MSE News: Prime Minister David Cameron plans welfare crackdown

Lifes_Grand_Plan

patchwork_cat wrote: »

I think that this is terrible. WHat about those people whose parents are dead or who have been thrown out etc. They will become homeless and will turn to charities who will be stretched beyond belief, which they are increasingly lately.

I was a Housing Benefit officer, so whilst I have become more cynical than when I started I have more information that the general public.

(Not all directed purely at you patchwork cat)

As usual, threads like theses on difficult subjects will be full of people slagging off the ideas with "what about......"

Silvercar quite rightly stated that there will and should be exceptions i.e. where parents are deceased etc....

Anyone commenting on the ideas shouldn't do so without having read the finer detail..... That's the problem, people will form an opinion without realising that the changes won't affect them, or will actually improve their situation possibly.

Cameron's comment rings far too true...

"If you are a single parent living outside London, if you have four children and you're renting a house on housing benefit, then you can claim almost £25,000 a year,"

My brother and his wife have four kids and earn more per year than my wife earned working part time.... :eek: My wife and I have just had a baby and will qualify for no benefits (which is fine, I don't expect people to pay for my child) but if my wife returns to work, not only will my brother and his wife earn more in benefits than she earns working full time, but we will also lose half my wifes wages in childcare too AND miss out on spending quality time with our child...

Marisco

The governments' mantra is "make work pay". OK then, how about creating jobs first and then making it possible to actually live on your wages i.e raise the NMW, so people don't have to claim HB,WTC,CT,CTC and any other acronym you can think of?? A lot of the benefits that people slag off are actually claimed by people in work! Raising the level of pay would then make work pay, instead of just subsidising employers who are happy to pay low wages to get more profits!!

bargainbetty

Sixer wrote: »

And why is the target always the under 25s? Pensioner benefits make up a third of the welfare bill. Why should taxpayer money go on a £200 winter fuel payment to working 60-year-olds, even if they are higher rate taxpayers?

Because the pensioners may have been making payments for 40 years, and therefore might be expected to get something back....? Many pensioners are working because they have to. 60 year olds will not qualify for state pensions - 65 and up. I'll probably be 70 before I can retire.

I disagree with the policy too and agree with the argument that rents should be controlled. However, I do think that the loopholes exploited by the tenants should be tightened up. Why should a young person get a paid private flat, what's wrong with a room in a shared house? Children should be expected to share bedrooms unless they are teenagers of different genders. (Parents should not automatically assume that the largest bedroom is theirs - they can take a smaller room and split the larger room with dividers etc). There are ways of reducing the bill without taking the rooves from over people's heads.

We're in it together, remember that Dave? Seems that this is a manifesto for the 2015 election, as the Lib Dems have already said they will reject any attempt to do this during the coalition.

SaRaH_3

we need a welfare and tax dodgers crackdown!!

Sixer

bargainbetty wrote: »

Because the pensioners may have been making payments for 40 years, and therefore might be expected to get something back....? Many pensioners are working because they have to. 60 year olds will not qualify for state pensions - 65 and up. I'll probably be 70 before I can retire.

They'll get a PENSION back! NICs will cease, whatever their income. They will have enjoyed what everyone enjoys in terms of a civilised country: a police service, a judicial service, a health service, an education, armed forces to protect them, roads, rubbish collections, etc ad infinitum.

It's a nonsense to look at welfare in terms of personal "accounts".

MissMoneypenny

It's an interesting area he has chosen to give his speech; Dartford; a marginal seat that is suffering badly at the hands of Labour.

I welcome these changes; for too long we have been seen as mugs for working. However, I think we need to go much further and use other western countries welfare systems as a model i.e

• a 2 tier benefit amount system. A low basic rate for those that have never worked full time and a higher rate for those that have (limited in time by the years they have worked full time).
• one fixed low amount for housing benefit/LHA, so that people can't choose to live in expensive areas as the workers expense.
• the parents to pay for and house their pregnant teenagers/early twentys children instead of the welfare state.

Marisco

bargainbetty wrote: »

Because the pensioners may have been making payments for 40 years, and therefore might be expected to get something back....? Many pensioners are working because they have to. 60 year olds will not qualify for state pensions - 65 and up. I'll probably be 70 before I can retire.

So what? Do you think Alan Sugar, Richard Branson, Bruce Forsyth etc, should get it because they have "paid in"? I think the WFA is definitely a benefit that should be means tested!!

Marisco

business_man wrote: »

Tax dodgers are less harmful than the welfare cheats. Giving less is always better than taking more out?

Course they are! Nowt wrong with Phillip Green who salts away hundreds of millions in his wife's name then!

MissMoneypenny

Sixer wrote: »

Why should I support taxpayer money going to line the pockets of BTL landlords - who are already being supported by low interest fiscal policy - any less than I should support welfare reform? We've already had one round of quite considerable cuts to housing benefits. It's the turn of the landlords now.

The housing benefit cuts do affect the landlords; many of whom raised their rents to the LHA levels that Labour brought in.

Labour pushed the rents up and this lot are aiming to bring them down.

brit1234

Wywth wrote: »

So you only see the abuse by the under 25's?

No I see widespread abuse all over the housing benefit system. What makes me sick is the huge amount of young criminals who get housed, a huge range of other benefits and spend all day on the streets committing crime and selling drugs.

Would it surprise you if I said the people responsible for the majority of crime are milking the benefit system. Also many of this criminals are in multi generation criminal families who milk the system.

I have no issue on helping those hard working who fall on hard times but we must stop this abuse from a growing criminal underclass.