Does the structure of the benefits system actually discourage disabled people from working? Or is this just how the Government plans to sell cuts to their benefits?
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I have never wanted to work more than I wanted to when I was on disability leave. I got paid about once every 2 months, and it wasn't nearly enough to cover my medical expenses. It doesn't discourage us from working; it discourages us from living.
I mean, I strongly believe that those who can work should. And if the system discourages that we should absolutely change it. But does it actually? And is cutting benefits the fix?
The way into work often starts gradually. Having very high marginal “tax” rates on the first steps into work is crazy. See @paullewismoney.bsky.social recent post.
I don’t think cutting benefits is the fix. Better health, support and encouragement of first steps a much better plan.
I agree, I’ve worked in local gov since 1999 within benefits sector. What I am currently seeing is a lot of people being awarded the LCWRAC within their UC award granting extra £416 pcm and can’t help wondering if this is better spent on healthcare etc for the claimant?
What discourages me working is being too disabled to work, otherwise I'd work and build a life/career. Cutting the rates won't make me able work, but it will make my quality of life more intolerable.
Advised to apply for PIP, app failed. After 6 months assessed as LCWRA so now has extra funds. Fair as he will prob never work more than 10 hrs per week. No help to find work from work coach. Private mentor much more helpful training and vol opps. Son contributes to society. Housing amount pitiful
Recently been through this with my 23 yr old son who has autism and a learning disability. He wanted to find some part time work and I heard about work coaches but only way to see one was to claim universal credit! So we did that. They asked for a fit note we got sent down disability path , rightly
As I understand the system (for SSA and SSI) you can work but if your wages are above a certain level (never enough to live on), then part of the SSI is withheld the following month. And, you're not allowed to receive cash gifts from anyone.
Why does no one ever talk about / target for improvement the employer side of the equation? Because there is sure as hell not universal support from employers to recruit and retain #disabled people or those with #longtermconditions. Worse, active discrimination and constructive dismissal are real.
I think the problem is lack of suitable jobs.
In fact, lack of any jobs.
The jobs have to exist before people can apply for them.
I know many people who can not get employment stable/reliable enough for them to live independently.
This isn't common enough knowledge.
PIP is set to be cut, and PIP isn't a benefit about helping people into work. It's for people who can't work.
Also, I don't believe people should have to work. The ideal we should work towards, even if it never happens, should be a world where work isn't needed.
Sure. Big big caution that I am talking generalities. But yes I think everyone should contribute. And it's not fair on those who do. And I suspect it's better for mental health to work.
Certainly better for mental health to feel value/purpose. I think our definition of “work” is key. Being forced to take an awful job to eat rather than free to volunteer to add value to society. Whole basis for the UBI/bring on Rossum’s machines debate I suppose.
Able yes, young, not sure, as I know of many youngsters who say the opposite. Job market is a mess, fake vacancies, AI used to select, pay so low rent cannot be paid
Sorry I know it's really hard for young people, but once you get over 50 the problem returns and if you're less able then trust me it puts a lot of employers off. My issues are very mild but suddenly my job prospects have taken a nosedive. I do 15hrs in a job I dislike and can't find anything better
Employers should be given money (or tax off) to take on people with varying disabilities, goes without saying. Then experience will count for something. (I'm not an economist but incentives woek)
If people COULD work, they WOULD. Because living off of universal credit fucking sucks. This is just an attempt to kill off disabled people to lighten the state’s duty to its people - something they in their warped world view see as mere burdens to the state, in other words.
Cutting benefits isn't going to make disabled people suddenly able to work, it just means we'll slowly starve or freeze to death. I'd love to have a job, of for no other reason than to have some disposable income, not constantly being skint would be a dream come true.
Dunno about disabled people, but as 2 adults and 1 toddler, my experience is that we would be bankrupt if we worked. UC covers rent, child care, and some living cost; far outstripping the wages we could earn to pay those costs and leaving us more time to be parents and engage with PDP/study.
What information would we, as the public, need in order to have an informed opinion rather than an emotional reaction? I’d genuinely like to see some facts.
I see lack of affordable child care for parttime work and conditions that make someone unappealing to employ (eg variable ones or medicated) as the reasons people rely on benefit unnecessarily. Also, if housing costs were taken out, wd welfare bill be more acceptable?
Surely those that can work, should- because it is beneficial for them- for multiple reasons beyond the simple financial. But where people don’t it is rarely due to fecklessness…
Am ready to buy the idea that we should support people back into work and cut the overall bill that way but that's very different from cutting their benefits - it might even mean spending more at an individual level on helping with the transition?
Nothing feckless here. Ran a business with my husband for 27yrs. Now have a chronic illness, claim PIP, work 7.5hrs pw. Can't work more it exacerbates my illness. Terrified at the prospect of vital support disappearing.
One size doesn’t fit all and this Labour government is in danger of ‘punishing’ the many to target the few. Most people, disabled or not, want to work.
Benefits today are not a stable income. You never know when the state will decide you’re ‘cured’.
Absolutely. I know people who have been helped (back) into employment by reasonable adjustment and support. Supportive not punitive action of a holistic nature needed in the first instance.
Helping some disabled people work would require investments to make the job centres actually helpful for disabled people trying to get jobs, as well as a huge push on a societal level to change companies views on disabled people in the work place so disabled people can get hired easier. Not cuts.
I can think of a whole load of other things that would help some people or be required by others - massive public transport improvements being a big one. But the common theme is they’re all investments that would actually remove some barriers from disabled peoples lives, not cuts that add new ones.
I found my perspective softened (from “no clear view “) and subtly changed by @rutgerbregman.com’s book utopia for realists.. with a really convincing and coherent narrative for universal basic income…
I appreciate this is radically different to current reality/events but is based on sound reasoning
I work for a trade union and *one* of the problems is 'reasonable adjustments' or lack thereof. It's a hoop-jumping exercise for many and they still won't get it, or not for ages.
It definitely does mean spending more. We are talking about people with very substantial barriers to work; they need a lot of specialist support and that doesn't come cheap.
My husband has advanced MS, wheelchair bound, little ability to move at all. He works for the NHS f/t, he’s HofD, he’s treated so shabbily by the LHB, especially his inline manager. They pay lip service. However because he works we get no support at all.
For 5 yrs I’ve not had a day off, I cared for him whilst I had post Septicaemia, I was sent home after 7/52 as there was no one to are for him, I was poorly for at least 1yrwith Post S Syndrome .
Hopefully-
One day someone might make me a cup of tea.
Its how they're trying to sell it & successive governments made the similar excuses. Cutting PIP(which is for those in or out of work)isn't going to help any disabled person. Already nearly twice as many jobseekers as vacancies so cutting benefits won't help anyone into work.
I strongly believe that working the average week for the average pay should get you an average home and an average lifestyle. Nothing too extravagant, one holiday a year, money for socializing.
But it doesn’t, so why bother working and drowning when you can just drown
Absolutely not! It takes huge amounts of time, effort, thought, stress, perseverance and humiliation to apply for, obtain and hold onto disability benefits. It is MUCH easier to work.
Disability benefits are not enough for a single person to live on. They might just about survive, but not live. There is an issue whereby salaries are also not enough to live on. Which would you choose?
Step 1: Cut all benefits for disabled people
Step 2: Don't hire disabled people bc. they are "icky" & need addtional support at work.
Step 3: Disabled people who have no support from relatives die.
This is Soft Eugenics: Cut support, make self-reliance impossible, let them die. Call it unfortunate.
I'd also add a step between steps 2 & 3, Make assist suicide easy for others to "persuade" disabled people to take that route. They're doing this RIGHT NOW by voting down (removing) all the agreed safeguards in the assisted dying bill
Given the risk that incompetently applied, or unfairly applied, benefit cuts could cause to people who are already vulnerable we have the right to ask the govt exactly what they plan to do. They should not implement those plans until they have been scrutinised and amended by disability professionals
Cutting the benefits, doesn’t make you more capable or less capable of getting a job if you’re disabled to appoint where you can’t work cutting your benefits is going to be disastrous, and I’m sure that a lot of disabled people would like to work me for one
No, the very idea that the torturous application for and mean amount received discourages seeking work is fatuous but some of us can't work or there isn't a job match available straightaway. Many claiming benefits are in work already
If someone is struggling to stand up, you don't kick their legs out from under them, you offer an arm or other support. One action is cruel, the other decent. It is clear that Labour Gov. are aiming at the legs as we speak under the lie of 'helping'.
I think there are chronically ill and disabled people who: could work if there are extra supports in place (Access to Work etc),
might work if their health improves (NHS invest needed),
won't ever be able to work.
No group is helped by cutting financial support. Investment in supports is key.
I would like to believe any change in the system is backed up by evidence or studies. But there isn't any in this case, or they would have used it. Everyone can see it is cruel cuts to the most vulnerable.
Jolyon, there are those of us that simply can’t work. I was a hard worker, loved my job. Now I’m too ill and have carers washing and feeding me. The Labour government is planning on cutting the money I have in an effort to force me to do something I cannot do. I will be plunged into destitution.
A destitution with no way out, ever. I do think much more can be done to support people back into work when they are ready. The current system is awful. But, in this instance they’re cutting money to ‘incentivise’ work for people who can’t do it. It’s cruel. Poverty for life.
The cruelty is the point. The “justification” is the radical right wing propaganda that “system incentivizes people not to work”… this is only true in that even a part time job (doing what they can) would result in losing benefits… because, guess what… “they can work!!! They’re just moochers!”
Firstly, you must address l
how you have lumped all people with disabilities into one big group; everyone's needs are different (usually a determined plan by a case worker who outlines their needs and areas of improvement), some need assisted transportation, meals, supervision, or all three.
Second, you would not be asking these kinds of questions if you had even a iota of the process and work case workers perform for those with disabilities. I have worked with my foster parents on providing said services, and I spit in your general direction.
PIP is not means tested. You can work and claim it, and for many people, they wouldn't be able to work without it. It helps with the extra costs of working/living with a disability or chronic illness.
I’ve worked for 30+years and contributed but now am riddled with arthritis, can’t sit for long can’t walk far and struggle with everyday tasks without pain and discomfort. It’s difficult to manage on disability and we do go without food to pay bills, cutting benefits will cause more poverty
Depends which benefit you're referring to? Of the 2 benefits you can apply for - PIP isn't means tested. But ESA has a limit on how much you can earn before lose ££.
I had a letter recently from the dreaded DWP to migrate over to UC, and Kendal is saying if you can't work, get lower benefits to live on, that is disgusting
Some people have needs that most companies cant accommodate. We used to have special workplaces set up for people so they could go to work and feel like a valued member of society. But government cuts closed those opportunities.
Governments give as little as they can to disabled people
On those that can work, I know of a few places where they are respected, but mostly they are underpaid in some cases not paid at all, so are being exploited by the businesses as well.
absolutely not
Without ESA & medical support I would never have recovered enough to start volunteering in order to retrain, which nobody would have paid me to do.
Now FT employed about to move to higher tax bracket. Not possible w/o disability benefits
Reform style messaging from Labour is sickening
As a disabled person with an inherited genetic condition that is incurable and unable to work due to it. I do feel this ‘Victorian’ attitude towards me of a ‘moral’ failure. That I’m not trying hard enough etc. One day it could be them! Disability doesn’t discriminate- only those with ‘ability’ do.
It's not easy getting a job even without being disabled. My son has applied for 50 jobs with very little response. It's either the jobs just aren't there or the HR people are incompetent.
I have a very sad tale about benefits paid to my late son who had severe mental health problems. Rather than throwing money at him, he could have done with a keyworker helping him to organise his life. He was sorely neglected by the authorities who insisted I was his carer which I resented
The rate of fraudulent claims for PIP is so low, it rounds to 0%. As per their own statistics. This is an ideological attack on the most vulnerable in our society, yet there are STILL people defending him.
Real worker’s rights makes work more accessible to more people. We have an administration championing overwork, 60 hour weeks, giving up weekends, and making the work environment even more hostile to workers. This will exclude more people from work.
It can do. It is also overheads like the thought of having to provide and disclose an ongoing audit of all income and outgoings to an unknown person and staying within permitted earnings and the encumbent fear of getting it wrong when maths and accountancy are not your greatest strenghts.
But there has been alot of scaremongering and poor messaging. And it may be the plan is to make it more difficult for new PIP applicants not ones that already havr it. But its already really difficult to get.
Kind of, the system is hopeless for people who could eg work 10hrs a week self employed, if you can't do a 9-5 job reliably, or part time say 20hrs a week, your choices are do no work at all and receive benefits, or do a tiny amount of work you can't live off & loose everything.
As a welfare rights adviser, I think there’s some truth to it. But the reason is that the basic rate (£90 per week for a single person) is so low that getting the extra disability money is the only way to make life liveable for people
I have an autistic son. He'd love to work. He volunteers wherever he can. But nobody will give him an actual job because of the support he needs and additional demand it puts on others.
He lives with us because of benefits. Without them he'd be in supported living costing the government much more.
Ditto! The ‘cost saving’ provided by unpaid carers, and unclaimed benefits is a cohort the govt should be wary of provoking further! Focus on big tax avoidance and corporate shenanigans instead.
I'm disabled, and I do work. WITH the help of PIP because being disabled and working isn't cheap! Without it, I'll end up off work again, costing tax payers even more. I don't want that anymore than they do.
I’m disabled and cannot work. For every minute of activity (physical or mental), I need 10 minutes of rest. Even if I *could* manage to make it through a workday, who would want to hire me?
Two things can be true. There's a lack of nuance and absence of compassion in the way they talk at sick and disabled people. You could tweak the structure so claimants are encouraged to try work & support is scaled down not stopped as they physically/mentally improve.
Really, no. Being disabled is expensive and hard. Nobody wants to employ me because epilepsy. There’s a look everyone gets when you mention it. Add in a personality disorder.
All the system changes in the world won’t change it. Cuts are cuts. They hinder.
You have to have employers willing to take on people with additional needs. It, unfortunately, is few and far between. Why would you take on someone who’s maybe good for a couple of years with support vs 20 years with someone just leaving college or uni. You wouldn’t.
Nobody seems to be talking about all the employers willing to make accommodations for the sick and disabled. In my long experience there aren’t many who want to be bothered. Labour living on a different planet yet again.
a better question is do disabled people have a choice? between the benefits system being frustrating, confusing, lengthy, etc to get something covered and applying for disability to stop working being the same, many of us choose the devil we know & the guaranteed pay til we can no longer continue.
5 years ago I was working full time then march 2020 I got ill and never recovered, I would still be working if it wasn't for that, as a 55 Yr old woman I certainly didn't expect my life to be this way, I'm certainly not lazy
Bring back Remploy. Scotland still has Remploy (Fair Start Scotland), which has helped 16,000 people since 2018 - scaling up to the UK population size that would rise to 180,000.
The UC system causes a reduction in mental health. Even if you start the process mentally healthy, it can rapidly cause that to deteriorate. If you start the process with poor mental health, it will worsen that for you, rather rapidly.
A vile idea from another Tory govt... I mean Labour.
Without NHS investment & making work places accessible for disabled workers who can work, cutting benefits will not help.
I have C-PTSD, I'm unemployed for that reason. I get no meaningful help from the underfunded NHS & probably will continue to be unemployable for a further decade or more.
They literally tell us when we get on SSDI that it is not something we can survive on, and should find work...even if we're on SSDI due to disabilities. But then we get punished for working to earn money to survive LIKE THEY TELL US TO DO.
The whole system is fucked.
The big problem is that for many of us, we can't work in the way that society expects. Some days I can work a few hours, others I can't even get out of bed. This will get me fired at any job as I cannot predict when it will happen.
We are stuck in a hellish nightmare of suck.
I suspect it does, at least in that there is no or limited provision for the actual support needed to allow disabled people to work. All the statements this week have included that crucial element as a brief afterthought, which doesn't fill me with confidence
In 2019 I was working in the NHS and just buying my first house. I then got a horrific diagnosis and lost my house, job, car and 4 organs. The NHS saved my life twice - but won't re-hire me, nor will anywhere else, as my disabilities are now complex. How is cutting my PiP gonna help?
It doesn't though...the system needs an overhaul that's for sure, why is everyone getting upset about RW media tittle-tattle?
Just wait until the new system is published.
So their own MP's, party members and supporters are spouting Right Wing tittle tattle when they're voicing their concerns about the way it's being done and the amount of people it's going to affect? 🤔 If it's not too rude to ask are you claiming any disability benefits?
There would be no benefit cheats if we had UBI, and we could cut the costly agencies raking it in to deny benefits.
A dream. I know.
But dreams are what the future is made of.
There already ARE utterly negligible amounts of “benefits cheats”. They’re a fantasy invented and sold to justify plunging more disabled people further into poverty. PIP fraud in particular was at 0% last year - zero percent fraud! And yet media still kept talking about PIP as of it gets cheated.
Not my point.
It's a valid conversation to have, but you've already conceded the point that cheating happens, and you end up arguing how much cheating is acceptable with zealots who want all cheating to be stamped out.
Don't fight the battle they choose.
I’m not sure what part of “0% fraud” you missed. As in, I’m not conceding it happens, I’m categorically stating PIP doesn’t get cheated and every slash against PIP only affects actual disabled people.
Not arguing your point. If you made it on another post but mine, I'd probably agree with it, maybe give it a like.
But I don't care to move the argument to how much fraud there is or is not in the benefit system, because that's where the right wing wants to hold the argument.
Major costs include employing agency staff in NHS & Social Care an example: Agency staff in Social Work earning £35+ per hour, no continuity, no commitment. Why wld anyone take up permanent position when this is on offer? Reform badly needed but where to start?
It’s not that simple.
There are a myriad of factors that go into whether someone can work. And there are programs like the working people’s disabilities program for people who need Medicaid due to a disability and also work.
However that program is difficult to navigate.
Add on to that- for people with disabilities, finding work is next to impossible, because people won’t hire them.
They are required to keep their assets under 2k so they can’t own a car, and the cost to take a bus or cab to work eats up most of the pay they make.
They are also required to send pay stubs weekly to SSA so they can deduct your pay from your SSI payment. Which can be cumbersome. Most people don’t have a scanner at home so they have to go the library. Adding more burden.
I'm lucky to be long retired, but from all I have heard, it does because you can't try out a little work without it easily leading to deductions from your benefits. + if you start work and it fails, you might face months waiting to be reassessed, with no income at all.
There is zero disability benefit fraud. This is a stat right from DWP. Disabled people are not the problem. Disabled people who cannot work are not the problem.
The gov are taking a cheap shot at a marginalised group who have little ability to fight back.
We also have a growing number of people with disabilities due to covid. It's absolutely scandalous that the government is doing nothing to rectify the Tories handling of this ongoing pandemic
It's one of those things which is both complex and simple. Everyone's needs are different but disabled people need a job which fits around their disability and the resources to get into work. For many those jobs that is compatible with their disablity doesn't exist locally.
Further complicated if it's something to do with mental health. Not to take anything away from physical disabilities, but in theory they're easier to 'prove'. And how did we get ourselves to a place where truly sick people are having to prove it anyway?! ME/CFS, long Covid etc, all need extra help.
NHS has people high up in the food chain put there to gaslight everyone that me/CFS and long COVID are not real. Same person also in charge of trans kids healthcare now.
Thank God for recent scientific discoveries or they would have been severely disabling ME folks to this day.
PIP is a pittance.
Being disabled is no picnic - PIP is no passport to a lush life of langourous idleness.
I'm glad I'm in Scotland where the alternative ADP is administered by an immeasurably more humane Social Security Scotland. I just hope we're not dragged down by this craven Lab Government.
Does anyone have a memory of employers having quotas of disabled people in 70’s? I remember my dad talked about it as an employer - not moaning but accepting it as a cost of business because it was universal. Also there was remploy, since dismantled.
It's a way of selling the cut's. The whole process of applying for PIP is grueling, demeaning and draining. No one would go through it if they didn't have to. The fraud rate is 0.02% whilst the DWP department error rate is 3% ??
No, the structure of the workplace makes it hard to get adaptations. What does your organisation do to make sure disabled people can work for you? Lifts, level access, flexible working, work from home, airborne viral mitigations, understanding of pacing, reduced hours same pay, workload management?
I think it’s the structure of work that discourages disabled people. So many people would like to do something but it’s so difficult to find perhaps a part time job that can work alongside the benefit system and top up any shortfall.
I have a disabled son. His conditions (various) make it pretty much impossible to work - let alone have a worthwhile or fulfilling career. That would require the ability to stick to routine, be able to manage his conditions in ways that most structured employment can't provide, and have the kind of
He's been at the tender mercies of the DWP (I'm not wealthy enough to support outright whereby he wouldn't need to work) and they have been an absolute an utter JOKE of the horribly unfunny kind.
Unsympathetic Job Coaches that don't bother to even read his notes before ordering him to apply for
Jobs he can't get and won't even be offered interviews for. Added to the fact that Job Centres now seem to have little to no actual job vacancies to offer people. When did that happen by the way? That we "allowed" a branch of Government that should mostly exist to help people find work can't be
Arsed to hold even basic lists of local or regional vacancies beyond the most meagre "retail or bar work" openings that appear on an adventure hoc basis. They can't even facilitate McJobs because everyone is supposed to "go out and make the effort themselves."
So, whenever I see/hear this kind of discussion start I realise I'm coming from a personal experience point that cannot possibly cover a whole country's experience - but what my son currently has to do to try and hoop-jump while fairly seriously unwell JUST to pick up
Disabled people invariably have higher expenses when in work, things that cost far less when on benefits (cost of medicines, cost of travel, costs of carers, etc.) so while being on benefits is a subsistence living working often means being below even that low subsistence level...
and all of that will be ignored in the failing government "lets kick the people on benefits" last ditch resort (because they have run out of ideas that exclude taxing the rich). Normally you'd not expect this point of government till a tired 3rd Labour term or first term tory party who revel in it.
They are exactly the same party that lost in 2015, same positions, same staff, same views. The only thing that changed is Keir not Milliband as leader, everyone else went back to the positions they had before Milliband lost. They would have lost had the tories not imploded and Farage...
not split the vote. They have thrown Trans people under the bus and are now throwing the poor, sick, disabled, and unemployed under the bus. They have nothing but tory ideas and tory ideals at their very core. They are to the right of Blair, and he was already well on the hard right of the party.
You'd be foolish to do anything that might prompt a reassessment of your eligibility for sickness or disability benefits when you can't have any confidence that that process will be carried out fairly and competently.
There is an ever-present risk of all financial support being withdrawn inappropriately and without warning, which is very damaging, especially to people with mental health issues.
After so many years of pretty appalling treatment of sick and disabled people in the benefits system, it may actually be the case that the only answer is to scrap the whole system and start again.
Get those assessments right and that will give claimants the freedom to try things out, to be creative, to search out solutions that might work for them as an individual. All of that is impossible as things stand.
I get pip & work, facing the prospect of losing it is terrifying. The pip review process itself has been so stressful it's caused a health flare & I've needed 3 weeks off work. I'm in an ok position financially with pip without it I'd be struggling and certainly not in any state to hold a job.
Pip is also used as a gateway to other schemes, without it I'd lose my blue badge & so would lose my work parking space, so id be unable to get to work. I'd lose event access schemes, I barely leave the flat as it is, removing my pip would be isolating me in my house. Doesn't make for a good worker.
I am sure most disabled people would love to work. The government should ensure the jobs are there and are accessible. Taking or reducing benefits will not help them to find jobs that don't exist.
I have been unable to work since 2011 due to MH issues. I get the giddy sum of £290 per month.
I'm rolling in money. Not.
Even worse, it looks as if Labour are trying to even remove that.
It's extremely difficult to get and maintain employment as a person with multiple disabilities. Most employers are not willing to accommodate, and have ableist views. Getting rid of WFH and Covid protections impacted our ability to work as well.
Yet ill & disabled people who simply *can't work* will be pushed into deepening poverty after UC & PIP are cut - with no route out. Taking away essential income won't magically make them well or able bodied. Scope estimates that disabled people need £1,010 p/m extra to meet costs of disability
"The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimated in 2023 that 57% of households with a disabled person had experienced food insecurity and seven in ten regularly went without essentials."
Blame game, Shame on #LabourParty
Do they think those on disability benefits want to be on it?
Those who cheer them on I really hope they don't get to experience a sudden Onset of an auto immune disease / a life changing infection/disease/accident
It's a safety net for anyone that ever needs it.
I'm in the 'benefit of the doubt' camp as well. This government is doing some good, fundamentally restorative work. They are really terrible at communicating it. So media fill in the gaps. Let's see.
They have been stating since before the election that they would slash benefits, and you cannot slash benefits without killing disabled people who rely on them. Where the fuck is this benefit of the doubt coming from - is it an assumption that they are, even now, lying about what they will do?
I'm assuming its because she describes herself as 'far too optimistic' & probably isn't disabled. Because if she isn't herself disabled, it's easy to sit back and give people who have openly said they will be harder on benefits claimants than the Tories the 'benefit of the doubt'.
PIP is about assisting with the cost of being disabled. Without it many who are disabled and work wouldn’t be able to work. Eg those using the mobility portion for Motability vehicle enabling them to get to workplace or appointments. It’s about encouraging independence. Govt narrative is inhuman.
Exactly! I'm disabled and work WITH the help of PIP. Because being disabled and working isn't cheap! Without it, I'll end up off work again, costing the taxpayer even more. I don't want that anymore than they do!
I think that’s the case for a huge number of people. False economy and lazy narrative to push the scrounger tale.
Further have any of the people asserting such guff actually looked at the forms and process involved in making a claim. Not something done lightly. #PIP
It's a huge battle to claim in the first place! Then there's the never-ending assessments, even though they have tonnes of medical evidence stating I have a LIFELONG condition! Labour are punching down. No better than the Tories.
No one in their right mind would choose to love on the absolute pittance given to disabled people. Energy should be put into making work accessible for disabled people rather than forcing more of them into poverty. Supporting home working would be a massive step in the right direction.
What makes you think it will? So far all they’ve offered is a lot of stick, no carrot. I have a lot of doubts. Are the government to offerr incentives to employers for taking on disabled/chronically ill staff? If yes, why should they get the benefits?
I've seen no indication that it will. All the talk that has been reported so far has been about cutting the welfare bill and cracking down etc. I've seen nothing to suggest a policy of helping people into work, only forcing them through poverty. I will be delighted if I'm wrong.
If someone is too sick to work, cutting benefits won't change that. We risk punishing genuinely disabled people for the actions of a very small number of cheats.
No doubt there is the odd one but I know of genuinely disabled people living in b&bs or unsuitable emergency housing. I have friends who have gone thru hell just to get a few quid from PIP. Another scared to run her tap as she can't afford her water bill and has had her attendance allowance removed.
An employment market that is unwilling to make the necessary adjustments to accommodate disabled people is discouraging disabled people. It's hard to face rejection again and again. Also, there are some who are physically or mentally incapable of work, they deserve to be cared for by the state.
Let's Fully Understand what's going on here - there is NO "Discouraging" going on in our Government! Trump, Musk & Company Fully Intend to KILL OFF Disabled People! No more Disabled People = No More Problems! "THIS" is EXACTLY their intent! 😡😡 #REVOLT #RESIST #FIGHT-BACK-NOW
Comments
I don’t think cutting benefits is the fix. Better health, support and encouragement of first steps a much better plan.
In fact, lack of any jobs.
The jobs have to exist before people can apply for them.
I know many people who can not get employment stable/reliable enough for them to live independently.
This isn't common enough knowledge.
Also, I don't believe people should have to work. The ideal we should work towards, even if it never happens, should be a world where work isn't needed.
Benefits today are not a stable income. You never know when the state will decide you’re ‘cured’.
I appreciate this is radically different to current reality/events but is based on sound reasoning
https://bsky.app/profile/drstevetaylor.bsky.social/post/3lk6bu6q72s2u
Hopefully-
One day someone might make me a cup of tea.
It's incredibly difficult to get any benefits today unless you're a corporation or banker!
But it doesn’t, so why bother working and drowning when you can just drown
Step 2: Don't hire disabled people bc. they are "icky" & need addtional support at work.
Step 3: Disabled people who have no support from relatives die.
This is Soft Eugenics: Cut support, make self-reliance impossible, let them die. Call it unfortunate.
I think this is the motivator:
"Labour strategists believe that appearing to get a handle on welfare is an essential weapon in the anti-Reform UK armoury."
might work if their health improves (NHS invest needed),
won't ever be able to work.
No group is helped by cutting financial support. Investment in supports is key.
how you have lumped all people with disabilities into one big group; everyone's needs are different (usually a determined plan by a case worker who outlines their needs and areas of improvement), some need assisted transportation, meals, supervision, or all three.
Poor people have to be threatened and have their money taken away to work.
I don't make the rules (if I did they'd be quite different).
On those that can work, I know of a few places where they are respected, but mostly they are underpaid in some cases not paid at all, so are being exploited by the businesses as well.
Is the drive to work a drive to exploitation?
Without ESA & medical support I would never have recovered enough to start volunteering in order to retrain, which nobody would have paid me to do.
Now FT employed about to move to higher tax bracket. Not possible w/o disability benefits
Reform style messaging from Labour is sickening
He lives with us because of benefits. Without them he'd be in supported living costing the government much more.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/pip-changes-dwp-benefits-latest-labour-disability-b2712733.html?utm_source=organise&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=blast965398
All the system changes in the world won’t change it. Cuts are cuts. They hinder.
Ditto for my daughter and autism.
A vile idea from another Tory govt... I mean Labour.
I have C-PTSD, I'm unemployed for that reason. I get no meaningful help from the underfunded NHS & probably will continue to be unemployable for a further decade or more.
This kind of Tory policy will push desperate people towards crime, suicide, or extreme poverty.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jan/28/disabled-man-starved-to-death-after-dwp-stopped-his-benefits
I would love to be able to cope with working again, especially if I got the kind of mental health support that would allow me to be a chef again.
This support doesn't exist. Fix the NHS if you want people back at work!
The whole system is fucked.
We are stuck in a hellish nightmare of suck.
Just wait until the new system is published.
A dream. I know.
But dreams are what the future is made of.
It's a valid conversation to have, but you've already conceded the point that cheating happens, and you end up arguing how much cheating is acceptable with zealots who want all cheating to be stamped out.
Don't fight the battle they choose.
But I don't care to move the argument to how much fraud there is or is not in the benefit system, because that's where the right wing wants to hold the argument.
There are a myriad of factors that go into whether someone can work. And there are programs like the working people’s disabilities program for people who need Medicaid due to a disability and also work.
However that program is difficult to navigate.
They are required to keep their assets under 2k so they can’t own a car, and the cost to take a bus or cab to work eats up most of the pay they make.
The gov are taking a cheap shot at a marginalised group who have little ability to fight back.
It’s disgusting.
Thank God for recent scientific discoveries or they would have been severely disabling ME folks to this day.
Do the practices of recruitment agencies ever come under the same intense public scrutiny?
Being disabled is no picnic - PIP is no passport to a lush life of langourous idleness.
I'm glad I'm in Scotland where the alternative ADP is administered by an immeasurably more humane Social Security Scotland. I just hope we're not dragged down by this craven Lab Government.
Unicorn's horns being less rare is not an overstatement.
Since losing his last job (a whole other story of unfairness and being railroaded out by uncaring line management)
Unsympathetic Job Coaches that don't bother to even read his notes before ordering him to apply for
This is frankly ludicrous in a way
So, whenever I see/hear this kind of discussion start I realise I'm coming from a personal experience point that cannot possibly cover a whole country's experience - but what my son currently has to do to try and hoop-jump while fairly seriously unwell JUST to pick up
This is Ideological bullshit.
£6bn cuts equate to 0.3% of a Total Govt Spend of £1.23trn.
It's not worth Reeves getting out of bed for.
Disabled people invariably have higher expenses when in work, things that cost far less when on benefits (cost of medicines, cost of travel, costs of carers, etc.) so while being on benefits is a subsistence living working often means being below even that low subsistence level...
Wait and see what the Policy is.
That was the policy that Rachel Reeves said she'd introduce during Milliband's tenure, she's just warmed it up again: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/12/labour-benefits-tories-labour-rachel-reeves-welfare
‘Permitted work’ exists so that people can do a few hours / or P/T work. This helps greatly with MH etc.
The waiting list for ‘Access to Work’ is insane. This needs to be tackled.
Many thousands of people on NHS waiting lists.
Support Services hacked to bits since 2010.
This is just the Labour Party punching down rather than tax the rich!
I'm rolling in money. Not.
Even worse, it looks as if Labour are trying to even remove that.
Do they think those on disability benefits want to be on it?
Those who cheer them on I really hope they don't get to experience a sudden Onset of an auto immune disease / a life changing infection/disease/accident
It's a safety net for anyone that ever needs it.
Let’s wait and see ..
Further have any of the people asserting such guff actually looked at the forms and process involved in making a claim. Not something done lightly. #PIP
please read this thread and have a word! The cuts are unethical and make no sense. Labour was founded on punching UP! Not down.