Above is an article from the independant in which Iain Duncan Smith outlines his reasons for the introduction of universal credit and general welfare reform. I am going to copy some statements and reply to them.
Five million people are trapped on out-of-work benefits and almost two million children are growing up in workless households, seeing a life on benefits as normal.
Disabled people do not feel trapped on these benefits. For disabled people benefits are a lifeline that enables them to live with dignity and respect. Disability doesn't discriminate, and you can't pay disability to go away. A life on benefits is not a life of luxury for disabled people, nor is a life on benefits seen as normal or desirable. I am sure the majority of disabled people would give up their life of benefits for a life free from their condition and the disabling effects of that which prevents them from engaging in the way the state expects.
What traps disabled people isn't the benefits system, but the work system. It seems bizarre to punish disabled people for the inflexible nature of work and employment to accommodate and make adjustments for disabled people to enable them to work. This is social model thinking. It is not the fault of the disabled person for being different, but the society that is at fault for calling them deficient.
It will be simpler for people to navigate and harder for people to defraud but, most importantly, it will make work pay. No longer will it be possible to be better off on benefits than in work.
Again, this is a lie and spin. I have demonstrated before that someone is better off in work than on benefits. What Mr Duncan smith is encouraging is hard working people thinking that everyone on benefits is better off. Yes, if you take a hard working couple and compare it with a family of 5, of course the family of five is going to be better off, but it is an unfair comparison. If you take a family of 2 in work and compare it with a family of 2 on benefits, then yes, the couple in work are going to be considerably better off.
Universal credit will reward people who choose to go back to work by ensuring that they are better off than they would be on benefits.
Again, the system as it currently is already enables this. see above. Disabled people very often don't have a choice whether to go to work or not. That choice is made for them by the inflexible nature of the work environment.
Together with our reforms, this sends the signal that a life on benefits must not be more attractive than working.
A life on benefits is not attractive. Come and live my life for a month. I will gladly swap anyone in work who is healthy with my disabled life on benefits. thats all i have to say.
The public do not believe that claimants should receive higher incomes than families in work
The public only believe this because of media spin like this article that drip feeds the notion that benefits claimants receive more money. its simply not true (as above)
Furthermore, we will exempt people who are in work and claiming tax credits, war widows or widowers, disabled people in receipt of disability living allowance, as well as those who can't work and get the highest level of support from employment and support allowance.
As the new DLA, PIP will be payed to 500,000 less disabled people, who will still be in need of help and support this will hit them the hardest. They will lose out on both PIP and the protection that it offers them. As for the ESA system, even the creator of the system has hit out at its flaws. It is a lottery if you end up in the right group of ESA, it is not based on need.
and more than three-quarters of the British people agree.
Is there a source for this?
No longer can the taxpayer continue to write blank cheques to pay for benefit claimants to live in properties they can only dream of.
People on benefits live in houses with a higher rent because landlords put the rent up for them so they can claim more money from the state. There is not a blank cheque for benefits claimaints. Already the introduction of the local housing allowance means that people can only live in the cheapest 50percent of properties. This is now being reduced to 30%. This statement will only cause more upset and harm, again, more spin.
Welfare budgets were allowed to rocket, and the Government now distributes an astonishing £200bn each year
And that is something we should be proud of. We are a nation that supports our most vunerable. The people who have become unemployed, the people who can't work, the sick, children and elderly.
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