At last, some sense on IB

[woolybananasbrother]

Tony, we can all quote individual cases and I am sure yours is tough to say the least. However my experience of IB dished out to teachers and lecturers, for example, on the grounds of stress and breakdown, is that they were by and large (excepting a very few cases) a bunch of skiving gits who were /are quite capable of doing a decent job of earning a living in a different field. And that they should not be subsidised in their life of ease and nonsense by the taxpayer.[:@]

[mint]

I see ascerbity runs in the family then.

[woolybananasbrother]

Yes, I've had IB for it for years.

[mint]

So, you really are a "deserving" case then

[woolybananasbrother]

Inherited my dear, inherited the IB[6]

[Ron Avery]

Is intelligence measured by not liking or ignoring the truth? If you want intelligent debate Mrs Cat first get your facts straight.     

"If you have been working full time (16 or more hours per week) for more than 8 weeks in the 21 weeks before you claim claim incapacity benefit, this test applies for the first 28 weeks of your claim. You normally pass this test by getting a medical certificate from your doctor. This certificate proves that you are incapable of doing your previous work because you are sick or disabled."

You only have to be seen by a DWP interviwer from now on.  Before you got IB on the say of your own GP who examined you to see if you were unfit to work in the first place, or has the government advisor and Disability Association got it wrong?

Yes, there is a follow up test which measures your persoanl capabilities but you do not have to take that if your condition is such that GP says it isn't necessary.

In the past in many areas as Gluestick mentioned  IB was seen as an alternative to the dole and warm hearted GPs liberally spent the tax payer's money giving people IB and that culture has remained in many areas.

 Existing claimants IB at the moment are not to be interviewed with a view to getting a job by the DWP  but they can have a volunatey interview if they wish to be helped find a job, but if you were winging it, living in France unstressing by counting the £90s going into the old bank each week, paying for the new car, why would you want to?

[Thibault]

Some of the responses on this thread demonstrate once again that there are some subjects on which it is almost impossible to have an objective debate.  This, perhaps, is why governments of various colours over the years have shied away in the end from tackling the problem. 

Thus, it seems, there are no solutions because the issues become mired in subjective responses.  A similar type of issue is immigration.

[ali-cat]

Maybe you should check your facts Mr Avery.  Having kept every letter, form & leaflet I have ever received regarding ICB I think you may be quoting from "The Rules of Ron" literature.

Of course it's your own doctor who signs you off work at the start - but once your SSP stops & you start to claim ICB your own doctor stops issuing sick notes.

"You do not have to send any more medical certificates from you doctor" - form IB8466/0513, once ICB is awarded.

"If we cannot decide if you are incapable of work, we will arrange a medical examination for you.  This will give us more information about your health problems so that we can decide your claim" - form IB-N-51A

It is very important that you go for the examination.  If for any reason you cannot go you must immediately tell the office that arranged the examination.  They will make another appointment for you" - form IPC SU 485

To recieve incapacity Benefit we work out the number of points using the following information: medical advice from your doctor, the questionnaire you completed & the report from the medical examiner who examined you. - form IB8466/0513

I have at least a dozen more forms I could look through but I honestly don't think it's necessary.  You have to attend the medicals to get the benefit.  Interviews to return to work are nothing to do with the actual awarding of the benefit - it's a totally different interview.

As for you comment about sitting watching your £90s going into the bank account & buying a new car - if that's the case what are people living on if that's all the money they receive?  Are you also aware that ICB is means tested?  If you are receiving an occupational pension your ICB is dramatically cut - never mind the massive drop in income, that you were used to. 

Sorry Ron - but the real claimants of ICB don't have the "Life of Reilly" you think they do - most find it very hard adjusting to not working & your ignorant comments are nothing short of offensive.

[woolybananasbrother]

Noone has a problem with the genuine claimant ali-cat, but the benefit has been abused to the extent that it is no longer reliable and, let's face it, is badly in need of reform.

[Boiling a frog]

Ali you may be genuine but obviously thousands are not.

http://www.stopbenefitfraudni.gov.uk/cost.ht

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3294491.ece

As for medical checks etc

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/5087058.stm

[Gluestick]

As I said before and as the interesting articles B a F linked to indicate, Government have totally lost control of ALL benefits: they have simply retreated to raising taxes, continuously to meet the esclating benefit cost, rather than attempting reform of the core benefit structure.

Perhaps worse, the insanity of the UK tax and NIC (National Insurance Contributions) system has for years meant that if one lives on benefits only and achieves, thereby an income of £x, then no tax or NIC was payable: if one however worked and acheived precisely the same income, then tax and NIC were taken, thus making those who actually worked, worse off than those who lived on benefits!

By the time that travel to and from work, clothes for work, lunches etc were taken into account, then workers were far worse off than benefit claimaints in many case.

This has been slightly ameliorated in the past few years, with such things as Working Tax Credits and a slight restructuring of NIC, however, there is still far too little incentive to work when the level of Minimum Wage is taken into account.

Whilst those of us who need to work for the self-satisfaction and personal pride would in all probability accept that we were worse off, there are hundreds of thousands who didn't!

And this led to a sort of Benefit-Dependant society, particularly in places like Liverpool.

In the mid 60s I worked for Ford Europe: at this time Ford opened their manufacturing plant at Halewood. The idea was that Halewood, Liverpool was an area of high unemployment: ergo there would be lots of job applicants and no labour problems.

Nice idea!

What actually transpired was that when the plant opened, the hourly paid personnel department (as we used to call them before we became high falutin!) was besieged.

Once the locals had bought a colour TV; carpeted their house and enjoyed a Spanish costa holiday and returned with a Spanish Dolly and castanets, they simply retreated to living on benefit: as they had for far too many years. Remember "Bread"?

Again, as I said before, by government adopting a sort of laissez faire attitude to benefit, those who genuinely need this type of financial support, fail to receive adequate levels of payment. If fraud were to be cut, then benefit levels to the genuine could be raised to other EU state levels; which they ought.

Personally, I believe that society has a moral duty to support, as the good book describes them, "The halt, the lame and the sick": and to provide such support, leaving the recipients feeling dignified, not cheapened. Whether such support eminates from government or through charitable or even local (Parish) support, as it did prior to the reform of National Assistance, is another argument. However it's also one of the crux points.

As we allowed central government to gradually take over as the provider of such support, we have abrogated our obligations increasingly; to the detriment of those who need it.

Rather than be a matter of social conscience, this issue has become a matter of party politics which is morally wrong.

However, such public trumpettings are good for the politicans and political parties: one remembers Peter Lilly, the Tory minister who wasted over £1,000,000,000 on his magic Benefit Card scheme which was going to cut fraud!

Like most similar intiatives irrespective of party, it failed totally.

 

[Ron Avery]

Mrs Cat I don't understand or care much why you are arguing or being offended by peope who say that IB is being fraudulently obtained, we know it is and your howls of protest that its not,  fly in the face of all the evidence, so lets leave it there shall we.

 

[Deby]

Of course wooly but to find the bad eggs a few good ones have to be cracked too. There will always be the ones in genuine need and then others who just play the system to their own gain.  What an awful analagy! We are dealing with people here and peoples' lives.  Imagine if your mother, father, close friend was one of the good ones and was to be 'cracked too' for the greater good of the taxpayer. It is a very emotive subject, but we do need a safety net and we pay for it through our taxes.  My poor mother lives in constant fear of these assessments, articles in the papers and media who demonize those in receipt of IB do not help.  It seems that we love to 'pick on' this area of society because we are all hardworking individuals who probably have our own stresses and deal with them very well until one day it might just happen to us! Deby

[ali-cat]

I have never said that no one fiddles the system - everyone knows it happens.  My problem is that all claimants are lumped together as shown in the 2nd post on this thread.

When the question "I wonder how many here in France will be reviewed" was asked, it was answered with -

[quote user="Geordie girl"]

Hopefully all of them.......................[6]

[/quote]

It has also been discribed as a "scroungers charter",   paid to "people sitting around doing very little or working on the black" or some who are "a bunch of skiving gits".

Genuine recipients feel guilty enough without these added insults & pressure. 

 

[Hoddy]

Of course the system is in need of reform. No-one knows this better than the genuine, decent people who are in reciept of it.

It is worth remembering that the genuine claimants are ordinary human beings like the rest of us who are ill while comparatively young and that it may happen to you one day. In my late husband’s case he had been a hardworking contributor to society when almost out of the blue he became seriously ill. In addition to losing his ability to work he lost all his hopes and dreams for the future and found himself quite suddenly in need of help from the state to which he had contributed for many years. The state then began to treat him, who had never even had a parking ticket, like a scrounger.

“I also suspect that many of those in need of support get just as mad about abuses to the system as the rest of us!!”

“Just as mad” goes nowhere near how angry he felt with the scroungers who caused this to happen and if you are under 60 it could be you - tomorrow.

All that Ali-Cat is asking is that people exercise a little caution when making blankets statements of condemnation.

Thibault - you’re right this is a very emotive issue.

Hoddy

[Boiling a frog]

Therein lies the problem.

Until IB is sorted out so that only genuine claimants receive their benifits then everyone on IB will be tarred with the same brush.That is what people should be fighting for,and reporting the fraudsters.

[Geordie girl]

Deby & Ali-cat first let me apologise for my comments. I did not mean to upset anyone in genuine need of IB. What i meant was that the true genuine people who receive IB should not mind a more rigorous system to weed out the fraudulent claiments. We all know someone who gets this payment for the right reasons and then the others who use it as a way of building up their weekly income. I myself was in receipt of this payment after a near fatal road accident, not my fault, and it was a godsend as my only income for 2 years. When i received damages for my accident the IB money was deducted from my claim and put back into the system. I didn`t mind, i was just glad that i was able to walk again and get on with my life. So i apologise if my comments were misconstrued in any way, and admit to not being at the front of the queue when the brains were given out; [:)]

 

 

[Russethouse]

ali -cat, I bet nearly everyone here can think of at least one person who takes advantage of this system, I can think of three without any effort.

As you are genuinely in need I would have thought you would be pleased to see those draining the system, weeded out. Please stop feeling guilty, you need the benefit, you are getting it.You may get more if scroungers are booted out the system, or should we all just sit back while the taxpayer is taken advantage of ?

If you have to have a regular check its just part of the system.  Millions in people in all works of life have to be regularly assessed in one way or other. Tax inspections, VAT inspections etc, that is all it is, a check to make sure that the the taxpayers money is being collected and distributed correctly.Its hardly as if the sick and disabled are being singled out.

I'm not very keen on a taxman or VAT man sitting in my home asking me where my children go to school or where we went on holiday (in a nice conversational way to make sure you are not living above your apparent means) but that's the  the way it is. Now I have to write down everything I do and justify my earnings in our own company, because a couple abused the system. MPs families, many of who work tirelessly for the party and/or constituency will probably have to justify their earnings too. I know single mothers who have been in danger of losing benefit because they had an extra toothbrush in the bathroom ! Some people abuse the system and others pay the price.

The sick and disabled are not be singled out, and if your French doctor really thinks that anyone should just be left and never checked again, perhaps that attitude helps to explain the state of the French health service.

 

[Gluestick]

And it is this sort of idiocy that brooks urgent reform of the whole benefit system!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=5SX4A2LJE3QSLQFIQMFCFFOAVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2008/02/03/nbenefit103.xml

 

[Russethouse]

I thought it was bad enough that we pay family benefit to children who are Polish and who live in Poland, because their fathers work here, but I understand the rationale and the complications, to a degree, but this ???? British tax payer being taken for a ride again.

[Frederick]

A lot of the people I come in contact with have Social Workers ...so...one would assume that as far as the "Authorities " are concerned they are fully aware of the family circumstances  re money  They do have assistance in claiming benefits if the forms are too complicated from their Social Workers . 

..I do however here the words " I will be worse off  if I get a job " time after time ..  I think the need for re training for many of the claimants has to be the way to go...many I believe have been out of the workplace for so long the thought of " going back to work " scares them  and the "  We get by " life living on reduced income is well entrenched in them ...  A way of getting over that has to be found !

.Many do calculate the benefit of returning to the workplace after removal of their payments  and  may decide to be about £100 better off for getting up early and working in all weathers and paying out for transport to get there etc is not worth it   " £100 for a full weeks work...a mugs game " ....I see a lot of SKY on their Tv's what does that cost per month out of the benefit.?...I see the car...and the claimant in some cases able to keep up the repairs on it themselves ...and  "do a bit for the neighbours "..Many do go on holiday....a static caravan on some site in Cornwall  that has facilities for the children is popular a " Haven Holiday "  ..or a cheap flight out to Spain where a family member or friend has a holiday home "they let us have for £100 a week " I was told on one occasion .so money does come in for many "helping out a mate ..cash in hand "  we all know that ..

 Children come along.... the amount received  increases making it even more of a "Mugs game " to go to work for many.... As  I said previously  a lot of them are young ...being supported not only by the state but also by family and charities to see that they have what they need . As a welfare officer for a charity I have visited many homes when called in by Social Services  where "in the interest of the children " we have been asked to pay utiliy bills to prevent dissconnection .or to put down carpets where kids are crawliing about on boards when they are rehoused ..so over the years have come into contact with many claimants .

. Should  the fact that a person can no longer do the job he or she had due to an injury or illness be all that is required for them to claim benefit for years ?  I know of a roofer who had an injury.... under 28 years old ..he will never carry tiles up on a roof again ...He has computer skills.. ( re builds his own and other peoples from scrap yard  parts  ) .. . He could do lots of work where heavy lifting is not required ...He has been home a long time and in the years I have know him had two more children and has been given a bigger house ....He is settled at home ......and there are a lot very much like him...Left school early ..roofing was all he knew...and .the thought of being trained in IT and put in an office scares him ..but that was what was suggested he re trained in ..He spent his time at the  re -habilitation  unit playin cards on the PC's  and making bird boxes out of bits of wood .... This guy is not alone  !.....there are many like him ...     The jobs are there ....a way has to be found to "nudge " the young people off benefit and make it worthwhile to take up employment again.....If that means reduction in state aid  for these particular claimants.in order to break the habit of staying at home ..........then ......... along with guidence to regain confidence to get back into the workplace ...that might have to be the way to go  or . their kids might  grow up to seek  their place on benefit . 

 

[Gluestick]

I can empathise with much you say, Frederick.

A few years ago, I was headhi=unted by Essex TEC (Training and Enterprise Council) to become a Board member of a new multi-million pound Urban Regeneration Programme, funded by GOER (Government of the Eastern Region) as part of the SRB (Single Bid Regeneration programme).

At the first meeting I had the misfortune of being elected chair! So for the next two years I found myself working very hard for nothing on top of my professional work.

As much of the project was concerned with economic development as well as social improvement I had first to study and absorb the local demography. Very strange but within less than one mile as the crow flys, there were two social housing developments and private dwellings selling for over £1 million.

One of the social housing projects was a LA effort from the 60s: the other, less than two years old and a HA co-funded by the LA and the Guinness Trust.

(jargon: Apols. LA= Local Authority: HA= Housing Association).

I simply didn't realise how bad social deprivation could be in an otherwise pretty affluent area. Yes, bare boards and young kiddies and etc. But also as you say, Satellite dishes everywhere, cars and busy pubs!

Perhaps the strangest bit was the new project: pretty nice places with bricked frontage! Yet, core adult unemployment was 90%; yes no typo, 90%.

Unemployment had become endemic: it was an expected way of life. Parents and uncles never worked and thus kids didn't even think about work as a lifestyle choice.

Sad.

I learned one lesson herein. My GP's receptionist, also one of our church wardens, asked me to help a young lass with a young babe living in one of the awful LA flats. She was apparently suffering from severe clinical depression after her live in lover (and the father) had beaten her up and left.

There was no furniture much and it was all pretty dismal. So I sprang into life with my Rotary Club and the church, scrounged a van and friend for an afternoon and ran around miles collecting three piece suite, washing machine, TV, carpets, complete kitchen, i.e. pans plates utensils; crockery kives and forks. After an impassioned appeal at the Rotary Club, everyone was so very generous. As were our fellow parishioners and sundry friends.

Practical assistance I thought, better than words and pills.

In a few weeks chummy was welcomed back and all was forgiven and the road to degredation starts here. Again.

Food for thought.............

 

[ali-cat]

The question still remains - will any sort of shake up of the system even work?

Maybe the Government should employ a couple of thousand PI's to follow everyone around 24/7, for a few months to see who really needs to receive help, because unfortunately, those who have been forced to stop work, not by their own choice but because of ill health, would probably love to return to gainful employment (to regain their morale, self-esteem & a heck of a lot more money) - while those who choose to cheat the system & have no intention of working, will probably be able to continue to lie & manipulate their way through their reviews.

[Gluestick]

Of course it would ali.

For example, one classic ploy for IB cheats is the "Bad Back" approach.

Private sector insurance companies now use MRI to prove no soft tissue damage and no organic problems.

Government could do the same: if, of course, they had sufficient MRI set-ups and radiographers qualified to use them; and orthopaedic specialists to translate the results!

However, if Government saved the billions dished out in fraud, then not only could such medical facilities benefit such systems; genuine patients could also enjoy MRI scans in weeks, rather than the months it currently takes............................

More critically, as I have said over and over in this thread, genuinely deserving cases could receive far better levels of benefit to bring the UK up to comparitive EU standards.

And BTW: my son who is just 39 suffers from Ankolysing Spondilitus............

And is working hard building his own businesses.

 

[Rose]

I was reluctant to post on this thread again as it is such a difficult and emotive subject.  As many have shown it is impossible to make generalisations as everyone's situation is different.  My own view is that there are people how abuse the system and others who are in desperate need of help.  Some receive assistance but feel bad as a result, some don't know how to claim and others, because of the stigma attached, refuse to claim.

 

As I mentioned earlier, my Mother had MS and for the last few years of her life she was nursed at home by my Father.  She had been diagnosed when I was a toddler and was a very brave and proud woman determine not to let her illness hinder her.  As the years passed she became progressively worse and in the end my parents decided to sell their family home and buy a bungalow;  this meant they took on a small mortgage  of just £18k.  The timing of this purchase co-incided with a turning point in the MS,  Mum became very ill and she had a very long stay in hospital.  When she was finally able to go home my dad became her full time carer.  At first he tried to hold down his job but because this became impossible and he stopped working.  Mum had hated her time in hospital and my dad promised she would never have to go back.

 

He was a proud man and came from a very humble background.  He worked hard all his life and unbeknown to me or my sister he had refused to take financial assistance  on the grounds that 'he would never take handouts'.  The problems of benefit fraud was alive and well in Thatcher's Britain as it is today in Brown's and the language of scroungers was around as much then as now.  As a result, after a year of trying to do it himself the situation forced a solution as his mortgage company sent him an eviction notice.  It was at this point that Dad admitted to us that he had refused any help and was now in a desperate situation. 

 

With help from Social Services his house was saved... but only on the understanding that when Mum died, the house would go to the Mortgage company if the arrears weren't paid.  By now, with huge costs and interest these arrear we in excess of £70k.  Three weeks after my mum died, my dad was served with an eviction notice and at the age of 65 he buried his wife and lost his home.

 

The reason why benefit fraud angers me so much and the reason why the system must be changed is that there are people out there who need help and we should and must offer assistance... be that through IB or any other welfare assistance.  This should be a right and should not carry the stigma that it has carried for so many years... none of us know what is around the corner and we should never forget that it could be us in need.  If the stigma was not there, my dad may have asked for help without feeling ashamed... and he would now be spending his retirement in his own little home with his beloved garden... instead of the 1 bedroom city centre LA flat he now has (still as proud, he wouldn't let his children buy him something else... it's not the way according to him!)

 

I do hope you're having lots of good days Ali-Cat ... and I hope you never have to feel guilty again!