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Are You 'Anxious &/Or Depressed Or Maybe Have Acne' ?
Britons with acne, constipation and those who abused alcohol and drugs are claiming almost £10,000-a-year each in disability benefits from a welfare system that experts warn is no longer fit for purpose.
The cost of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) is set to rise from £15bn before the pandemic to £37bn in real terms by the end of the decade, while the overall cost of sickness and disability benefits is on course to climb to £100bn.
PIP provides cash payments for those with extra care or mobility needs, allowing people to spend it on everything from taxis to mobility scooters and cars. Roughly 1.3m people are eligible for the maximum of £9,500 a year to help them cope with a “main disabling condition” that ranges from drug abuse to obesity to long Covid.
Claims linked to some form of anxiety and depression account for one of the biggest sub-category of PIP, with over 800,000 payments now supporting the anxious and depressed.
Today's Telegraph.
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For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.One report I saw said that 1 in 4 under 25's have mental health problems and many are claiming job seekers allowance. The mental health problems probably occurred when they realized they would have to fend for themselves after the education phase. Too much to bear + can't cope with that = mental health problems.
Some interesting cases in this BBC article today where they speak to some people who say they rely on these benefits.
For example Emily, 41, who is autistic and struggles with time management and organising basic tasks for her daily routine.
"My autism has prevented me from getting jobs in the past,"
She is now working full time as a flight attendant and has developed strategies to help with being late, including getting up much earlier to allow extra time before shifts.
She is aware of the criticism benefit claimants often receive. "I'm not a scrounger," she says.
Emily gets more than £400 per month in PIP payments, which are not dependent on the recipient's income. But the money mostly goes on her regular bills, rather than on the occupational therapy she thinks would really help her to establish a proper routine.
Receiving PIP also means she is eligible for a disabled discount railcard, which makes travel to work more affordable."It's a big thing," she says. "I would struggle to pay."
So the PIP payments are helping pay the same sort of bills everyone else has to pay ?
Alison, 56, who lives with her brother in a council property in Southampton, says she feels "sick" at the prospect of cuts.
She has been diagnosed with depression, anxiety and PTSD brought on by childhood traumas. She also suffers panic attacks and night terrors. Since Covid she is afraid of leaving the house due to "fear of germs". [my bold]
Alison hasn't worked since she lost her job with Southampton City Council in 1997, and claims both PIP, the main disability benefit, and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) totalling around £1,700 per month.
She says she would find it difficult to cope with the pressure of a job.
Maybe help might be more effective trying to improve the mental state of those fearful of life, and fostering an attitude of self reliance.
In fairness while we should want to support those in society with special needs as well as we can, it must be difficult to know where to draw the line as a nation has many calls on it's budget. The present state of the world does mean belts probably need tightening.
Mind you, if government didn't squander the public's money on looking after illegals, health tourists, foreign criminals and suchlike, there would be less pressure elsewhere.
Trouble is those who have genuine disabilities get tarred with the same brush. I do think targeted support is better in many cases, funding mental health services for those with anxiety, depression etc, but they need to be proper services not 12 weeks of CBT ( you should be fine now). I also think better support in the workplace including adaptations ( there is currently money available for this via the disability employment advisers) both to help disabled people work safely, and facilitate entry into the workplace.
But those who think it shouldn't support normal life stuff need to consider that many of the things disabled people do either cost more ( e.g transport where they may need to use taxis rather than buses due to access issues even if it's not all the time, paying for someone to make journeys with them at least until they feel safe doing it alone.) Or additional heating, and or hot water. As an example I feel the cold far more since my mobility has been affected and the heating that was ok for 13 years is no longer enough.
"Trouble is those who have genuine disabilities get tarred with the same brush."
That's certinly a problem. But it must be solved.
But before then there are easy savings to be made. Among the first should be a radical overhaul of the “Motability” scheme which gives claimants a new car (including tax and insurance) every three years, in exchange for all or part of their “mobility” benefits.
First of all its scope should be radically narrowed. Over 815,000 people now avail themselves of this service, a rise of almost a third in two years. Almost all the new claimants suffer what is the new “bad back” – “mental health problems”.
They’re offered a choice of vehicle (with a down payment being required for some of the more expensive models on offer) and even some vans. Among the most expensive - a BMW listed at £55,000 – a down payment of just £8,000 is required. Many less expensive cars require no down payment at all. Two additional drivers can be named to drive the vehicle and (unlike a Blue Badge) there is no requirement for the claimant themselves to be on board when the vehicle is used.
One in five of all new cars registered last year were bought by Motability. The company is a private concern owned principally by four of the big banks. The CEO has a remuneration package of approaching £1m pa and it sits on assets of around £4bn, including over £1bn in cash. It long ago outgrew its original purpose – to provide basic cars for people too ill or disabled to work and who cannot get round without one.
Among the more notable clients of the Motability scheme are this odious pair of creeps:
https:/
The pair, along with their children, committed a large number of “dine and dash” offences, sometimes making off in a transit van - a Motability vehicle. I use this example not to illustrate that all Motability clients are thieving scroungers, but instead to illustrate the obvious lack of care taken by those dolling out taxpayers’ cash to provide the vehicles.
"Britons with acne, constipation and those who abused alcohol and drugs are claiming almost £10,000-a-year each in disability benefits"
this does not mean that they are claiming pip for those reasons. this is mendacious reporting which is intended to justify removing support for millions of people... a murderous cause that the conservatives and have espoused since 2010. shame on labour for joining in.
I've mentioned this before but a friend of mine had a motability vehicle (SUV - Honda CRV etc.) for several years*. He had no serious mobility issues, he was on a good pension & his wife was earning £60k pa (it's not means tested apparently) and they owned 3 other vehicles. If that's not a misuse of public funds I don't know what is.
*He doesn't have one any more.
The notion that the government plans to “slash benefits” does not seem too appropriate.
The measures announced today are said to save £5bn a year by 2030.
At the time of the October 2024 Budget, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecast that total spending on health and disability benefits would rise from £64.7bn in 2023-24 to £100.7bn in 2029-30. The biggest contributor to this increase would be from welfare spending on working-age adults, defined as those aged between 16 and 64. This was projected to rise from £48.5bn in 2023-24 to £75.7bn in 2029-30. All these figures are at today’s values. None has been adjusted for inflation.
£5bn on a forecast total of £100bn (+inflation) in five years’ time amounts to no more than noise and rounding.
Almost 3m people of working age in the UK are said to be so ill they cannot perform any work. One in five 18-24 year olds are treated similarly. By any measure these are incredible numbers which many people find hard to believe (except, perhaps, those granting their welfare payments). But it doesn’t stop there.
In 2023-24, Personal Independence Payments (PIP) totalled £18bn. That's projected to almost double to £34bn by 2029-30 meaning the number of claimants rising from 2.7 million to 4.2 million.
The government needs to decide whether it will continue expecting those working, who are declining in number, to continue to pay an increasing number of people who say they cannot work. They should ask themselves whether it is fair to expect those who are working to pay for new cars of up to £55k in value for those who are not. Especially when many of those working could not afford to buy and run a new car of any price.
They should also ask why the numbers of people who will qualify for PIPs is forecast to rise by 55% in the next five years.
If government ministers are not too interested in the answers, the people paying for this munificence certainly are.
Untitled; //"Britons with acne, constipation and those who abused alcohol and drugs are claiming almost £10,000-a-year each in disability benefits"
this does not mean that they are claiming pip for those reasons. this is mendacious reporting which is intended to justify removing support for millions of people... //
You sound suspiciously like you are one of them, am I correct?
I can see no other reason for a sane, intelligent person not to want to see a curb on this ridiculous expenditure of taxpayer's money.
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