Welfare benefits news, possible changes & constructive ‘discussion - an ongoing thread

apple85

Obviously it would be hard for any of us to fully escape all of the various news and rumours to do with several possible reforms within the welfare system (which if gone through may affect a large number of members here)

in all honestly this feels very overwhelming as it’s going to be a while before we get 100% confirmation of what’s happening and the accompanying details (and even longer before an official launch happens, in which things could get shaken up in the process) but I’m sure we are going to hear all sorts of bits & bobs (of varying levels of accuracy) in the meantime.

For that reason I’ve created this umbrella type thread to post the news, quotes and be a place of constructive debate.

I will ask (because I’ve been guilty of this myself recently) that if you find a new information article or quotes can you try and track down the original source (city exclusive papers like the chronicle often pack their articles with worrying unnecessary fluff.

Also this thread is about the disabled and how any welfare changes may affect them - there has been suggestion that the government should be targeted other groups in place of the disabled (which happened on another on of my created threads recently and it got quite unpleasant). The bottom line is that the neither the disabled or anyone else deserves to be targeted in the way that certain politicians are implying. So please show empathy and be open minded when possible.

Lastly a request - if any of this is a worry for you, keep your friends and family updated with the latest, write to your mp or anyone else you may think may listen. Just be proactive when you can (change doesn’t happen by itself)

could a scope forum moderator merge my old thread (see below) into this one please?:

https://forum.scope.org.uk/discussion/110514/the-treasury-suggesting-cuts-to-the-benefit-system-may-be-used-to-fund-tax-cuts-in-time/p1

Note: I’ve tried to be careful with my wording but I do sometimes say things in the wrong way so if there’s a better way to word things I’m open too suggestions

woodbine

Welfare reform seems to happen at one speed...slow, ten years in there are still thousands of people who haven't been moved from DLA to PIP, it's party conference season and we can expect the Tories to talk up welfare reform and talk down HS2 expansion to Manchester which apparently isn't going to happen.

Adeline

I appreciate a discussion like this, I don't think they happen enough especially on here which always is a surprise as it impacts what I imagine to be the largest percentage of us. 

I'm very nervous about many of the proposed changes. The white paper was bad enough but the consultation changes are terrifying and I really hope many people are responding to them rather than just complaining. Very sadly it does no good for us all to be concerned if we're not actively responding to the consultation. 

woodbine said:

Welfare reform seems to happen at one speed...slow, ten years in there are still thousands of people who haven't been moved from DLA to PIP, it's party conference season and we can expect the Tories to talk up welfare reform and talk down HS2 expansion to Manchester which apparently isn't going to happen.

This may be true but just because it won't impact for a number of years doesn't mean we should ignore it. If we can challenge and change it, all the better. We're told from birth to think of the future. "What will you be when you grow up?", "Are you saving for retirement?" and so on, yet because something is a few years away, despite the fact it could financially destitute people, we're told not to worry as it'll be slow and in the future.

The government are asking for feedback now, so the time to be concerned is now, before decisions are made.

Jimm_Scope

apple85 said:

could a scope forum moderator merge my old thread (see below) into this one please?:

https://forum.scope.org.uk/discussion/110514/the-treasury-suggesting-cuts-to-the-benefit-system-may-be-used-to-fund-tax-cuts-in-time/p1

While I would be happy to do so, as it's good to try and collate the same topics into fewer discussions, merging that thread with this one would place the older thread first. It merges everything into it's chronological order no matter it's original location. Meaning your intro post here would be pushed from the first post.

I appreciate you making this umbrella thread to try and limit the number of discussions on this similar topic, it does make it a touch easier.

Jimm_Scope

@apple85 I think 'pressured' is a much better word for it actually. As it is putting pressure on you to make the decision to potentially take treatments you don't want to.

apple85

Jimm_Scope said:

@apple85 I think 'pressured' is a much better word for it actually. As it is putting pressure on you to make the decision to potentially take treatments you don't want to.

Okay, noted  - that was a much simpler solution then I foresaw 

apple85

Okay, I’m going to start reposting the updates (from the most direct sources I could at the time of posting) from the old thread. - these will be reposts of news from the 30th sept to 2nd oct

I also think I’m going to emit the majority of the opinions I originally typed alongside the original posts - I will put my hand up and admit I do react on impulse initially (which may be reflected in some of my comment) but I’m much more level headed once I’ve had a chance to think on things and read others perspectives so after posting update votes from now on I’m probably going to sleep on things before offering an opinion.

I would also like to remake the point that though the snippets we are hearing are undeniable worrying no 100% decisions has officially been made by this government - they are very much at the planning stage & I’m almost certain that the first solid detail of any possible welfare reform won’t be heard till the chancellor’s autumn statement on the 22nd November (and even then it would only be an announcement, almost certainly not the official launch date - the reforms would need to get through parliament and lords and even then you may need to factor in public backlash, lawyers/courts getting involved, and a general election in the middle amongst other things - a u-turn/shelving of reform is even a possibility)

I would also like to point out that in the past few years there has been so many disablity charities helping with filling in the assessment papers (and then individuals who have been helped themselves or are talented in the area of welfare research that ‘pay it forward’ on forums like this one) - I will again state that it is no accident that the percentage increase of people successful at tribunals (and at the assessment and mr stage) in recent years is no accident.
If these reforms do in fact happen, it may take a little time to figure things out but I do have the hope & belief if the disabled community continues to work together then it may be possible to find a way to prevail again (obviously the more people aware the better)

apple85

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/sep/30/uk-welfare-budget-could-be-cut-to-pave-way-for-tax-cuts-says-jeremy-hunt

from the original times articles:

Jeremy Hunt has pledged to end the “vicious circle of ever-rising taxes” by reforming the benefits system and tackling the spiralling cost of public services.

In an interview with The Times before next week’s Conservative Party conference, the chancellor said he would launch the “biggest transformation of public services in our lifetimes”.

All departments will be told to identify savings from reducing the number of routine tasks carried out by frontline staff such as doctors, teachers and police officers, helped by investment in new technology.

Hunt said the government was also looking to overhaul the benefits system, which he described as “incredibly damaging to the economy and individuals”. He said that 100,000 people a year were moving off work into benefits “without any obligation to look for work”, leaving people isolated.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies found that record tax rises over the past four years would cost the equivalent of £3,500 per household. The think tank warned this week that Britain was making a “decisive and permanent shift” to a higher-tax economy.Hunt is under mounting pressure from the right of the party to unveil a pathway to tax cuts before the general election amid warnings that the level of taxation has become “unsustainable”.In his most explicit comments to date, the chancellor signalled that the Tories would make a big offer on tax before the election. “The big question that everyone wants an answer to is are we condemned to taxes going on rising for ever and ever?” Hunt said. “The party that has an answer to that, a credible answer, is likely to win people’s trust at the next election.” The chancellor said that the state needed to become “more productive”, not bigger.
He said the government would use artificial intelligence to improve efficiency and ensure public sector workers could focus on frontline services. He suggested that AI could be used by teachers to mark papers, by police officers to prevent crimes and by doctors and nurses to diagnose illnesses.“We need a more productive state, not a bigger state,” he said. “We need a state that doesn’t just deliver the services it currently delivers, but actually improves the services it delivers and recognises that there’s going to be more calls on those services with an ageing population. But we need to find a formula that doesn’t mean that we’re on a vicious circle of ever-rising taxes.”On benefits he said that the government was looking at early treatment for those with mental health conditions to remove “barriers” to work. “We need to make sure we’re doing a better job for people who are finding it difficult to work for whatever reason,” he said.
“We have got a system which is too focused on process and not enough on outcomes. The outcome that we should be looking for is one where dramatically fewer people are permanently signed off having to look for work, because that isn’t a good outcome for them and it’s not a good outcome for the economy.” He said that increasing productivity by 0.5 per cent would pave the way for tax cuts.“Despite the challenges of the last 13 years one of our proudest achievements is that as of last month you can earn £1,000 a month without paying a penny of tax or national insurance,” he said. “We have dramatically reduced taxes on lower paid people. I would like to reduce taxes on everyone.”He called for more positivity about the economy and said people needed to “shrug off a bit of the pessimism”.“When I started the job there was a lot of doom and gloom about Britain, our prospects,” he says. “What I have realised now nearly a year on is that there is just far too much declinism. If you look at the fundamentals of the British economy we have had our setbacks like everyone else, we are the fastest-growing large European country, not just since the pandemic but since Brexit, since 2010.“That’s a period when we’ve had a once-in-a-century pandemic, a global financial crisis that we were particularly exposed to, and a 1970s-style energy shock. Despite all of that the British economy has been very resilient.”He said there was “every possibility” that people could see the “start of a sustained increase in real wages”.Hunt’s remarks on the economy coincided with Office for National Statistics figures showing that the economy is far bigger than first thought, compared with before the Covid-19 crisis.

apple85

Below is an excerpt from the large interview Hunt did with the times:

The other big area of reform in Hunt’s sights is Britain’s spiralling benefits bill — largely driven, he says, by 100,000 people a year moving out of employment and becoming entirely dependent on the state “without any obligation to look for work”.

Many of these people have left work because of mental health conditions and he is concerned not just about the cost to the state but also about their own long-term wellbeing.

“My biggest worry about the way the system works at the moment is that we are seeing about 100,000 people a year moving off work into benefits without any obligation to look for work,” he says. “That is incredibly damaging for the economy (but) it’s also very damaging for the individuals involved.

“We all want to be a society where there’s a safety net — that’s something we’re incredibly proud of as Brits — but I don’t believe the system is working in either the interests of the economy or the people who depend on it.” Hunt says the government is looking at ways to provide early treatment for those with mental health conditions, and reducing the number of people who are effectively permanently signed off sick.

“We need to make sure we’re doing a better job for people who are finding it difficult to work for whatever reason,” he says. “We have got a system which is too focused on process and not enough on outcomes. The outcome that we should be looking for is one where dramatically fewer people are permanently signed off having to look for work because that isn’t a good outcome for them and it’s not a good outcome for the economy.”

Could greater conditionality be part of it? “That’s certainly what Mel Stride thinks,” Hunt says. “He has been making great strides to that effect. Any welfare system has to be a mix of carrot and stick. The most important judge of whether things are working is whether we are succeeding in removing barriers to work. There’s no shortage of jobs.” Hunt’s message is clear — if the Tories can make the public services more efficient and get more people into work there is a pathway to tax cuts.

“I asked the Treasury what it would take to stabilise the level of taxes as a proportion of GDP,” he says. “They came back with a very alluring, simple answer: 0.5 per cent. We need to increase the productivity growth in the public sector by 0.5 per cent a year more than its current levels.” On the question of which taxes could be cut Hunt is more agnostic. Rishi Sunak is said to favour putting a flagship pledge to scrap inheritance tax at the heart of the Tory manifesto.

“All taxes are distortive,” Hunt says. “That’s a problem . . . we worry about inheritance tax, because it’s a tax on aspiration and savings, and we also worry about income tax because it’s important to make work pay.” Will the Tories commit to the triple tax lock again, under which they pledged not to raise income tax, VAT or national insurance?

“Despite the challenges of the last 13 years one of our proudest achievements is that as of last month you can earn £1,000 a month without paying a penny of tax or national insurance,” Hunt says. “We have dramatically reduced taxes on lower-paid people. I would like to reduce taxes on everyone.”

apple85

A couple of updates from the Tory conference 

excerpt from the bbc:

At a fringe event on Sunday, Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said the government was already looking at the Work Capability Assessment "so it reflects the way the modern world works", including increased opportunities for home-working. 

The assessment decides how much an individual's illness or disability limits their ability to work. If someone is deemed fit for work their benefits may be withdrawn. 

Getting people back into employment is a key part of the government's plan to grow the economy and was a focus of the chancellor's Budget in March. 

The number of people who cannot work because of long-term sickness has been rising, with recent figures showing 2.5 million were missing from the labour market because of medical conditions.

Excerpt from sky news:

Mr Hunt will tell the party membership in Manchester: "Since the pandemic, things have being going in the wrong direction. Whilst companies struggle to find workers, around 100,000 people are leaving the labour force every year for a life on benefits.

"As part of that, we will look at the way the sanctions regime works. It is a fundamental matter of fairness. Those who won't even look for work do not deserve the same benefits as people trying hard to do the right thing."

A party spokesman said: "To ensure work always pays, the chancellor will also confirm that he and Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride will look again at the benefit sanctions regime to make it harder for people to claim benefits while refusing to take active steps to move into work.

"Proposals will be set out in the upcoming autumn statement."

Speaking last month, Mr Stride said that he was consulting on changes to the Work Capability Assessment, the test aimed at establishing how much a disability or illness limits someone's ability to work.

apple85

From @resfoundation

Turning to @MelJStride, he breaks down the economically inactive into three groups. Looking first at older workers, he highlights the Government's mid-life MOT which is helping to get older workers back into the workplace if they want to return to work after retirement.

Two other groups are also being targeted by Government to get into good employment: parents and young people. 

Parents can be supported back into work through better childcare provision, while young people can be given better access to training and mental health support.

Work is essential to the health and wellbeing of people. In order to help keep people in work while recovering from illness, @MelJStride mentions several consultations that @DWPgovuk are currently undertaking to address this, including reforming Work Capability Assessments and GP fit notes.

From @ionewells:

DWP secretary Mel Stride says there’s been an “unsatisfactory” upward trend in the last four years of economic activity due to long-term sickness. 

Says one factor is mental health - and claims reasons include “social media” and the “socialisation of mental health.”

Stride adds: “We feel we can much more easily talk about mental health. But maybe there is more extensive labelling of people’s mental health that maybe wasn’t the case years ago.” 

He says 2.6m are out of work with no expectations on them to look for work.

He says “work is brilliant in terms of helping those with mental health conditions” for finances, mental health and relationships. 

Adds govt is looking at reforming work assessments, GP fit note appointments, occupational health and potential for people to WFH.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/oct/01/time-to-withhold-benefits-from-those-who-wont-look-for-work-jeremy-hunt?CMP=share_btn_tw

apple85

apple85

Also if anyone has access to Twitter I’d recommending checking out @Shrink_at_Large who imo is also level headed on this subject

apple85

apple85

Okay that’s the previous stuff reposted

From now on I’ll probably wait till the night time (and all the morning paper story refresh has happened) till I post a summary of relevant quotes and news articles - I know that means it won’t be so much ‘breaking news’, but it usually takes a few hours for the most reliable papers/media to post a good summary media and for politician/journalists to post comments that may be of interest to members of this forum. (And I really want to avoid posting articles for the smaller city papers that use a lot of padded ‘fluff’ - go straight to the horses mouth when possible, and articles that are well written)

I imagine the Tory & labour conference’s in the next 10’ish days will provide a number of nuggets, then in theory it should (touch wood) be pretty quiet till the build up of the chancellor’s autumn statement on the 22nd November

apple85

From the times:

Minister links mental health problems to rise in benefit claims

Mel Stride praises treatment for conditions previously kept hidden but questions whether the mental health ‘label’ may now be too easily applied

Over-labelling everyday problems as mental health issues is contributing to a surge in benefit claims, the work and pensions secretary has suggested.

Mel Stride said that a rise in claims for mental health was central to a recent increase in long-term sickness, blaming “labelling” by society for pushing up numbers.

He suggested that the modern attitude to mental health was “too readily identifying” people as having mental health problems and pushing them towards benefits when their problems would once have been seen as having social causes.

A record 2.6 million people are off work because of long-term sickness, with mental health conditions the biggest single contributor. Numbers are up by about half a million since the pandemic started and about a quarter of the increase among working-age people is due to mental health conditions.

Young people are twice as likely to be claiming disability benefits as people the same age 20 years ago, with mental health accounting for the bulk of cases for those under the age of 35, figures have shown.

Stride cited social media and the effect of lockdown as possible reasons why mental health claims were increasing, saying that the rise in conditions such as depression and anxiety was “the big one” in explaining a surge in people who are off work sick.

“Covid was very bad for young people’s mental health and particularly for people that want to socialise, build networks — it’s part of growing up and that was denied for them at a critical point,” Stride told a Centre for Social Justice event at the Conservative Party conference.

He also spoke about his own daughters, aged 12 and 15, arguing that social media was worsening young people’s mental health. “They don’t have a childhood like mine when I would go home from school having had a punch-up with my mates or whatever and read a book or watch telly,” he said.

“They go home with a phone in their pocket and they might be in their bed at one o’clock connected to these people and there’s something that’s kicked off and it’s very stressful. They’re never away from it.”

However, Stride seemed concerned that growing social awareness of mental health problems is itself contributing to a rise in diagnosis. While saying that it was a “good thing” that more people were getting treatment for conditions that had been hidden in the past, he argued that “socialisation can determine mental health — labelling”.

He asked: “To what degree are we too readily identifying individuals as being [ill] and then doing various things as a result of that? To what extent are we leaning too hard into some of that stuff? It’s a question mark in my mind.”

A paper by psychologists at the University of Oxford and the University of New South Wales, published in the journal New Ideas in Psychology, argued that “awareness efforts are leading some individuals to interpret and report milder forms of distress as mental health problems”, saying this then led to stronger symptoms.

The report added: “For example, interpreting low levels of anxiety as symptomatic of an anxiety disorder might lead to behavioural avoidance, which can further exacerbate anxiety symptoms.”

Stride is understood to be concerned that the NHS is doing little to deal with this trend and has been careful to stress that he is not accusing claimants of shirking.

“It’s unhelpful generally to frame the debate in terms of attacking people,” he said. “If you get the reform right, all of that will be taken care of.”

apple85

From the Guardian live text yesterday:

apple85

From the times (26th September - only just found but think it’s relevant):

Therapy sessions start for long-term sick with record numbers off work

Therapists employed by the state will begin consultations with the long-term sick this week after ministers expressed frustration that the NHS was not doing enough to get people back work.

Pilot sessions will begin in London and Birmingham, where physiotherapists, mental health counsellors and stroke specialists hired by the Department for Work and Pensions will offer assessments to hundreds of people claiming sickness benefits in an effort to reduce the number classed as unfit to work.

Ministers hope to expand the scheme by hiring more therapists to offer a route back to work for the 2.6 million long-term sick, fearing that the NHS has no incentive to get people well enough for employment.

Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, has spoken of the need to end a system in which GPs are “just ticking a box that says ‘can’t possibly do any work’” after a brief consultation.
Long-term sickness is at record levels after a surge in disability claims since the pandemic. Mental health and joint problems are among the biggest causes, for reasons that are not fully understood, although delays in getting NHS treatment and the rise in working from home have been suggested as possible factors.

As part of the reforms, assessments for universal credit and personal independence payments will be carried out by specialists to better judge what work claimants could be capable of doing.

Ministers hope this will lead to more people being classed as fit for some work as they adopt a stick-and-carrot approach that combines boosting support schemes for the long-term sick with requiring more of them to look for jobs.

Stride said: “Many of our claimants have complex health conditions, and this trial will explore whether they could benefit from support from medical professionals with specialist knowledge.”

Although the pilot schemes will not offer claimants a full course of treatment run by the benefits system, they will inform broader changes designed to make the welfare system take control of both clinical treatment and job coaching to encourage more people back to employment.

Stride said he wanted to continue “improving the benefits experience for claimants and providing opportunities for them to benefit from work where appropriate, putting the emphasis on what they can do rather than what they can’t”.

The Treasury is eyeing the £260 billion welfare budget as it looks for savings to fund tax cuts. Ministers are most concerned about the £26 billion spent on disability benefits, a figure that has risen by two thirds in a decade and is projected to rise billions further.

This month Stride set out changes that will require hundreds of thousands of people with mobility and mental health problems to look for work they can do from home or see their benefits cut. Wider reforms that would allow people to keep claiming sick pay while they move into jobs have been delayed until after the election next year because officials want more time to flesh out the details.

Tax breaks given to staff and businesses for checkups and treatments to keep people in work are also being looked at, along with life coaches to guide those with health, housing and debt problems through the process of finding a job.

Stride has previously said that the NHS is not doing enough once people are signed off sick and should “step in and support that person and get them, keep them, back in work or close to the labour market. That’s not happening quickly enough.”

Earlier this year he said that “very busy” GPs spend an average of seven minutes with a patient who is signed off sick, and that he wanted a system in which doctors could offer people more help with getting back to work.

apple85

https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/stride-promises-incentives-for-dwp-heroes,-firmer-sanctions-and-human-beings-freed-by-work

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/03/jeremy-hunt-job-life-on-benefits-chancellor

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tories-doing-best-make-disabled-31096904

just interesting reads/perspectives

apple85

Note: I’m trying to find a more comprehensive writeup of the csj thinktank panel on ‘economic inactivity’ (featuring 3 of the ‘4 horsemen’ I see…….very bad joke I know) apart from that mentioned in the times and guardian live text but coming up short right now!

in other news, both Rees-mogg and Anderson made some pretty ‘delightful’ comments (best I don’t share, both men are ‘poorly educated’ imo) and some DPAC protesters were turned away by Manchester police yesterday

The positive news though is I think more people are talking about all the possible welfare reforms

edit: there is a good writeup of the lee Anderson comments on benefits by the i-news but unless asked I’m not going to post it as it is a vile read and he’s as I said before poorly educated on the subject

2nd edit: I forgot to post this from a couple of days back

https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/burnham-pledges-to-challenge-labour-leaders-over-broken-promise-on-rights/

woodbine

The most depressing aspect of some of this is that if changes are enacted before the general election they won't be over-turned by the new Labour govt (assuming as expected they win), if I'm brutally honest I will be selfish and explain that I reach SRP age in 16 months, but I will campaign against any unfair and unneeded changes whilst I'm still drawing breath.