Means Testing (why don't we do it)?

dtsazza

LydiaJ wrote: »

If you want to cover all the possibilities, so as not to get claims for discrimination, then you'd have to redraft it to say something much more like: Kids may be sent to boarding school at the taxpayer's expense if everyone with parental responsibility for them is either (a) working abroad, or (b) living abroad with a spouse or civil partner who is there because of their work.

Or even clearer, leaving no room for claims for discrimination, one of the following:

• Kids may be sent to boarding school at the taxpayer's expense.
• (Nothing, i.e. the taxpayer will not pay for any boarding school fees.)

Any conditions whatsoever create grounds for complaint from people who nearly missed them. What about people who work in embassies, which are considered foreign soil? What about people who are civil partners in practice but are not legally recognised as such? And so on...

Surely paying for everyone or no-one leaves a lot less room for contention?

LydiaJ

dtsazza wrote: »

Or even clearer, leaving no room for claims for discrimination, one of the following:

• Kids may be sent to boarding school at the taxpayer's expense.
• (Nothing, i.e. the taxpayer will not pay for any boarding school fees.)

Any conditions whatsoever create grounds for complaint from people who nearly missed them. What about people who work in embassies, which are considered foreign soil? What about people who are civil partners in practice but are not legally recognised as such? And so on...

Surely paying for everyone or no-one leaves a lot less room for contention?

Oh yes, much simpler. The trouble is that most people have a fundamental understanding of benefits as what should be given to people who need them and not to people who don't, and that means you have to define what you mean by "needing" help. Sending the kids of overseas workers to boarding school in the UK may not be the best example, though. I know nothing about it - perhaps it's essential to recruiting and retaining diplomats to work in parts of the world where no British person in their right mind would want to bring up their children, or perhaps it's an outdated perk that ought to be abolished; I haven't the faintest idea. Let's consider incapacity benefit instead.

People begin by saying that someone who's deaf, blind, paralysed from the neck down and brain damaged is never going to be able to earn their own living and deserves help from the state in the way that able-bodied people don't. But there's a continuum of people between those extremes, and that means a line has to be drawn somewhere. Attempts to draw that line are never perfect, and we end up with people claiming IB for fictional bad backs or depression. (NB I am not suggesting that all IB claimants with back pain or depression are fraudulent, merely that some of them are.)

ETA Since widowed parent's allowance has been mentioned, I'll just add a note to say that it's neither means tested nor universal - it's a contribution based payment that depends on the NI record of the spouse or civil partner who's died.

heathcote123

Pimperne1 wrote: »

Not an expert on which allowances are paid without Means Testing but I believe the following are:

Pensions
Family Allowance
Some Disability Allowances related benefits
Winter Fuel Allowance

If we are ever going to get our financial house in order we must stop paying money to people who don't need it (would any other country just pay out to someone who was already quite well off?).

Instead of making 1000 or so of those civil servants redundant we should keep them in place and have one office which will review all allowances and remove those from families who don't need them. After a year reduce the staff to 900 and make it 100 less each year from then on (leaving by natural wastage rather than redundancy I would suggest).

Simple process, you provide your P60 from last year along with a consolidated claim for that which you current receive. No ifs and buts so if you earn in excess of, say, £40k a year jointly then you don't need the taxpayer to provide you with financial assistance.

I for one am looking forward to us actually grasping this bull by the horns and showing the outside world that we are taking our responsibilities seriously.

I think we'd be better at looking at tax & benefit simplication rather than making it even more complex.

Then we need to stop politicians bribing people with their own money (given the tax credit giveaway, I'm amazed labour aren't still in power).

But yes it is nuts, from a personal point of view I'm getting a subsidy on my housing despite being somewhere near the top 1% earnings wise. I'd be certainly wouldn't grumble if they pulled the plug on that, as useful as it was at the time.

lemonjelly

BigAunty wrote: »

.

There's a lady on another forum moaning about the loss of EMA for her teenage child who rejects the argument that her tax credits and child benefit should cover educational costs, too. Apparently CB is just for their clothes and food...?!!

The vast majority of EMA recipients didn't need it. It was rarely spent on educational needs - booze, weed, fags & phone credit were the main spends. I speak from the experience of working in a college.
The food issue startles me. I get letters all the time off parents stating we should feed their kids too, or alleging that their kids can't afford to eat.

Amazingly, almost all of these poverty striken children have iphones or blackberries. Hmmm, so people can afford £400 phones (or a £40 per month contract) but can't afford to eat or travel to school/college eh?

dtsazza wrote: »

Surely that's an argument for less flexibility?

If everyone was treated exactly the same, i.e. everyone got a benefits handout of the same amount, then there could be no possible complaints (human rights or otherwise) as everyone would be being treated equally.

Flexibility or caveats would by their very nature be about treating some people differently to others, and so would give rise to potential discrimination claims.

No it isn't. Not all people are the same. Not all circumstances are the same. Different people have different needs.

LydiaJ wrote: »

PS lemonjelly - do you happen to know when that widows/widowers legal battle happened? It seems quite amazing to me that any government would bother fighting it - it's so obvious that (a) it's grossly unfair to give it to women but not men and (b) they would lose, so fighting it would be a waste of money. Why didn't they just agree to change the rules as soon as it was pointed out to them? Or was it a long time ago when attitudes were different? It's not as though there are huge numbers of widowers bringing up minor children - it must be a drop in the ocean of the benefits bill. I do know it's called "widowed parent's allowance" now, although the JobCentrePlus computer can't cope with that, so sometimes (but not always) when they send letters about it, they refer to it as a state pension, which confused me no end the first time I got one of their letters. :rotfl:

It was in the last decade. Widows benefits became what are now called "bereavement benefits" & in the legislation parent replaced widow etc. A quick check shows that the change occurred in April 2001.
I remember dealing with a fella who was under 35 with 2 young children who had lost his wife suddenly. Jobcentre staff absolutely told him (& also me) that they wouldn't pay him widows parents allowance as he was a widower, not a widow.
Cases got taken to the ECHR, arguing discrimination. Can you believe the government disputed it all the way to the day before the judgement, & then settled & announced the legislation change.:mad:

BigAunty

Though I'd hate to compare Greek tax evasion to UK tax evasion, as they are hopefully chalk and cheese in terms of degree...

One of the cultural reasons that means tax evasion is so rampant in Greece is that they distrust the corrupt political system so much, and the public don't feel that they get anything back in terms of services for their contributions. They feel their taxes just go into a big black hole of kick-backs and waste.

So if the UK govt wants to tell the public that they can work and pay taxes for 45 years and not get a state pension at the end of it, they can expect the same self-interested response?

LydiaJ

lemonjelly wrote: »

It was in the last decade. Widows benefits became what are now called "bereavement benefits" & in the legislation parent replaced widow etc. A quick check shows that the change occurred in April 2001.
I remember dealing with a fella who was under 35 with 2 young children who had lost his wife suddenly. Jobcentre staff absolutely told him (& also me) that they wouldn't pay him widows parents allowance as he was a widower, not a widow.
Cases got taken to the ECHR, arguing discrimination. Can you believe the government disputed it all the way to the day before the judgement, & then settled & announced the legislation change.:mad:

2001! :eek:

I thought I was reasonably [STRIKE]cynical[/STRIKE]realistic about politicians, but that shocks me. WPA makes a significant difference to me, and I'm grateful for it, so the idea that a man in my situation would be any less deserving of it than I am is deeply offensive to me. :mad: