Downing Street is preparing billions of pounds worth of cuts to disability benefits in an attempt to calm markets over its economic plan, The Telegraph can reveal.
No 10 and Treasury figures think significant reductions are needed in the welfare budget, including to personal independence payments (PIP).
The annual cost of support payments for people with disabilities and health conditions is forecast to soar from £22 billion to £35 billion by 2029 – a 60 per cent increase.
Cutting who is eligible for them would possibly be the right answer. Getting the slackers, with “stress”, off their arses would be a good thing in fact.
But how?
Precisely how will these subsidies increase by 59% over a four year period? A level that would make the most avaricious public sector union green with envy.
Not inflation obviously so either the present level of individual support is considered inadequate and in need of significant increase or else a mass of new claimants is in the pipeline just waiting to become eligible for PiP or whatever (which rather begs the question how are they or their parents currently coping). The nearest the article comes to this is a reference to mental health and anxiety which many would say has become the new catch-all. Is it really going to cost that much though? I suppose an extra million largely self-diagnosed recipients at £10k a pop would just about do it.
Reduce eligibility for mental health problems sole to those diagnosed with actual psychosis. The real nutters who have to be properly medicated. Depression, anxiety, ADHD etc etc, no dice, keep working. Arguably actually better for your mental health than sitting at home doing nothing anyway.
Won’t work Jim. Slackers will clog up the GPs until they give them a diagnosis that allows them to arse fuck the taxpayer to keep them living quite comfortably.
Maybe someone has looked at that mystery gene therapy injury data that they’re determined to not share with the rest of us.
“Slackers will clog up the GPs until they give them a diagnosis that allows them to arse fuck the taxpayer to keep them living quite comfortably.”
A lot harder to fake true psychosis than feeling a bit depressed or anxious. And it won’t be something a GP can diagnose. It’d be a proper trick cyclist job. I know from first hand experience how hard it is to get a person going through psychosis sectioned, and they don’t hand out anti-psychotic drugs willy nilly, they are not smarties. So would be a far far higher hurdle for the average slacker to get over.
Remember those halcyon days when we were discussing universal basic income? Har
Wasn’t Universal Basic Income, as originally envisaged, supposed to solve this very problem? Just divide the total current benefits bill by the number of inhabitants of the country, and transfer an appropriate payment to every individual’s bank account once a month. That way you can sack all the public sector administrators of the benefits system, and every individual is encouraged to do whatever amount of work suits them to top up their basic income. Zero-hours contracts and side-hustles in; minimum wage and state-mandated workers’ rights out.
Of course, once the left got hold of the idea, it was transformed into a universal top-up of all the current benefits, but the original idea had its merits.
“Wasn’t Universal Basic Income, as originally envisaged, supposed to solve this very problem?”
No, because it has never (as far as I can work out) been suggested as a replacement for disability benefits as well. So the huge incentive to ‘get on the sick’ would remain. And if you did include disability benefits then some very disabled people would be left to starve to death, as they literally cannot work, and need significant amounts of money from the State just to continue living.
And of course there’s housing benefits, which are significant, and if they continue will mitigate against any positive incentives a UBI would bring. But if they went it would mean loads of people couldn’t afford their rent suddenly and would face eviction.
UBI is one of those great ideas in theory that prove impossible to implement in practice. Particularly because in a democracy its extremely difficult to ever cut any benefits, so shifting from a means tested benefit system to an UBI one will always result in losses to someone somewhere. And those losses will be concentrated at the bottom of society, and gains at the top. It really isn’t politically acceptable to take money from lots of poor people and give it to lots of rich(er) ones. And as every country (so far) that has introduced a benefits system has decided to make it means tested to start with, it means moving to a UBI is never possible. If you started with one, maybe, but then the amounts that could be given to everyone would be miniscule, and not do any good at all.
So we are stuck with means tested systems.
“ Downing Street is preparing billions of pounds worth of cuts to disability benefits”
Look what those evil Tories made us do, if only thy hadn’t crashed the economy….. cue Guardian rolling out the worst marginal sob cases to chants of “evil Tories” rather than focusing on those who have a terminal case of duvetities.
When in reality what they mean is: if only the Tories had fixed the stuffed economy that we bequeathed them like they did eventually after ‘79 we’d have been able to spend like Blair/Brown.
“Particularly because in a democracy it’s extremely difficult to ever cut any benefits” except when a non-experienced-economist non-chess-champion clicked her fingers and, lo, the Winter Fuel Allowance vanished.
Hell, it even vanished in a regressive way, since the bulk of the poorest pensioners are those whose income is just marginally above the threshold for pension credit. (Or so I read; does anyone here know better?)
I know anecdotally that much like the 16-hour week magically unlocking loads of benefits, if you’ve underpaid your stamp and qualify for Pension Credit a world of benefits magically appears that makes the full pension look like jack shit.
So, those who did the right thing and paid their stamp are mugs, as usual. Exhibit A: me.
“except when a non-experienced-economist non-chess-champion clicked her fingers and, lo, the Winter Fuel Allowance vanished.”
And so may Labour as a result. Look how unpopular its made them. People won’t forget it either. All the other stuff (TTK’s penchant for fabulous gear, the riots, the tax hikes etc etc) is forgettable and survivable (look how Blair survived some quite serious scandals early on), the one thing that just everyone, Left and Right agrees on is that the WFA abolition was the work of a bunch of c*nts. Everyone has an aged parent or grandparent, and no-one wants to think of them shivering in the cold because they can’t afford the heating bills. And we’re all going to be old one day, so everyone has a long term vested interest in old age benefits. A really really stupid idea to get on the wrong side of all that emotional baggage, even if you consider the WFA a waste of money, given a lot of it goes to people who don’t need it. When emotion hits rationality, emotion will win out.
Now that the Winter Fuel Payment of £200 (some exceptions) only goes to Pension Credit recipients, now is the time to abolish it completely and just add £4/week to Pension Credit.
You’ve been alive for 67 years and can budget accordingly for birthdays, holidays, christmas and fuel.
Further advantage in saving on admin, and also cutting off legacy EU residents from getting it.
There’s also some duplication of benefits – e.g. you might get PIP mobility for help getting around – which is fine, you choose how you spend it, taxis, or bunging your granddaughter an Austen to take you to a show, whatever. So you shouldn’t need a disabled railcard, free bus, or discount for entry to anything government does, ‘cos the money’s already been given for you to decide how you spend it.
Every guy/gal who is not seeking work due to a disability is excluded from the calculation of %age unemployed. Someone has calculated how many they have to add to the number registered sick to meet the Labour government’s unemployment target after a million businesses either lay off staff or go bust (making *all* their workers unemployed) as a tresult of Reeves’ budget. Someone else has been shocked at the resulting increase in sick pay and decided to cut it.
Reeves is going to find she’s playing whack-a-mole with the economy
John
January 11, 2025 at 7:52 am
Precisely how will these subsidies increase by 59% over a four year period? ………….I suppose an extra million largely self-diagnosed recipients at £10k a pop would just about do it.
And just like that:-
The number of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) claims linked to anxiety and depressive disorders has doubled since the start of lockdown. Around 4.2 million adults in the UK are expected to be claiming PIP by 2030, according to projections by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), up from 3.2 million currently.
(Today’s telegraph article revealing that over 90% of disability benefit claims are being assessed remotely by civil servants working from home).
Go to Gulag. Go directly to Gulag. Do not pass Go. Do not collect £200 in benefits.