Will the cruel Tory welfare reforms save any money?

First topic message reminder :

My personal opinion is that the current spate of tory reforms to the benefit system are cruel, regressive, and worst of all won't save money (the alleged intention).



In a supposedly modern civilised country one would think housing would be considered a human right.......rather than simply an investment / a chance to make a fast buck.

I note there is talk of a yacht for the biggest benefit claimee of them all. I note over £10billion has been spent on the olympics. I note £32billion is being spent on a high speed rail link (london-birmingham) - this will shave, a no doubt absolutely vita,l 32mins off the journey (essential??!!!) and be used by a miniscule % of the UK population.

How about investing this money in affordable social housing instead? Or do government no longer care to invest in those they view as peasants and serfs?

The tories efforts to turn the nation against those unfortunate enough to find themselves unemployed via vile smears, and an insidious propaganda campaign, are reminiscent of Nazi germany's propaganda campaign against the jews.

Iain Duncan Smith is a disgusting human being and has blood on his hands.

Instead of kicking the weakest targets that can't defend themselves....maybe the Bullingdon bullies should try picking on somebody their own size.....like the bankers, or benefit leeching corporations like Tescos.

They currently resemble a 20st thug stamping on a little girls head.

Welfare is essential and if we are to remain a civilised country we owe it to ourselves to provide for those less fortunate; unless we want to see people starving and homeless turning into savages.

The biggest burden on the UK in recent times has not been the unemployed.....welfare is not a burden - it is an essential expense in a civilised nation.

The biggest burden, and the cause of much unemployment, has been the rich greedy bankers who have cost this country, and us taxpayers, untold £billions in order to benefit a few. They have placed the real burden on the UK.

"when I go into shops and supermarkets it's always the ones on benefits who spend like there was no tomorrow"

I wonder how you come to that conclusion biglin. Do those on benefits have it tattood on their foreheads?

On second thoughts biglin, perhaps you work at the local job centre.

On the issue of shopping, has anyone noticed an increase in the number of costumers using the likes of Aldi and Netto and many of them have 'posh' cars........

A sign of the times that even the middle classes are now having to lower their sights?

A sign perhaps that you can't get rich by wasting money. Have you seen the price of Servants' bacon in Waitrose recently?

We hear this nonsense that inflation is down because ---- wait for it----
"food, fuel and energy prices have come down"

Don 'it wana make ya spit??

"food, fuel and energy prices have come down"

Just in time for the annual pensions rise review........!!!!!

And today there are warnings that due to the droughts in the USA and extreme wet weather in the UK that bread prices are likely to rise by 20%..

I also noticed yesterday the the price of diesel had risen by 2p a litre......

But new-car sales figures are up 10.1% year-on-year. (SMMT) So somebody's got some money.

"I also noticed yesterday the the price of diesel had risen by 2p a litre......"

Yes astradt I was wondering why myself. We are being taken for a ride AGAIN with no protection whatsoever.

astradt1 wrote:On the issue of shopping, has anyone noticed an increase in the number of costumers using the likes of Aldi and Netto and many of them have 'posh' cars........

A sign of the times that even the middle classes are now having to lower their sights?

yes I have seen this too astradt1, the local high street is dead midweek and people are shopping down. clothes shops are dying on there feet too.

Mel wrote:"I also noticed yesterday the the price of diesel had risen by 2p a litre......"

Yes astradt I was wondering why myself. We are being taken for a ride AGAIN with no protection whatsoever.

Hi Mel
protection from this coalition Government? god we have no hope at all. as the only protection they are interested in is for the bankers. but then these are the very people who fund the Tory Party. so unless we all become City of London bankers overnight we have had it..... The truth is the people of the UK are on there own.

Before anyone accuses me of hypocrisy regarding our house rules on copyright, the following article is reproduced in full only because the source specifically gives permission that it can be shared:-

Mythbuster: Tall tales about welfare reform

Ben Baumberg, Kate Bell and Declan Gaffney tackle some of the most common welfare myths.

Welfare reform is almost inevitably contentious. Answering the question of who should receive how much financial support relies on often competing conceptions of fairness, with rival views about who needs, and who deserves, our help, not to mention the most just and efficient way of providing it. These issues are worth debating – but the current debate is being conducted on shoddy terms. Myths and stereotypes abound. These serve not only to unfairly stigmatise claimants, but to obscure the questions we might want to answer about how best the state can provide support to people who need it.

Myth: There is a major problem of ‘families where generations have never worked’

Reality: The academics Paul Gregg and Lindsay MacMillan looked at the Labour Force Survey, the large-scale survey of households from which we get most of our statistics about who’s in work. In households with two or more generations of working age, there were only 0.3% where neither generation had ever worked. In a third of these, the member of the younger generation had been out of work for less than a year.

When they looked at longer-term data, they found that only 1 per cent of sons in the families they tracked had never worked by the time they were 29. What’s more, while sons whose fathers had experienced unemployment were more likely to be unemployed, this only applied where there were few jobs in the local labour market. So ‘inter-generational worklessness’ is much more likely to be explained by a lack of jobs than a lack of a ‘work ethic’.

Myth: Most benefits spending goes to unemployed people of working age

Reality: The largest element of social security expenditure (42%) goes to pensioners. Housing benefit accounts for 20% (and about one fifth of these claimants are in work); 15% goes on children, through child benefit and child tax credit; 8% on disability living allowance, which helps disabled people (both in and out of work) with extra costs; 4% on employment and support allowance to those who cannot work due to sickness or disability; 4% on income support, mainly for single parents, carers and some disabled people; 3% on jobseeker’s allowance; and 2% on carer’s allowance and maternity pay, leaving 3% on other benefits.

Myth: Benefit fraud is high and increasing

Reality: The latest Department for Work and Pensions estimates show that in 2011/12 just 0.7% of benefit expenditure was overpaid due to fraud, including a 2.8% fraud rate for jobseeker’s allowance and a mere 0.3% for incapacity benefits. Even if we put together fraud with ‘customer error’ – people who are not entitled to benefits but not deliberately defrauding the state – the rate of false claims is 3.4% for JSA and 1.2% for incapacity benefit.

The claim that benefit fraud is increasing is similarly false. Because there have been changes in how fraud has been calculated over time, we have to look at combined fraud and ‘customer error’ for JSA and income support. This declined from 9.4% to 4.8% of spending from 1997/98 to 2004/05, and has since stayed roughly flat.

Myth: Couples on benefits are better off if they split up

Reality: This one has recently been comprehensively disproved by research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, who concluded: “The simplest question that can be asked in testing the couple penalty is: does the benefits system provide a different proportion of a family’s daily living needs if they live together and if they live apart? The clear answer from the calculations in this paper is no. The benefits system provides very similar living standards to families living together and apart.”

Research in 2009 for the Department for Work and Pensions looked at whether different benefit systems had any impact on people’s decisions about whether to stay together or not. They concluded that “on balance, the reviewed literature shows that there is no consistent and robust evidence to support claims that the welfare system has a significant impact upon family structure.”

Myth: The welfare bill has ballooned out of control

Reality: This government has repeatedly claimed that welfare expenditure grew unsustainably under Labour. In fact, total expenditure on welfare was 11.6% of GDP in 1996/97; under Labour it averaged 10.7% up to the crash. Afterwards benefits for children and working age adults rose from an average 4.9% of GDP up to 2007/08 to 6%. This is what you would expect during a recession.

Myth: Most benefit claims are long term

Reality: The government persistently frames benefit claimants as ‘languishing in dependency’. So how much of the benefit caseload is long-term? It depends whether you count people at a single point in time or look at people moving on and off benefits over a period. The numbers paint a completely different picture. For example, in 2008, some 75% of incapacity benefit claimants had been receiving the benefit for more than five years, and only 13% for less than one year. But over the period 2003–8, only 37% were long-term while 38% were on benefit for less than a year. So if you count claimants at just one point in time, as government tends to do, you will overestimate how much of the caseload is long-term – and underestimate how many people move on and off benefits over time.

Myth: Social security benefits are too generous

Reality: Out of work benefit levels fall well below income standards based on detailed research into what ordinary people think should go into a minimum household budget. Research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that while pensioners do in fact receive 100% of what people think they need, a single adult of working age receives 40% of the weekly minimum income standard and a couple with two children receives 62% of the weekly minimum.

Myth: Most people who claim disability benefits could be working

Reality: There are two main kinds of disability benefits: disability living allowance (to cover the extra costs of disability) and employment and support allowance (income replacement for those not in employment). The most basic misunderstanding is that the latter is only for people who are ‘completely incapable of work’. The welfare reformer Sidney Webb commented in 1914 – in the midst of one of many previous panics about ‘true disability’ – that the only people who could do no work at all were “literally unconscious or asleep”. The question is whether suitable jobs exist, and whether these people would be able to get them.

Once we understand this, three problems face us. First, just because we’re living longer doesn’t mean we’re in better health; improved medical care means that many people born with impairments or suffering traumatic injuries are able to live longer. Second, jobs are in some ways worse than in the early 1990s: people have to work harder and have less control over their job, which makes it more difficult for people with health problems to stay in work. And while we now have anti-discrimination legislation, this only forces employers to make ‘reasonable’ adjustments; the evidence not only suggests these are often limited, but that employers are less willing to employ disabled people as a result.

Finally, many of the people claiming incapacity benefits are people with low employability in areas of few jobs. These are the very employers that are less likely to make adjustments. Some people end up in a situation where they are not fit enough to do the jobs they can get, but can’t get the jobs they can do.

Completely incapable of work? Not necessarily. Penalised for their disability by a labour market that has no place for them? Definitely.

http://www.redpepper.org.uk/mythbuster-welfare-reform/

Really??? How convenient...I will ask them if this is true

Really??? How convenient...I will ask them if this is true

blueturando. Feel free to do so, and allow me help you. Click on the link to the source and read the last sentence:-

You can download this article as a PDF to print and share.

As a Tory, you probably can’t comprehend that real socialists aren’t preoccupied with making money and see spreading ideas as their first priority. For example, the prominent Labour blogger Dr Eoin Clarke has given me written permission to reproduce anything that he posts.

As co-administrator of this forum, it will be my head on the block if I get the copyright laws wrong. It won’t be your head, or that of anyone else, so I will continue (as will the rest of the staff) to ensure that our house rules on copyright are adhered to by our members, who now know that they have a potential 'snitch' in their midst.

"....they have a potential 'snitch' in their midst."

At the school I was so privileged to attend, a lad who was guilty of this charge was tied to the railings outside the school with his trousers round his ankles and was found by a shocked passing spinster who felt it her duty to report her shocking find to the Headmaster. The Head didn't ask said boy who had done the deed since he knew that if the debagged laddie pointed the finger (again), he would end up with an even worse fate. ( and I don't mean being labelled a Tory!)

Sounds cruel, but there were some things you just didn't do...

It's not even about jobs or the lack of them.

It's about the paltry wages paid to many - wages that don't provide enough to live on without resort to tax credits, housing benefit, etc. Meanwhile others earn disproportionately, and excessively, more as they value themselves too highly.......not just the top 5%, but the top 50% of earners. Until we recognise that wage differentials in this country have become grossly, and disgustingly unbalanced and unfair I'm afraid the decline will continue.

The wagemasters - those deciding the 'going rate' for jobs are thieves.

I wonder who it is that has told HMRC not to be too hard on the wealthy when it comes to enforcing payment of taxes. We don't want City Spivs and Asset-strippers taking their business to Zurich, do we?

Young people forced into three months work experience


young people do unpaid work for three months in order to qualify for jobseekers' allowance? This is the latest plan announced by Employment Minister Chris Grayling yesterday. The idea is that people aged between 18 and 24, claiming the dole for the first time, will be made to work in charity shops and care homes for three months in order to qualify for the payouts.

So is this slave labour, or a great opportunity to get work experience?

http://money.aol.co.uk/2012/08/29/young-people-forced-into-three-months-work-experience/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cuk%7Cdl5%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D124749

There we go just a few months after it was said that no one would loose their benefits if they did not take up unpaid work this government has changed its mind(U-Turn) again.....

I wonder how many people would be comfortable with the constant change in staffing at the local care home for the elderly with in influx of untrained staff?

I'm sure that the home owners will be rubbing their hands at the thought of not having to pay £6.55 an hour for non-professionally qualified care staff....

I wonder who will be paying for the CRB checks or are the government going to exempt care homes from having staff CRBed......

blueturando. Feel free to do so, and allow me help you. Click on the link to the source and read the last sentence:-

Ivan I was teasing, hence the smiley face. I like to read the blogs you post, please carry on my friend

The British system of Education is presumably intended to prepare children for the Marketplace in which they will have to earn their own living as adults.

But does the evidence confirm that? Hundreds of employers report that taking on a school-leaver almost invariably involves remedial training in the basic skills of reading, writing and calculation. It's not difficult to understand their reluctance to pay a minimum- or indeed any wage for providing work experience.

There may be hundreds of employers who find hundreds of potential young employees lacking in the basic educational skills as you say OW. The thing is there are thousands and not just hundreds of employers who are enjoying cheap labour from those young ones who have the basic educational skills and indeed further educational skills and many with degrees who are so desperate to work, take anything end up being exploited.
Things have changed since our days, especially since Thatcher. One could walk out of one job into another without too much trouble.
Nothing to do with the young being lazy or selective, for they are desperate, the Tories know it and so do the greedy mercinary employers.

Bobby - it all seems brutal now, but it was just how things were done in those halcyon days.

I can barely believe now that the Deputy Head -who was i/c the prefectorial system -used to allow - nay encourage- those prefects to dish out all sorts of severe punishments to errant boys . Paradoxically such sanctions were usually reserved for those who had indulged in physical assaults on younger lads. There weren't too many takers for a repeat performance after being given a dose of their own medicine.

Fortunately for my good health, I used to concentrate on improving my technique in the knitting club...

So....in reference to the original question here.

Have the tory reforms saved any money? Answer: a resounding NO.

Is the country in a better position than it was when the economic vandals and society wreckers (aka the tories) were elected? NO.

All pre-election promises Dave and his malignant cohorts made have all now been proven as being lies.

Cabinet reshuffles won't solve anything - the problem lies in the core values and beliefs of these odious priveleged louts.

On the subject of welfare reform just had a nice letter this morning instructing me to attend an ATOS miracle centre. If I were a bit paranoid I'd think the timing odd as I run the local anti-atos campaign which was high profile for the last few weeks. What to do? That pesky damn Spina Bifida, Hydrocephalus and cerebal palsy doesnt seem to want wear off. bugger.

KnarkyBadger wrote:On the subject of welfare reform just had a nice letter this morning instructing me to attend an ATOS miracle centre. If I were a bit paranoid I'd think the timing odd as I run the local anti-atos campaign which was high profile for the last few weeks. What to do? That pesky damn Spina Bifida, Hydrocephalus and cerebal palsy doesnt seem to want wear off. bugger.

Apocryphal advice is to wear a kipper in your underpants for a couple of days prior to the appointment in order to shorten the examination. But don't try to use public transport.

oftenwrong wrote:

KnarkyBadger wrote:On the subject of welfare reform just had a nice letter this morning instructing me to attend an ATOS miracle centre. If I were a bit paranoid I'd think the timing odd as I run the local anti-atos campaign which was high profile for the last few weeks. What to do? That pesky damn Spina Bifida, Hydrocephalus and cerebal palsy doesnt seem to want wear off. bugger.

Apocryphal advice is to wear a kipper in your underpants for a couple of days prior to the appointment in order to shorten the examination. But don't try to use public transport.

Just a kipper or any type of stinky fish? Public transport is definatly a no no!

Beware Knarky,

If you (and I hope not) are found to be "fit for work" and then go on to win your tribunal case, you will still I understand (in many cases) be called back to ATOS.
I have written to my MP to ascertain as to why this should be the case and await the reply. Absolutely disgusting don't you think?

Hello Mel. Does that mean that if a person is found fit for work a second time, Atos get another two Grand????

bobby wrote:Hello Mel. Does that mean that if a person is found fit for work a second time, Atos get another two Grand????

There are some interesting comments here:

http://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/forum?func=view&catid=10&id=31912

"Hello Mel. Does that mean that if a person is found fit for work a second time, Atos get another two Grand????"

That wouldn't surprise me bobby in the least. Nor would it surprise me if one or two of these Tory tyrants have shares in ATOS.

THANKS FOR THE LINK OW. Proves my point and how bloody disgusting for the tyrants to allow this unbelievable cruelty to continue. It really shows what absolute bastards the Tories are.

It should be noted that it was the Labour government who appointed, and awarded contracts to ATOS.

Thanks chip, that helps a lot!!!!

No trouble, Mel.

Surely, if there's going to be so many assessments, the scheme will cost more to administer than is saved in benefits?
I'm not sure of the composwwition of the assessment panels, but there has to be at least one doctor I'd have thought, and they don't come cheap, and with all the appeals etc. I'd have thought getting someone off disability benefits was a bit of a dear old do.
Not sure it really matters whose idea the scheme was, it seems a bit silly to me.

ATOS now apparently has £3Bn worth of government contracts.

The relationship between the DWP and Atos started back in 2004 when Atos purchased Schlumberger's Sema Group who were initially awarded the contract for DWP medicals. Labour then renewed the contract in 2005. It was for £500m over 7 years, with the possibility of it being extended to 12 years at a cost of £850m.

The Coalition signed the new contract in 2010 creating the monster that was given the outrageos cash incentives to force people off Incapacity benefits.

The difference between the Atos assessment and the appeal/tribunal hearing

At the tribunal the judge and medical expert take into account how your illness affects you based on what you are telling them.

The Atos assessment on the other hand takes what you have said and twists it to fit their targets then scores everyone illness from the same template.

THIS WAS NEVER THE CASE UNDER NEW LABOUR CHIP. LET'S GET THE FACTS RIGHT BEFORE CONDEMNING EH?

The Atos assessment on the other hand takes what you have said and twists it to fit their targets then scores everyone illness from the same template.

Spot on Mel. The assessments are a joke - questions are phrased where ATOS can interpret them any way they wish......basically say NO you're wrong / say YES you're wrong.

Btw...I wasn't condemning Labour - merely pointing it out for anybody who wasn't aware of the fact. They can then look into it and draw their own conclusions - as you have done yourself Mel.

Good post ...by the way, mel.

Thanks chip.
I was merely pointing out FULLY the facts re your comment---"It should be noted that it was the Labour government who appointed, and awarded contracts to ATOS." Which to anyone who would not bother to "draw their own conclusions" would naturally think that Labour were also using ATOS as an unfair mercinary monster, which was not the case.

After all we don't want to feed these Tory tyrants more unjustified ammo, as they surely have used more than their share already.

IDS is all over the media with his UNIVERSAL CREDITS which are apparently to the Poor what the Universal Solvent is to a scientific researcher. However there is one important "Credit" which has been excluded, so it won't quite be Universal.

Cuddly Eric Pickles retains control of Council Tax and thereby Council Tax benefits.

What they give with one hand, they'll take away with the other. So what else is new?

Happy birthday to the forum! This is a copy of my blog post at http://skwalker1964.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/dla-to-pip-change-will-drive-at-least-85000-people-into-poverty - I'll insert the graphs & tables but for links to sources please visit the original post:

I wrote yesterday about how the Dept for Work & Pensions’ response to my FOI request demonstrated that the government has spent nothing on any analysis of the likely impacts of the switch in 2013 from ‘Disability Living Allowance’ (DLA) to ‘Personal Independence Payment’ (PIP) on the lives and wellbeing of the disabled people the change will affect. If you’re unfamiliar with DLA and PIP, some more information on them can be found in yesterday’s article, or by visiting the DWP’s website.

It turns out that an extremely cursory impact assessment was done – you can see it here. If you bother to read it, you’ll see that whatever else it analyses, the impact of the loss of benefit on the 500,000 disabled people who will be excluded from PIP is not included!

So, I’ve been doing a bit of investigation and a few basic calculations myself. Even using the most cautious figures, I’ve already seen that the government’s plans are likely to push at least 160,000 people into poverty and will definitely do so to around half that figure.

The graph below, which appears in the DWP’s document but without analysis of its significance, shows the distribution of disabled people at various income levels. For the non-disabled population also shown on the graph, ‘deciles’ are shown – dividing the population up into strata that represent 10ths of the total population, but for disabled people, you’ll see that the spread is rather different. The income calculations include any DLA payments.



As you can see, a total of 17% of disabled people fall into deciles 1-2 – the lowest 2 income bands. Now look at the table below, which is from a different section of the DWP’s website:



UK governments define poverty as having an income less than 60% of the nation’s median income. The third column of figures shows the level of weekly income for a selection of types of individual and family that represents the poverty threshold – in other words, falling below that level means you’re in poverty. The subsequent columns show bands of income – this time represented in quintiles, or 20% of the total, which doesn’t mesh perfectly with the other graph but we can work around it.

The bottom quintile represents the bottom 10% of earners on the earlier graph plus the next-lowest 10%. The webpage containing the table advises that 10% of the population has total earnings below the 60% poverty threshold. Working from the data in the table, this means that the next-lowest decile earns less than £20 above the poverty line for people with no children, less than £25 above for a single person with 2 children, and less than £31 above the line for a couple with 2 children.

Working from the 2nd-quintile figures, we can see that the 3rd-lowest band of earners start at just above these levels.

The 2012 rates for DLA are as follows:



Let’s be cautious and assume for this discussion that everyone in the lowest two earnings bands are on the minimum DLA level. As the first graph showed, 7% of disabled people are already in the lowest earnings band and therefore already below the poverty line. The loss of DLA to these people will be a hammer blow that drives them even deeper into poverty. 10% of disabled people are in the next-lowest income band, just above the poverty threshold. Even if they’re only receiving one DLA component, the loss will be enough to tip over almost all of them below the poverty line. All of those receiving 2 components would be pushed by the loss of them below the line – even if they’re only receiving the minimum DLA levels in both.

And for those currently receiving – and then losing in 2013 – higher DLA levels, the loss will be enough to push even those in the 3rd-lowest band below the poverty line.

But for now let’s be cautious and just look at the two bottom bands. A total of 17% of disabled people are in these bands. The DWP says that 500,000 people currently receiving DLA will not receive PIP. 17% of 500,000 equals 85,000 people losing the benefit.

This means that in the most optimistic case – where all those affected are single, have no children and are currently only receiving the lowest levels of DLA payment – 85,000 will either be pushed deeper into poverty or pushed from merely being low-paid into poverty. Once you factor in those who have children, and those who are in the 3rd- and 4th-lowest bands at the moment but are only there because they’re receiving the standard or upper levels of DLA, that number will easily double or worse. Perhaps much worse.

The DWP claims that the switch to PIP is meant to be ‘enabling’ – helping disabled people have more active, fulfilling and productive lives. But even a basic look at the effects of its policy – not even considering the fact that those caring for DLA-recipients who lose the benefit will lose their carer’s allowance as well, or any of the many other factors that will come into play – shows that the effect of the policy will be to push hundreds of thousands of people into poverty and despair.

The DWP’s ministers are despicable, but they’re not brainless. They must know what their policy will do to such a vast number of people – but a proper impact-assessment would put the facts into the official, public record.

No wonder they didn’t want to do one.

If you want to know more about the likely impacts of this insane and callous policy, which is fully in keeping with the ethos and ideology of the most right-wing and destructive government the UK has suffered in generations, the campaign group Disability Rights UK carried out its own assessment of the impact of the PIP plans both on disabled people and the wider UK situation. You can find it here.[b]

Let them eat cake!

It's enshrined in Tory doctrine. Survival of the fittest.

Let them eat cake!

It's enshrined in Tory doctrine. Survival of the fittest.

Shouldn't that be 'Survival of the Richest'?