from her bed by a personal assistant.

she has a job,

if her pip was taken away from her because she has a job she would not be able to get to her job because she would lose her car.

her village has one bus an hour and they are not wheelchair accessible.

should people like my friend lose her adapted van because she has a job? If she loses the van she’ll lose her job within the week and then she’ll be eligible for benefits again and can get the van again and get a job again and then lose the van…, and so on and so on.

Either when we get the shit kicked out of us by the bond markets or when they lose. Entitlements have wracked up to the point where more and more people are claiming something and are highly incentivised to keep it that way.

Universal credit is much tougher than previous benefits due to the savings limit. They check bank accounts.

Maybe if the NHS was funded properly then we'd have fewer people on welfare. But it's probably cheaper to just fund welfare.

Restrict PIP only to those with the most severe disabilities. Completely remove universal credit and bump up the job seeker's allowance to a livable rate (say £500 per week). Cap the JSA to 24 weeks of benefit within a five year rolling window. Remove the triple lock and index pensions to earnings only. Use some of the savings to fund food banks, shelters and job training programmes so that people down on their luck can bounce back quickly. Create a job corps that provides basic employment opportunities for people unable to work more advanced jobs (picking up rubbish, tidying public spaces, etc.).

You can easily have a compassionate state without creating a dependency on government benefits.

@concertinacornflake Now let’s hear your proposal???

UK is far from the highest https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-longrun

Gilt yields are already beyond elevated in historical terms - yes, owing to exogenous events like the ME, but also to this governments terrible policy decisions.

Healey has no room for manoeuvre in October.

The UK tax burden reached 36.1% of GDP in 2025/26 and is projected to rise toward historic post-war highs (37.2% in 1948)

Your most recent post suggested removing universal credit.

stats suggest 8.4 million people are on UC which is more than enough to lose any party that suggests that the next election.

She also suggested removing the triple lock. 😁

That’s the issue. When enough people will vote to keep it it’s hard to remove payments.

Easy to criticise, but I have not seen your proposals.

Please advise.

A full-on financial & currency crisis is the only thing which will force this government, and more to the point, its backbenchers, to face up to fiscal & economic reality. And they may get the opportunity sooner rather than later.

It should be means tested and not available to those who are employed (as employed already legally have to provide reasonable adjustment for those with disabilities)

Workplace reasonable adjustments don't include the home and travel adjustments that someone needs in order to get to work in the first place. PIP is to help with the costs of those.

I agree with some of your points: we need to abolish the pension triple lock, and we need to invest in making the long-term unemployed employable.

@ilovesooty evidently does not agree with removing the triple lock…

I didn't say that.

However any suggestion of it will have pensioners up in arms. They vote.

Why the smiley emoji, then?

Anyway, keen to hear others suggestions - which are lacking.

The suggestions aren’t bad or emoji worthy. One problem is so many voters won’t vote against their own payments. And that’s so many rn.

Which comes back to some kind of fiscal intervention.

My proposals:

if I were a political party (I’m not for avoidance of doubt)

I would want to win the next election.
removing triple lock would lose me the next election so I wouldn’t do it
removing UC would lose me the next election so I wouldn’t do that either.

that means that somewhere around 60-70% of the welfare bill can’t be changed without losing an election. So I’d fiddle around with little stuff that might get me some useful headlines but won’t make much difference.

so no welfare cutting proposals here.

the current government is focusing on cutting the nhs back to pre-covid levels and not taking on any additional spending (defence review rejected) plus cutting anything that isn’t absolutely necessary either in money terms or in will lose the next election terms.

Would you reintroduce the two-child benefit cap?