“The reforms – coming into force in April – will tackle these perverse incentives by introducing a lower Universal Credit health element rate of £217.26 per month for new claimants, compared to the higher rate of £429.80.”
If you were taken ill next month and could no longer work, you’ll now receive less money.
They’re spending billions to try to get ill/disabled people into jobs that don’t exist – there’s already more than twice as many people looking for jobs than there are vacancies.
Unsurprisingly most businesses aren’t going to pick someone who hasn’t worked in a decade and needs accommodations over someone healthy with references.
It’d be a ‘perverse incentive’ I assume to increase wages to a point where people in full time work no longer needed benefits or food banks…and could buy a house.
Sszaj on
Let’s halve the state pension and get seventy year olds off of Facebook and back at the coal face.Â
Seems about as reasonable as cutting disability benefits to incentivise people to work.Â
OkPea5819 on
This is absurd – completely agree with the principle of getting people into work – but how can two people receive different rates solely based on when they first applied? Especially 50%.
Potential-Bird-5826 on
Yeah? As of today i’m 131 applications into a job hunt. I have had my CV tweaked by the Job centre. I’m applying on indeed, reed, linked in, mynewterm, a medicaljobs website, i’ve contacted recruiters in three different countries. I will relocate to anywhere. Literally my only criteria is ‘is english or dutch the primary language of the place you need people’.
But sure, the government is trying to ‘help me into work’ by reducing my UC payment in a few months. Fuckery like this is why people want to burn the system down.
PurchaseDry9350 on
This isn’t support, it’s punishment, pressure and cruelty, and will increase poverty. This is over £200 a month cut from sick people’s income. To say ‘support’ is absolute gaslighting and an absurd lie.
PurchaseDry9350 on
And interesting that they’re doing this right when Starmer is in danger 🙄
M_M_X_X_V on
They will do anything but Job Creation. Why isn’t job creation even brought up in our political debates? It makes no sense.
what-a-trash on
The housing part of UC hasn’t kept up with rising rental costs, a lot of disabled people have to spend a portion of their UC disability money to make up the shortfall, and will now be unable to afford basics like food and electricity.
This will lead to deaths. The Labour government will have our blood on their hands.
Additional_Pickle_59 on
We’re gonna see a level of poverty no living person has ever seen before. They’ll never punish companies for disgraceful AI hiring strategies, hoarding wealth or passing costs on to anyone they can, but you can be safe in knowing that anyone who lost their job to sickness will never have a job again.
mrayner9 on
Seeing this whilst we also had “Britons working harder to earn less” article earlier is an oxymoron lol.
Its all good getting people into work. They need to feel rewarded to actually stay put in work. Thats the difference
-Incubation- on
What makes this even more grim is that if a couple were disabled enough to qualify for the unable to work related element, they only qualify for one payment. However, if they lived separately, they would both qualify in their own right.
RecedingQuickly on
This is targeting the lcwra component which doesn’t mean you cant work, you can still work and claim it. It’s broken as you can work a part time job, claim it for a base of about £840 + housing benefit. Someone working a 18hour part time job could pull in £1800 a month (including housing) with no tax.
Woffingshire on
Article says the people currently on UC will continue to get the full amount. New claimants get half of it.
How does that incentivise people into work? It only applies to new claimants. If I lost my job tomorrow i’d be getting barely enough money to live on while I look for a new one, but people who have been abusing the system to live solely off benefits for 10 years will be allowed to continue doing it.
This simply wasn’t thought through as a system.
yadasellsavonmate on
Proper right wing policy…Â Â
They are just Tories who play left wing identity politics.Â
pinetashapple on
Fantastic they’re prioritising this and not the adult social care reform that’s been promised for over 3 years.Â
ScubaPuddingJr on
How are they going to get people back into work, when there aren’t enough jobs for these unemployed people who are also trapped within the welfare state?
Groxy_ on
What I don’t understand is why the government doesn’t just give people jobs. There’s hundreds and hundreds of hours of litter picking and general maintenance around citites that could be done in return for their welfare money.Â
Counterpoint-4 on
If there was training that guaranteed a job at the end it would be more encouraging than telling people to train then they can’t get a job, so back to square one.
salamanderwolf on
Labour and shortsightedly punishing people for being disabled which will end up costing the country more. Name a more iconic duo.
They deserve every kicking they get.
Redditisfakeleft on
>The reforms – coming into force in April – will tackle these perverse incentives by introducing a lower Universal Credit health element rate of £217.26 per month for new claimants, compared to the higher rate of £429.80.
>Those with the most severe, lifelong conditions, those nearing end of life, and all existing Universal Credit health claimants will continue to receive the higher rate.
Anyone see the perverse incentive?
cordlesspizza on
It always sounds good to people before they get this level of disabled, be it through cancer or anything else. Then they will scream it’s not enough. It’s genuinely a disgusting amount to live off if disabled, even with additional benefits.
bulldog_blues on
I don’t like the proposed cut to disability benefits at all. They’re not sufficient to cover living costs as is and now future claimants will get even less support?
The support for jobs *could* be a good thing, the devil will be in the detail. But even if it is, that doesn’t counterbalance the harm this will cause to disabled people.
This is a policy straight out of the Conservative playbook, so it’s very disappointing to see Labour proposing it.
narnababy on
Able-bodied people are struggling to find work, do you think people with disabilities are going to do any better?
My partner has epilepsy meaning he can’t drive, can’t lone work, can’t work with heavy machinery, can’t climb ladders, can’t work in a high stress job or at night (as this is a trigger for his seizures). He spent months recently trying to find a job and has ended up in a position a 4 hour train ride away from our home. And yet when he was let go during lockdown he walked into a new job within the week. There were more jobs when everyone was staying at home than there are now!
So now I have to work and solo parent all week, he gets to miss out on family time, all so we can keep a roof over our heads. I can’t support a family on my single income so him being a SAHD just wasn’t an option. PIP payments are pathetic and now they want to cut UC?
Disabled people will die because of this, they won’t be able to get to appointments, or heat their homes, or pay for housing or food.
Labour have royally fucked up on this one.
ash_ninetyone on
This isn’t support.
Support is doing useful things like offering interview experience, upskilling opportunities, helping people tailor their CV. And even then, it requires the recruiter to look at it and decide to give you an interview and that is mostly out of your hand.
A lot of it is down to the job market and someone willing to give you that chance.
Support isn’t halving the UC rate on something a lot of folk already struggle to get by on.
Saint_Sin on
Cruelty is the aim. Wait until Reform (the Tories) gets into power and we are copying nazi America.
alpastotesmejor on
What a joke. Just tax billionaires, oh wait they won’t.
SoulStuckInAthens on
I’m not even on any form of benefits, but I’m getting so fucking tired of this assault on disabled people.
WHAT COULD YOU POSSIBLY WANT FROM US? THERE ARE NO JOBS. THERE ARE 2.5 MILLION UNEMPLOYED WORKING AGED PEOPLE AND ONLY 700,000 JOB VACANCIES. WHY WOULD *ANY* EMPLOYER HIRE A DISABLED PERSON IN A SCENARIO LIKE THIS? I HAVE HAD RECRUITERS OUTRIGHT VERBALLY TELL ME DURING INTERVIEWS THAT THEY DO NOT HIRE DISABLED PEOPLE FOR A SIMPLE DESK JOB. AND YET SOMEHOW THE GOVERNMENT FROM ALL ANGLES, REFORM, LABOUR, WHOEVER, WILL ALWAYS KEEP BLAMING PEOPLE LIKE ME FOR TAKING ALL THE MONEY AWAY IN THIS COUNTRY BY NOT WORKING. I JUST WANT TO SCREAM THIS IN AN MP’S FACE UNTIL THEY FINALLY FUCKING UNDERSTAND THE ISSUE HERE.
Caps over but I am just so restless and tired of this constant ‘disabled people are lazy fuckers that just want to do nothing and go on monthly holidays with benefit money’ bullshit. It’s soul crushing, makes me feel less than human for being born chronically ill. But yeah, those pensioners, keep giving them more, keep giving the golden generation that got everything as young adults, even more, and keep taking from us young disabled people.
Impressive-Bird-6085 on
It’s utterly ludicrous that the new legislation now classes a severe disability and/ or chronic illness as a perverse incentive……. It’s insane. It’s policy by tabloid press. It’ll also result in perverse outcomes – it’ll cost the public purse, and therefore the taxpayer more money in the medium to long term.
DoubleDropper on
So everyone is just going to act like AI isnt going to decimate the job market in the next few years? If UBI is not implemented then I think we are going to be in a world of shit.
TennisExact553 on
Yea lets get them back into the non existent jobs and not stop out sourcing and not look at automation or ai taking jobs. Disillusioned clowns.
Key_Education_9851 on
Does that mean that they will stop telling me that I can’t be disabled despite being diagnosed with a chronic illness because I have a job? No? Oh…Â
MandeliciousXTC on
The irony of these ‘pro-work’ reforms is that they ignore how the system sometimes already fails those who have worked their entire lives. I’ve spent over a year fighting for a colleague/employee who has been a dedicated worker for over two decades.
When she was hit with severe, debilitating illness (Lupus and at one point suspected cancer), the system she paid into for 20+ years simply vanished. We had to get multiple past and present Company Directors and an MP involved just to stop her from falling into mortgage arrears because the DWP delayed her initial benefits for months.
The assessments were a farce—one PIP assessor even claimed she ‘didn’t sound in pain’ over the phone, while a UC assessor had to stop the meeting halfway through because it was so obvious she was severely disabled. What? Where is the consistency.
Now, the government is cutting that health element by £200+ a month for new claimants. If she had fallen ill under these ‘new’ rules, no amount of ‘incentive’ would fix her autoimmune flare-ups. She WANTS to work and WANTS to be back to normal.
It’s not a ‘perverse incentive’ to need enough money to not go hungry while you’re bedbound—it’s a human right we all supposedly pay for. She also has two teenage kids.
Glanwy on
We really, really do need a massive, fundamental overhaul of the benefits and tax system……. And fast.
swordoftruth1963 on
Cutting benefits and then claiming to help by showing people some internet sites that help with CVs. Brilliant
sonicadam132 on
Are they ensuring there are enough jobs? Or making sure companies are hiring disabled people, unless they say they aren’t hiring due to a disability then it’s legal still
NajafBound on
There aren’t enough jobs for them to get into though.
Reika_Shichijou on
”Government makes cuts to save a few bob”
Fixed it for you.
appletinicyclone on
Cut triple lock instead of this insanity
They won’t though.
20-40 years olds need to start operating like a block vote for elections otherwise the pensioner problem will keep coming back
Dry_Construction4939 on
I’m disabled. I tried to go back into work 2 years ago because apparently I wasn’t sick enough for PiP anymore, and so I tried to make a go of it.
All it did was make my health considerably worse because no one wants to employ someone with a massive gap in a CV, so you have to end up taking any job that will accept you, and they tend to be ones with a horrible work environment and a very physical element to working.
Naturally, I have ended up back at square one and am now on LCWRA.Â
If the government, really, truly want to make us work, because to be clear, I would like to, they’re going to have to start forcing Employers to hire us. I’m not talking shelf staking, working in coffee shops, restaurants, or general manual labour either, because many of us are limited in what we can do, it’ll have to be stuff that’s in a good environment.Â
Which won’t happen.Â
People with good, entry level CVs are struggling to land a decent, minimum wage office job at the moment, no one is going to take someone who requires adjustments.Â
I’m not saying the solution is to continue at the rate we’re going, because it’s not, but they’re really, truly going to have to accept that just forcing people back to work, with a course or 2 from the Job Centre under their belt doesn’t work.
KarneeKarnay on
I can believe they are fucking around with making it worse for people and not better. The issue with the system is not fucking malicious actors. When you have a social safety net, you accept some form of fraud, because the benefits far out way the fraud.
What the giv should be doing is making the ramp to get off of benefits easier. Not punish you for being g on them in the first place.
duxwontobey on
Government continues to starve the poors and offers no on-ramp for job seekers that isn’t taking the equivalent of a 50% tax from the poorest people in society.
Here’s how to fix it. Make the rate livable, then match salary together with benefits for a period of time during the transition, up to average wage of £35k. That way there’s a huge reason to get off of benefits, but not a fucking cliff you fall off of once you get a job. Add some check to make sure people don’t go on and off of job repeatedly to abuse this and done.
Iamchi1 on
As a disabled young woman who is just now being told by my health professionals that returning to work may be a pipe dream with my current health situation, I am truly scared, it doesn’t even matter what political affiliation the government is, healthcare and the vulnerable keep paying the price in the UK.
42 Comments
“The reforms – coming into force in April – will tackle these perverse incentives by introducing a lower Universal Credit health element rate of £217.26 per month for new claimants, compared to the higher rate of £429.80.”
If you were taken ill next month and could no longer work, you’ll now receive less money.
They’re spending billions to try to get ill/disabled people into jobs that don’t exist – there’s already more than twice as many people looking for jobs than there are vacancies.
Unsurprisingly most businesses aren’t going to pick someone who hasn’t worked in a decade and needs accommodations over someone healthy with references.
It’d be a ‘perverse incentive’ I assume to increase wages to a point where people in full time work no longer needed benefits or food banks…and could buy a house.
Let’s halve the state pension and get seventy year olds off of Facebook and back at the coal face.Â
Seems about as reasonable as cutting disability benefits to incentivise people to work.Â
This is absurd – completely agree with the principle of getting people into work – but how can two people receive different rates solely based on when they first applied? Especially 50%.
Yeah? As of today i’m 131 applications into a job hunt. I have had my CV tweaked by the Job centre. I’m applying on indeed, reed, linked in, mynewterm, a medicaljobs website, i’ve contacted recruiters in three different countries. I will relocate to anywhere. Literally my only criteria is ‘is english or dutch the primary language of the place you need people’.
But sure, the government is trying to ‘help me into work’ by reducing my UC payment in a few months. Fuckery like this is why people want to burn the system down.
This isn’t support, it’s punishment, pressure and cruelty, and will increase poverty. This is over £200 a month cut from sick people’s income. To say ‘support’ is absolute gaslighting and an absurd lie.
And interesting that they’re doing this right when Starmer is in danger 🙄
They will do anything but Job Creation. Why isn’t job creation even brought up in our political debates? It makes no sense.
The housing part of UC hasn’t kept up with rising rental costs, a lot of disabled people have to spend a portion of their UC disability money to make up the shortfall, and will now be unable to afford basics like food and electricity.
This will lead to deaths. The Labour government will have our blood on their hands.
We’re gonna see a level of poverty no living person has ever seen before. They’ll never punish companies for disgraceful AI hiring strategies, hoarding wealth or passing costs on to anyone they can, but you can be safe in knowing that anyone who lost their job to sickness will never have a job again.
Seeing this whilst we also had “Britons working harder to earn less” article earlier is an oxymoron lol.
Its all good getting people into work. They need to feel rewarded to actually stay put in work. Thats the difference
What makes this even more grim is that if a couple were disabled enough to qualify for the unable to work related element, they only qualify for one payment. However, if they lived separately, they would both qualify in their own right.
This is targeting the lcwra component which doesn’t mean you cant work, you can still work and claim it. It’s broken as you can work a part time job, claim it for a base of about £840 + housing benefit. Someone working a 18hour part time job could pull in £1800 a month (including housing) with no tax.
Article says the people currently on UC will continue to get the full amount. New claimants get half of it.
How does that incentivise people into work? It only applies to new claimants. If I lost my job tomorrow i’d be getting barely enough money to live on while I look for a new one, but people who have been abusing the system to live solely off benefits for 10 years will be allowed to continue doing it.
This simply wasn’t thought through as a system.
Proper right wing policy…Â Â
They are just Tories who play left wing identity politics.Â
Fantastic they’re prioritising this and not the adult social care reform that’s been promised for over 3 years.Â
How are they going to get people back into work, when there aren’t enough jobs for these unemployed people who are also trapped within the welfare state?
What I don’t understand is why the government doesn’t just give people jobs. There’s hundreds and hundreds of hours of litter picking and general maintenance around citites that could be done in return for their welfare money.Â
If there was training that guaranteed a job at the end it would be more encouraging than telling people to train then they can’t get a job, so back to square one.
Labour and shortsightedly punishing people for being disabled which will end up costing the country more. Name a more iconic duo.
They deserve every kicking they get.
>The reforms – coming into force in April – will tackle these perverse incentives by introducing a lower Universal Credit health element rate of £217.26 per month for new claimants, compared to the higher rate of £429.80.
>Those with the most severe, lifelong conditions, those nearing end of life, and all existing Universal Credit health claimants will continue to receive the higher rate.
Anyone see the perverse incentive?
It always sounds good to people before they get this level of disabled, be it through cancer or anything else. Then they will scream it’s not enough. It’s genuinely a disgusting amount to live off if disabled, even with additional benefits.
I don’t like the proposed cut to disability benefits at all. They’re not sufficient to cover living costs as is and now future claimants will get even less support?
The support for jobs *could* be a good thing, the devil will be in the detail. But even if it is, that doesn’t counterbalance the harm this will cause to disabled people.
This is a policy straight out of the Conservative playbook, so it’s very disappointing to see Labour proposing it.
Able-bodied people are struggling to find work, do you think people with disabilities are going to do any better?
My partner has epilepsy meaning he can’t drive, can’t lone work, can’t work with heavy machinery, can’t climb ladders, can’t work in a high stress job or at night (as this is a trigger for his seizures). He spent months recently trying to find a job and has ended up in a position a 4 hour train ride away from our home. And yet when he was let go during lockdown he walked into a new job within the week. There were more jobs when everyone was staying at home than there are now!
So now I have to work and solo parent all week, he gets to miss out on family time, all so we can keep a roof over our heads. I can’t support a family on my single income so him being a SAHD just wasn’t an option. PIP payments are pathetic and now they want to cut UC?
Disabled people will die because of this, they won’t be able to get to appointments, or heat their homes, or pay for housing or food.
Labour have royally fucked up on this one.
This isn’t support.
Support is doing useful things like offering interview experience, upskilling opportunities, helping people tailor their CV. And even then, it requires the recruiter to look at it and decide to give you an interview and that is mostly out of your hand.
A lot of it is down to the job market and someone willing to give you that chance.
Support isn’t halving the UC rate on something a lot of folk already struggle to get by on.
Cruelty is the aim. Wait until Reform (the Tories) gets into power and we are copying nazi America.
What a joke. Just tax billionaires, oh wait they won’t.
I’m not even on any form of benefits, but I’m getting so fucking tired of this assault on disabled people.
WHAT COULD YOU POSSIBLY WANT FROM US? THERE ARE NO JOBS. THERE ARE 2.5 MILLION UNEMPLOYED WORKING AGED PEOPLE AND ONLY 700,000 JOB VACANCIES. WHY WOULD *ANY* EMPLOYER HIRE A DISABLED PERSON IN A SCENARIO LIKE THIS? I HAVE HAD RECRUITERS OUTRIGHT VERBALLY TELL ME DURING INTERVIEWS THAT THEY DO NOT HIRE DISABLED PEOPLE FOR A SIMPLE DESK JOB. AND YET SOMEHOW THE GOVERNMENT FROM ALL ANGLES, REFORM, LABOUR, WHOEVER, WILL ALWAYS KEEP BLAMING PEOPLE LIKE ME FOR TAKING ALL THE MONEY AWAY IN THIS COUNTRY BY NOT WORKING. I JUST WANT TO SCREAM THIS IN AN MP’S FACE UNTIL THEY FINALLY FUCKING UNDERSTAND THE ISSUE HERE.
Caps over but I am just so restless and tired of this constant ‘disabled people are lazy fuckers that just want to do nothing and go on monthly holidays with benefit money’ bullshit. It’s soul crushing, makes me feel less than human for being born chronically ill. But yeah, those pensioners, keep giving them more, keep giving the golden generation that got everything as young adults, even more, and keep taking from us young disabled people.
It’s utterly ludicrous that the new legislation now classes a severe disability and/ or chronic illness as a perverse incentive……. It’s insane. It’s policy by tabloid press. It’ll also result in perverse outcomes – it’ll cost the public purse, and therefore the taxpayer more money in the medium to long term.
So everyone is just going to act like AI isnt going to decimate the job market in the next few years? If UBI is not implemented then I think we are going to be in a world of shit.
Yea lets get them back into the non existent jobs and not stop out sourcing and not look at automation or ai taking jobs. Disillusioned clowns.
Does that mean that they will stop telling me that I can’t be disabled despite being diagnosed with a chronic illness because I have a job? No? Oh…Â
The irony of these ‘pro-work’ reforms is that they ignore how the system sometimes already fails those who have worked their entire lives. I’ve spent over a year fighting for a colleague/employee who has been a dedicated worker for over two decades.
When she was hit with severe, debilitating illness (Lupus and at one point suspected cancer), the system she paid into for 20+ years simply vanished. We had to get multiple past and present Company Directors and an MP involved just to stop her from falling into mortgage arrears because the DWP delayed her initial benefits for months.
The assessments were a farce—one PIP assessor even claimed she ‘didn’t sound in pain’ over the phone, while a UC assessor had to stop the meeting halfway through because it was so obvious she was severely disabled. What? Where is the consistency.
Now, the government is cutting that health element by £200+ a month for new claimants. If she had fallen ill under these ‘new’ rules, no amount of ‘incentive’ would fix her autoimmune flare-ups. She WANTS to work and WANTS to be back to normal.
It’s not a ‘perverse incentive’ to need enough money to not go hungry while you’re bedbound—it’s a human right we all supposedly pay for. She also has two teenage kids.
We really, really do need a massive, fundamental overhaul of the benefits and tax system……. And fast.
Cutting benefits and then claiming to help by showing people some internet sites that help with CVs. Brilliant
Are they ensuring there are enough jobs? Or making sure companies are hiring disabled people, unless they say they aren’t hiring due to a disability then it’s legal still
There aren’t enough jobs for them to get into though.
”Government makes cuts to save a few bob”
Fixed it for you.
Cut triple lock instead of this insanity
They won’t though.
20-40 years olds need to start operating like a block vote for elections otherwise the pensioner problem will keep coming back
I’m disabled. I tried to go back into work 2 years ago because apparently I wasn’t sick enough for PiP anymore, and so I tried to make a go of it.
All it did was make my health considerably worse because no one wants to employ someone with a massive gap in a CV, so you have to end up taking any job that will accept you, and they tend to be ones with a horrible work environment and a very physical element to working.
Naturally, I have ended up back at square one and am now on LCWRA.Â
If the government, really, truly want to make us work, because to be clear, I would like to, they’re going to have to start forcing Employers to hire us. I’m not talking shelf staking, working in coffee shops, restaurants, or general manual labour either, because many of us are limited in what we can do, it’ll have to be stuff that’s in a good environment.Â
Which won’t happen.Â
People with good, entry level CVs are struggling to land a decent, minimum wage office job at the moment, no one is going to take someone who requires adjustments.Â
I’m not saying the solution is to continue at the rate we’re going, because it’s not, but they’re really, truly going to have to accept that just forcing people back to work, with a course or 2 from the Job Centre under their belt doesn’t work.
I can believe they are fucking around with making it worse for people and not better. The issue with the system is not fucking malicious actors. When you have a social safety net, you accept some form of fraud, because the benefits far out way the fraud.
What the giv should be doing is making the ramp to get off of benefits easier. Not punish you for being g on them in the first place.
Government continues to starve the poors and offers no on-ramp for job seekers that isn’t taking the equivalent of a 50% tax from the poorest people in society.
Here’s how to fix it. Make the rate livable, then match salary together with benefits for a period of time during the transition, up to average wage of £35k. That way there’s a huge reason to get off of benefits, but not a fucking cliff you fall off of once you get a job. Add some check to make sure people don’t go on and off of job repeatedly to abuse this and done.
As a disabled young woman who is just now being told by my health professionals that returning to work may be a pipe dream with my current health situation, I am truly scared, it doesn’t even matter what political affiliation the government is, healthcare and the vulnerable keep paying the price in the UK.