is incapacity benefit going to means tested?

zzzLazyDaisy

The point is, though, that women who have had to stop working early in their working life through injury or ill-health have no way to make arrangements to accommodate the changes to the pension age. As long as the existing IB security net was in place, this meant that these women would have some income until they reached the new, later, retirement age. IB is paid at a lower rate than state pension, so those with savings adjusted their living arrangements and expectations to try to eek those savings out over the additional 5 years - which over night has been extended to 6 years. Now we are being told that the existing safety IB safety net is also going to be removed. Which means, for example, that those of us who were afraid to keep the heating up in winter, despite the effect on our health, because we knew that there were so many extra winters to get through before we qualified for the increased income of the state pension (and the winter fuel allowance) are to be penalised for our thriftiness.

Okay, one view is that everyone should be the same and no-one should benefit from having the foresight and prudence to put savings away for a 'rainy day' ... just in case.

The result is that maybe I should have spent my income when I was working on fast cars and lavish expensive holidays, in the sure and certain knowledge that the state would reward me if/when I needed money because I had spent it all while I could. And in fact the payout, in terms of LHA/CTB/IS/etc will be much more than the small amount of IB that we currently receive, because IB is set just high enough to take those claimants out of the means tested system.



Because that is the mentality that we are going to create by these changes.