Yesterday the story about a new single benefit for sick and disabled people came up.
So DWP are now looking at a single benefit to replace PIP, ESA and Universal Credit. They say people want a simpler application & assessment process. That's true, but what we don't want is a new single benefit that removes people off benefit who need it.https://t.co/CuM5vvNKbI
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is exploring the idea of a single benefit for sick and disabled people, it has been reported.
Some 1.4million claim Disability Living Allowance (DLA) or its replacement Personal Independence Payment (PIP) – paid to help people with the costs of being disabled. Others claim ESA (Employment and Support Allowance), which UC is replacing.
The DWP says keeping all these different benefits and having just one assessment wouldn’t work. A brand new scheme would be a way to make the whole system simpler, it says.
The proposal is included in the DWP’s recent report ‘Shaping Future Support: The Health and Disability Green Paper.’
NOTE; The Green Paper was published on the 20th of July and the consultation ended on the 11th of October.
As the Mirror points out today, “A little-reported Green Paper over the summer said a ‘new single benefit’ could combine payments – with Tory welfare chief Therese Coffey saying ‘everything is on the table'”
The Welfare Weekly article continues,
“Responding to the proposal of creating a new benefit or merging ESA, DLA & PIP with Universal Credit, Disability Rights UK (DRUK) said: “We are very suspicious of the Green Paper suggestion that Ministers could create a “new single benefit” so as to simplify the application and assessment process..
DR UK, Disability Forum England and DBC have responded to the Health and Disability Green Paper. Shaping Future Support https://t.co/TeSxW9zYqq considers the options for addressing some “short-to medium-term issues in health and disability benefits”. https://t.co/WEtoxKFBT3
“Given the stress, worry, fear and distrust work capability assessments and PIP assessments cause Disabled people, the prospect of only having one assessment and not two is only superficially attractive at best.
“Given the repeated stress the Green Paper gives to “affordability” we believe the DWP is being disingenuous and the actual reason for the single benefit suggestion is likely to be reducing expenditure.”
Gail Ward, from the Hand2Mouth Project, said: “Those on Legacy Benefits will be Migrated to UC in 2023/24 and the merging of ESA,DLA/PIP will be a disaster for claimants and potentially means that PIP will become means tested.
“The form descriptors while having different criteria are already closely aligned and the DWP were calling PIP ‘a functional benefit’ in an evidence session before the Work and Pensions Committee recently.
……
The warning is very clearly when Therese Coffey suggested that severe disability group could be nudged into some type of work or training programme is a loud and clear message to all claimants that they want to cut overall costs and cut claimant numbers.”
Ms Coffey also suggested she was concerned by the number of people claiming PIP for mental health difficulties, saying she wanted to “target that even more so to people who really need that support”.
She added: “PIP has certainly grown in a way that was not anticipated when it was introduced.
“To give you an example, three out of four young people who claim PIP have their primary reason being mental ill health.
“That in itself is 189,000 young people who currently receive benefit focused on that. There may be other benefits they receive as well.
This seems, as our contributors have commented, part of a wider strategy to merge all benefits. The problem is, as Universal Credit has already shown, this can create bureaucratic and information technology nightmares. As well as, as he above comment about ‘affordability’ indicates, being an excuse for cutting benefit levels.
This is the Minister in Charge of the Green Paper:
"There is still work to be done to level up and create a fairer society with equal opportunities for all. "
Meet the new Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work: Chloe Smith MP https://t.co/MngFnECuNS
I give you Boris Johnson's new DWP Minister.for Disability, Health & Work, Chloe Smith MP ~ Never knowingly voted to improve the quality of life for poor and disabled people ~ 😫 pic.twitter.com/edgiRKgYjg
— Deb McPleb | PEACE & JUSTICE 😷💙☮️🏳️🌈🦎🥀 (@Heygabagaba1) September 17, 2021
The £20-a-week reduction would stay – but working people who receive the benefit would be allowed to keep more of their earnings, under the proposal.
The so-called “taper rate” – the amount a claimant loses for every extra pound they earn – would be reduced from 63p to 60p, if the Treasury agrees the move.
Guardian:
This won’t help those too ill to work, who lost jobs in the pandemic or have full time caring responsibilities. We need to #KeepTheLifeline for all 👇
Ministers consider plan to ease £20-a-week universal credit cut | Universal credit | The Guardian https://t.co/prWzDZh9Dp
Having lost the argument Boris Johnson has now resorted to barefaced lies to justify his planned cut to Universal Credit which will plunge another 800,000 people into poverty. This should be reported on every UK News Channel. Every one pic.twitter.com/CR8xzfgYVq
One Britain One Nation Day is due to be celebrated in schools on Friday through the singing of a patriotic song.
On Monday, Lord Freud, architect of Universal Credit admitted that the benefit rates "aren't good enough." Today, this: almost half of Universal Credit claimants are having their monthly benefits reduced. https://t.co/3vOXktabcV
Almost half of Brits on Universal Credit are not getting the full benefit payment every month because they are paying back debts to the DWP.
Some 45% of all claims in February – 2.2million – had a deduction, meaning the claimant did not get their full entitlement that month.
Many were people who took out an advance from their own future benefits – to bridge the five-week wait for their first UC payment.
Some 49% of all deductions, worth £86million in February alone, were to pay back an advance.
The DWP claim there is nothing wrong with this, because advances mean people are being paid the same amount of benefits over a longer time.
But campaigners say the five-week wait must be scrapped, because many skint Brits have no choice but to borrow against their own future benefits.
If you want to join in the "One Britain One Nation" campaign being actively promoted by the UK Government, you can sing along with their special song and its catchy lyric "Strong Britain, great nation".
The end of #lockdown may be in sight but today's unemployment figures are a reminder that the journey to economic recovery will be long. That's why the Government must #KeepTheLifeline of the £20 #UniversalCredit uplift for at least a year. https://t.co/FtHr73hgNp
#Marr asks @RishiSunak about the future of the #UniversalCredit £20 uplift. No clear answer today but if the Government is committed to keeping families on low incomes afloat they must #KeepTheLifeline for at least one year and extend to legacy benefits at Wednesday’s #Budget2021
Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds says Universal Credit system needs radical reform but for now the £20 uplift must be retained during the pandemic
Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds has declared that Universal Credit “simply has not worked” and should be scrapped.
The call from Labour’s finance chief comes as claimants wait to hear if a coronavirus top-up on the benefit – £1,040 a year, equivalent to £80 a month or £20 a week – will be extended into the next financial year
Ms Dodds said the temporary rise for six million Brits must be “maintained during the pandemic” but in the long term, the welfare scheme must be replaced.
She spoke about Universal Credit on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, where she said: “In the near term what we’ve got to do is be clear to families that in the middle of a pandemic, they should not be seeing £20 less a week coming in when they’re struggling.
“In the longer term, what we really need to see is radical reform, scrapping that Universal Credit system because it simply has not worked for families.”
This is so frustrating. Labour should just say “yes we support a £20 weekly uplift in Universal Credit in perpetuity, until we can replace it with a system that better supports people and their families.”
Our @paulapeters2 asking you to please support DPAC's national day of action online, on March 1st from 12pm onwards. Extend the £20 uplift to all claimants! Feel welcome to tag us in your tweets/bids/pics. Please use the hashtag #20More4Allpic.twitter.com/AY3tIPLl2Z
‘If I didn’t come here I’d have nothing’. Lisa Currie among 220 forced to queue for food in sub-zero temperatures in the heart of Glasgow. She relies on the Kindness Homeless Street team https://t.co/xWEpsZDHIC@BigIssue is right, it's “an indictment of national failure”. pic.twitter.com/dW2e9ctFBK
When exactly did Food Banks become an established part of life in the UK?
In theory social security was meant to cover people’s basic needs, with enough money to get what you need to eat as a part of benefit levels. The welfare state is based on rights, a kind of universal insurance, but also a a minium protection for all,.
There are countries without a welfare state, and those with such a small cover for those in need that food provision is the principal last resort for the poor, working or not. ” In the US the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is a federal nutrition program. Known previously as “food stamps,” SNAP benefits can help you stretch your food budget if you have a low income. SNAP (food stamps), D-SNAP, and WIC for women, infants, and children. “
That said, people have fallen through that net for a long time (dole is very limited, and can simply come to a complete end after a fixed time), soup kitchens, have been part of the US landscape for decades.
The idea is that people should succeed if they merit it. Real failures, ‘losers’ as they call then, should have to reply on the generosity, if they can get it, of strangers. Or go to the gutter. If really genuinely unfortunate the kindness of charity is available,
The world’s first food bank was established in the US in 1967, and since then many thousands have been set up all over the world. In Europe, which until recently had little need for food banks due to extensive welfare systems, their numbers have grown rapidly since the 2006 and even faster since the global economic crisis.
In the UK, traditionally food hampers have been given out to the elderly and vulnerable members of communities at Harvest festivals and at Christmas but all year-round hunger has been a prominent issue since 2007 and has dramatically increased since 2011. Most, but not all, UK food banks are co-ordinated by The Trussell Trust – a Christian charity based in Salisbury which serves as the UK’s only food bank network. The Trussell Trust was established in 2000; in 2004 they only ran two food banks but as of August 2012 a massive 252 were being operated.
In the UK, a food bank is not a “soup kitchen”. Whilst the majority of food banks do give food directly to the hungry it is done by the issue of a voucher system which is issued from a third party. Soup kitchens can be accessed by the hungry without the intervention, assistance or referral of any professional body.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans who rely on the federal food stamp program will lose their benefits under a new Trump administration rule that will tighten work requirements for recipients.
The move by the administration is the latest in its attempt to scale back the social safety net for low-income Americans. It is the first of three proposed rules targeting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as Snap, to be finalized. The program feeds more than 36 million people.
The plan will limit states from exempting work-eligible adults from having to maintain steady employment in order to receive benefits.
The voluntary support given to food banks is “rather uplifting” and “shows what a compassionate country we are”, Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg has said.
He told LBC radio the only reason for the rise in their use was “that people know that they are there”.
..
“To have charitable support given by people voluntarily to support their fellow citizens I think is rather uplifting and shows what a good, compassionate country we are,” he said.
“Inevitably, the state can’t do everything, so I think that there is good within food banks.
“The real reason for the rise in numbers is that people know that they are there and Labour deliberately didn’t tell them.”
The Honourable Lady is right to praise volunteers at her local food bank who support vulnerable people in their area. The Honourable Lady is right to praise volunteers at her local food bank who support vulnerable people in their area.
“Marrying the two is a perfect way to try to address the challenges that people face at difficult times in their lives.
“The Hon. Lady will be aware of the work that we have been trying to do with the Trussell Trust, and I am pleased to say that we will also be having a roundtable of independent food banks to understand how we can help them and their customers to move forwards.”
You have to say that if Universal Credit is such a success, why on earth do we need these providers? Do we want to a society, a Trump utopia, where the poor dutifully queue for food? What about rights and equality, the right to a minium decent living standard for all?
Trump has gone. His fellow national populists in the UK should be booted out..
Ipswich Unemployed Action. 
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