Benefits Claimant Calls into Radio 5
bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16681535Posted Jan 23, 2012, 11:32 PM UTC
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Just because there are greater wrongs, it doesn't make benefit fraud right.
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Because that is my argument isn't it?:
Who are the real parasites?
Yes, that does appear to be your argument. The royal family receiving money from the government has nothing to do with the benefit cap, neither does Tony Blair not paying full tax.
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This depressed the hell out of me and should be required listening to all those that think that this country gives a free ride to anyone who simply decides they don't want to work.
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On the flip-side.
I have a friend who has worked maybe 3 jobs since leaving school, none longer than 3 months. He is now 24 and literally hasn't worked since 19.
He has his own 1 bedroom house, nice enough by any standards, with all rent and bills paid for. Ok so he doesn't live a extravagant lifestyle with money coming out of his ears but he is confertable and happy that's for sure.
He always has food in the cupboard. Internet and Xbox live, plus virgin tv, which is great because he generally spends every day in the house. He basically has it down to a system now where any time he is required to go to the job centre for assessment he "forgets" his papers or is late etc. He still comes to the pub a few times a month and is generally content.
The job centre have told him he needs to do something with himself so now he has signed onto their enterprise scheme where they will help you set up you're own business and give you initial funding. I was speaking to him about it the other day and he was telling me it was all going well and he only had a couple of meetings left. His business idea is actually terrible and won't make any money but after asking him more about it he said he wasn't that bothered because if it failed he can just sign on the dole again....
Oh he also has 2 kids who he pays nothing for. The one he isn't allowed to see but did decided to try and get access to her, all for free of corse. When told his funding for this was being cut he said "ah well, I guess I won't be seeing her then"
He isn't claiming disability benefits so I cannot comment on that side but people DO scam benefits and are more than happy living like that.
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He basically has it down to a system now where any time he is required to go to the job centre for assessment he "forgets" his papers or is late etc
I don't know how he's managing that, because they're very suspicious of that sort of evasive behaviour. If you do it more than a couple of times they'll treat you with hostility, put you on warning and then kick you off. You aren't even allowed to miss an appointment due to illness more than twice.
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I'd like to she'd more light on it but I don't know how he's got away with it for so long. On the occasions where I've asked about it he's said that he told them he forgot his book and the second he turned up too late so the had to re-schedule.
I don't know what his secret is but he's been living this way for as long as I care to remember. Has had his house for about 2/3 years now. Was in a hostel before that, prison before that and unofficially (read: illegally) living in his exs council flat before that.
He even has made a bunch of friends over Xbox live who are all living pretty much identical lifestyles and all seem to be enjoying it. Needless to say I spend most of the time I see him telling him to get a bloody job.
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Odds are he's exaggerating to show off somewhat. At a minimum, every fortnight he would have had to do six jobhunting activites (potentially forged) and two applications given by the jobcentre (which they check that you've applied for).
What I find crazy about this whole benefits situation is this:
He always has food in the cupboard. Internet and Xbox live, plus virgin tv, which is great because he generally spends every day in the house.
Employed people talk enviously about the laziness of this lifestyle, and people who have it seem like they like it, but in reality they're living a subsistence existence, they're usually depressed, and they're missing out on a huge chunk of their life because of it. Your mate might think he's onto a winner because he has food and TV etc, but he's hurting himself more than anyone else. It's not a happy existence in the long run.
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I guess it depends on the quality of the staff at the actual job centre you need to go to? I can well imagine people having vastly different experiences just because one job centre has competent staff who take their job seriously, and another one where the staff just do it to earn a salary and really aren't bothered enough to chase people up for missing meetings etc.
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Having moved recently, I've been to three different jobcentres and although the style and attitude of the staff does indeed vary a lot, the rules and requirements are universal. If you don't prove that you're looking for work, they're very proactive about cutting people off. You usually see different staff each time, so you can't rely on finding a lazy/sympathetic adviser, and if you're late, missing paperwork, etc, it all goes on the system and you have a limited number of chances before you're out.
Most likely, his mate is overstating it a bit for bragging rights. Which is dumb, because it just creates a bad image for people on benefits and will only end up hurting him when his friends go to vote.
Generally the staff at the jobcentre spend most of their day seeing people with real problems - disabilities, redundancies, etc - so they don't have a lot of sympathy for sob stories.
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Must differ on the area you're in. A friends brother did that time and time again. I think sometimes they just don't care.
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he has signed onto their enterprise scheme where they will help you set up you're own business and give you initial funding.
I looked into that myself, it's a terrible scheme. Sure they give you help to go set up a business, but it's limited to a few months and importantly, you have to go self-employed. As everyone knows, going self employed makes it nearly impossible to claim unemployment benefits again. So, when you run out of money, the shit really hits the fan.
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Yea the scheme looks like a pile of turd. From what I can gather the "funding" they give you is nowhere near enough to do anything useful with and you are left with the option of making an e-business which isn't really viable as any business you can think of there are already 10 more established sites out there.
My mate for example wants to set up a adult lingerie and sex toy website, already a fail. I tried explaining to him that the target demographic, being women, are generally very fussy about what goes in/on them and would rather splash the cash at Ann Summers/La Senza than buy shoddy cheap chinese dildos off a poorly made website ( he has NO knowledge of web development and is using google sites v_v).
He told me that to get accepted you needed to pitch the idea and submit a business plan but either this is a formality and they actually accept anyone, or he didn't have to do it in the end, because I really can't see how his idea would have been accepted at all.
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There are flips sides to everything.
I know someone who hasn't stayed in a job for years and never held one for more than six months. They are diabetic, and diagnosed with depression. They get housing and disability allowance.
However, they are regularly out and about, going to pubs and bars, getting expensive tattoos, has all the mod cons, and seem to have more disposable income than I do.
I don't resent them for it, I resent the system that allows them to get away with it and not help them back into work.
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As far as i'm concerned, this has nothing to do with putting a cap on benefits. This is an issue of the distribution of benefits, and benefit fraud.
There was a woman on Radio 2 today saying how she had a comfortable life in London, didn't work, and it would be unfair if this was taken away from her.
I am still fairly convinced that nobody requires a yearly benefit allowance of £26,000, considering that even before tax that's higher than the average wage.
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This benefits cap idea is quite clever, and I am actually impressed with the Tories for it. It is a beautiful bit of well poisoning.
The actual numbers that get £26,000pa on benefits is fairly small - about 67,000 families and the savings from the cap are modest at about £290 million, which compares quite well to the £53 billion paid in benefits to to the richest half of the population (ONS data: source here). So the rich are doing better out of benefits than the poor.
People don't see that bit though. What they see is 'people on benefits get more than average income' assume it applies to most claimants and then they get angry. Put like that it would seem unfair, but by then people are too cross to see the massive distortion. The real aim is not to save the £290 million, though that would be nice. It is to frame the debate into terms of 'why do those feckless fucks get more than me?!' which nicely oils the wheels of their bigger and far less justified benefits cuts elsewhere.
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The fact that there are 67,000 families earning more than the average way for doing no work is appauling, regardless of how much money would be saved if they were removed.
The part i am in favour of is the cap, not any other part of the legislation being pushed through with it. What annoys me is that there is little to no justification for the amount paid out to some people. Some claim that to live in the richer parts of the country, you need this much money to live. I've had to move to a poorer area because i no longer earn enough, why shouldn't other people be relocated?
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Did you see the bit about people richer than you getting £53 billion in benefits. Didn't that raise an eyebrow? That is people with a lot of income being given more. Did you notice that the only benefit cut that Cameron is in favour of reversing is the one that would have taken Child Benefit away from rich people. Boy, the Tories have done a good job framing this debate. Classic divide and rule, they have us fighting amongst ourselves for the scraps.
Yes, there is a debate to be had about what would be a reasonable upper limit for benefits. But having it in terms of resentment and jealousy is just playing their game and losing. To be clear, to get £26,000 you have to have several children and probably also being claiming some form of disability benefit. So benefits paid above the basic adult minimum are either to feed and clothe children or are for the extra costs of being a disabled person. Which of those would you take away? The kids won't magically go away and neither will the disability. Money paid as Housing Benefit goes to the landlord and is not cash sloshing around in the pockets of claimants to spend.
When we get on to the costs of renting we are getting somewhere that is fruitful for debate. There are ways that this can be tackled, one of which is to limit Housing Benefit. The downside of this is social cleansing and a rise in homelessness. Other ways would be to tackle how much landlords can charge through legislation. The downside to this is that people have business plans and mortgages based on being able to charge high rents. So neither solution is perfect, but why automatically grab for the one that the government dangle under your nose? We need to sort this out, but not like this.
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To be clear, to get £26,000 you have to have several children
There is an incentive in this country to have more children than you can afford to look after. That is a problem.
The kids won't magically go away
True, but until you remove the incentive for people to have too many children, they aren't going to stop appearing either. I don't think it's a good idea to look at disability and child benefits as something totally necessary and will never go away as there is still a lot that can be done.
Disability benefits too: I know a lot of people get really mad when you talk about this, and what i'm about to say is probably very controversial, but i think a lot of people who claim disability benefits have the capacity to do certain jobs. I know a guy who claims disability benefits who would be perfectly able to work in 80% of jobs. He doesn't have the physical ability to do large amounts of manual labour but is quite capable of shop-work or working on the phone. A wheelchair doesn't make you completely incapable of getting any job (once again i appreciate some disability does.)
The problem should be tackled from the root, and the rest will follow.
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That's my mindset for the most part.
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I would think that living the life for a year, or any fixed period wouldn't do the experience justice as part of it, espescially right now, is the lack of hope that it'll end
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Pulp got it exactly right, and this cover and video caught that. You may not like the song, cover, or well known blogger's interpretation, but it's bang on the money for me.
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Why did I not think of that song when I wrote that comment. Its amazing how relevant that song has remained. (Also, love the Shat)
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The people that get an easy ride are the ones that bang out kids, get a house or flat paid for, have no intention of working, sit at home all day, generally abuse drink and drugs and are on Jeremy Kyle every week.
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Summed up beautifully.
I vented on here a lot when I was on Jobseekers. You really don't think straight being lower, as he says, than a murderer.
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But that's exactly it. Where are these people who are 'taking advantage of it and milking it for all its worth' and 'buying iPhones every other week'? Where? There are isolated cases that make the news, and create a myth of 'all these scroungers'. That's exactly the point of what the guy is saying.
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Hmm. I understand your pain though I'd be cautious of anecdotal evidence. My EMA (before abolished) went on travel costs. I live on benefits myself (Income Support and Housing Benefit) and am similarly poverty-stricken to the man in the clip. My point is that personal experience isn't a reliable indicator of any macro-scale issue. Also bear in mind that you likely don't quite know the full story behind the people whose excess you believe to be supported by benefits.
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In London travel is free for 16-18 in education so EMA was more of a personal allowance
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won't be able to go to university
You should still be able to go to uni. I had no money and just applied for all the loans and grants I could get. You need to have a good budget and plan carefully, but it's possible.
I know uni is like 3-4 times more expensive than when I went, but if you want to go, it should be possible - just be sensible when you pick your degree, and pick something employers will be happy to see on your CV.
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9 year olds who are on benefits? And what benefits system is this that replaces your possessions if you break or lose them? I want to sign up to that.
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Methinks some these people must have additional income streams other than benefits. I don't know what that might be in the 'heroin capital of Europe' though.
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Have a friend who works in a relatively deprived town for a firm which takes on lots of legal aid work.
They meet a lot of them, they certainly do exist.
Yes this is anecdotal evidence but it's not an isolated problem. Nor is people who don't know how to work the system or who just get unlucky getting screwed an isolated problem.
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I've been disabled since 2004 and since then I've received the equivalent of ~£95 per week, I need to live close to family and the only way of doing so was to rent a £400 house, housing benefit would only pay £300 so I'd always had to put £100 a month towards it myself, I managed to convince the landlord to lower it to £350 in the end. On top of that I had the gas, electric and water to pay, after I paid for food I had nothing left.
I originally applied for DLA when I first fell ill and the doctor who came out to assess me screwed me over, they even canceled my income support, I was left for 6 months with nothing until the appeal went to court and I won. That period of my life was horrible.
The notion people are scamming the benefits system is ridiculous, it's impossible to get DLA, the doctors who assess you lie, I've had 4 separate assessments since I fell ill and 3 of those doctors lied, the last one didn't because she came out after I made a complaint (which was upheld) against the doctor who saw me before her, the first doctor made comments such as "he chooses to live a disabled life style" saying I'm the fault of my own disability (I suffer from a neurological disorder)
I can live relatively comfortably now with the extra I get from DLA but I went 6 years without getting anything due to fear of what happened in 2004 happening again, 6 years disabled with no money, no new clothes, having to rely on family for things like sofas. At one point my 94 year old granddad gave me £30 so I could get a couple pair of jeans.
It's complete and utter nonsense that loads of people are scamming the benefits system, it's impossible to get anything even if you are genuinely ill.
I can completely sympathise with you.
I had my first heart attack when I was 30, then two more by the time I was 34. I can walk about 15yds before I have to rest. Turned down for DLA, lost two appeals and it took a year to get to a tribunal - the tribunal panel were fantastic, took them all of 5 minutes to decide in my favour and said it should never have got to that stage in the 1st place.
ATOS Dr said he performed a physical on me (lie), said I had no 'obeservable mobility problems' - I use two walking sticks and could be overtaken by an arthritic tortoise. I had supplied the names of my cardio surgeon and vascular surgeon but the DHSS hadn't even bothered to wait for a reply from either of them.
My DLA is up for renewal this september and the rules are changing and frankly, I am fucking shitting myself. If I lose my DLA then I lose my car - if I have no car then I am housebound again, unable to even walk to the nearest shop or bus stop and will have to rely on my 70yr old father (who has heart problems himself) to come take me shopping, or wait for weekends when my gf comes over.
While there are indeed some people who are 'scamming' the system - I've known of a few myself, but genuine cases like us get fucked over in the process when the govt go on their crusade against benefit cheats.
Have a witness with you when you receive a visit from the ATOS doctor and secretly record the assessment. That way you can present evidence that the ATOS doctor is lying and be able to have a transcript of the interview. DO NOT tell the atos doctor you're recording the assessment he/she will walk out of they know, you don't need his permission as it will be in your house. Remember to ask for the assessment report and meticulously work through it, pointing out every single discrepancy.
The CAB will help you out for free too and deal with most of the paperwork.
Good luck.
Am I the only one who thinks maybe there's more chance of this guy scamming the system than having all these doctors LIE to make his life a misery?
This is the internet after all, and it's hard not to be sceptical.
I have been dealing with benefits appeals since 1992 and unfortunately Sugar_Free_orangeade's story rings true and if they have won at appeal then the medical evidence will have been thoroughly tested and found in their favour. However I suspect that at least some of what they experienced as lies were possibly omissions, failure to ask the right questions and the assumption that the claimant was a scrounger. The end result was the same, Sugar_Free_orangeade will have seen several reports that bore no resemblance to their actual difficulties, are effectively lies and will have caused substantial harm.
Benefits Agency Medical Services and ATOS medical reports are notoriously inaccurate and incomplete. Having seen hundreds of sets of appeal papers where I can cross reference these reports with appellants’ medical records and evidence from their consultants, and spent hours talking to appellants and family members that observed the medical examinations I have come across solid evidence of direct lying by doctors working for the DWP. However direct and overt lies, whilst they happen, are not as common as the omissions, misrepresentation, hurriedness, rudeness, lack of care and prejudice that are the stock in trade of a high proportion of these doctors. Many are ignorant of anything to do with mental health problems and frequently misdiagnose based on extremely fragmentary information and an apparent assumption that depression equals malingering. It is not all the doctors, a pattern is apparent and claimants always make unprompted and similar complaints about the same set of doctors and not about others. 12 of them are in fact under investigation by the GMC for not putting the care of their patients first.
If you find hard to accept that doctors would behave like this try thinking of these doctors as being like traffic wardens. What sort of person applies for the job of traffic warden? Some will be decent people but a higher than normal number will be those with a natural inclination to cuntishness. It is the same with these doctors. Having done their medical training, instead of being paid to care for patients they have opted to be paid to judge people. Those that do home visits are local GPs paid per visit in time that other GPs would spend in surgery with their NHS patients. They are not paid by how long it takes to do the job, so they tend to hurry. I have caught them lying on forms about the times that they were at a claimant’s house a number of times. Those that work in-house are directly employed by ATOS so they are under continual quota pressure to refuse benefit and are directed by a computer system that prevents them from asking questions about problems if the claimant didn’t mention that problem right at the start of the interview.
So yes. Lying cunts, some of them, but the medical assessment system is broken, and it is this same system that is being extended in the current Welfare Reform Bill instead of reformed.
The doctor actually did lie, it wasn't failure to ask the right questions or omissions, it was out right lies. This is why my complaint against this doctor was upheld, I had proof he was lying.
Like I said. Cunts.
And well done for nailing them with a complaint :) Far too many people are too scared to do this in case it somehow goes against their claim. The more complaints the better.
It's sad that with no information to support your claim your first reaction is to assume someone with a debilitating neurological disorder who's been ill for the 6 years with nothing is 'scamming the system'.
Did you miss that bit?
Why is it sad ?
"neurological disorder" can mean so much from suffering with headaches to stroke victims.
Trusting everyone who claims they have a "debilitating neurological disorder" gets us into trouble, which is why we have assessments. Now there was a reply below mine with lots more information from someone with first hand experience who shoved in a few links for good measure. Explaining how you may have been a "victim".
I still feel in my gut that you're full of shit, can't explain why but with what I've read today I'm willing to say my gut feeling isn't always going to be right.
No one leaves a promising engineering career to live alone on less than £95 a week for 6 years because they've got a bloody head ache. I'm housebound most days.
There are objective markers that show people level of function, these markers show how the disability affects the person with the disease. I have these markers so it was easy to prove the doctor lied.
The doctor failed to recognise NICE guidelines and instead said the reason I was disabled was because I live a disabled lifestyle, these doctors are not allowed to make a diagnosis, I already have that, when I presented them with proof to the contrary they slapped the doctors hand for it.
I didn't think the doctors would lie either but they're cruel and vicious, they have quotas to stick by and they'll do anything they can to stay within them.
I don't know why you're suspicious, do you think disabled people don't go on reddit or something? Or can't articulate their thoughts in a correct manor?
Knew someone who managed to fake it enough to be granted a flat, living allowance and the like. Pissed me off to hell seeing her out and about around town.
Around town doing what?
Drinking etc on a night out.
Unfortunately people like you are paying the price of the previous government's attempts to improve the unemployment figures and the current government's heavy handed attempts to remedy that.
My anecdote: A few years ago I was talking to a chap I know from my local skatepark. He was unemployed until one day he happened to mentioned to someone at the job centre (or whatever they're called these days) that he couldn't do jobs involving heavy lifting because he didn't have full mobility in his shoulder. This was from a BMX accident a few weeks before, serious but not permanent. Within a week or two he had been taken off unemployment benefit and switched to disability allowance. I think he actually ended up with more money as a result. So this "disabled person" who was "unable to work" (by their definition, not his) spent his days riding BMX instead. He didn't set out to cheat the system, but when he was offered more money for being "disabled" instead of "unemployed" he took it. It made no difference to him what label they put on him. But had we read about him in the paper, claiming his disability benefit while being an active sportsman, we would have had no doubt that he was benefit cheat. He also mentioned that he wasn't the only one in his group of friends who was officially "disabled" instead of being "unemployed" so it wasn't an isolated incident.
So while I don't dispute the fact that you're not getting the support you need, it's wrong to say that the system isn't being abused. However, I suspect that most of the abuse is (or was) political in nature and implemented with the short-term goal of improving the unemployment figures. Now the other lot are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Can I just fact-check a few things with you as some parts of this confuse me, at least under the benefits system of the last decade or two. I am also going to go on a bit because I feel obliged to try and counteract a lot of the propaganda flying about at the moment that people are starting to believe. So bear with me and strap in.
Whatever happened to your friend this was not as a result of national policy under the last Labour or indeed the previous Tory government. I have been in the trade since 1992 so have seen a few things come and go, then come back again. Blaming Labour for this one is a myth being actively pushed by the current Tory government as a fake justification for their cuts. Unofficial local policies might have varied so I am not saying it did not happen to your friend, but the right people should be blamed. The last time a government actively pushed people off dole onto sickness was under Thatcher. Peter Lilley (a Tory, Major government) reversed this policy back in 1995 with the introduction of Incapacity Benefit to get people off sick and back on the dole (sorry, into gainful employment). Labour actually made the regime a lot tougher with Employment & Support Allowance. The problem with both of these benefits was that they assumed that most people off sick were wagging it and they ran into a hard wall of genuine claimants that they were not expecting. I have spent a large part of the last two decades dealing with the damage to disabled people caused by this push, which has come from both parties.
Was his 'disability allowance' called Disability Living Allowance or Incapacity Benefit/Employment & Support Allowance? It matters because only DLA is a label for disability. It is also only for long-term disability, not short to medium term injuries, and is an 'in-work' benefit so he would not have automatically come off 'unemployment benefit' (Jobseekers?) and could in fact have claimed it if he had a job. If this happened after 1995 it sounds like he actually got either Incapacity Benefit, or more recently, Employment & Support Allowance. These are 'sickness' benefits designed for incapacity for work, not 'disability' benefits, and would automatically have taken him off Jobseekers as you say. There has been a lot of deliberate muddying of the waters on the distinction by the government, allowing the long-term disabled to be tarred with the same brush as feckless scroungers pulling a sickie in the run up to the current round of cuts.
The problem is that he would have needed a GP sick note to claim and would eventually have had to attend a DWP medical. It is very plausible that his GP would have signed him off for a few weeks to be helpful and to allow recuperation time, but he would never have scored the needed 15 points on the DWP medical with just a shoulder injury so he could not have claimed long-term without some other problem. How long was he actually on 'disability allowance' for? My bet is that it was a local coincidence of helpful advisers at the Job Centre and GPs thinking that they were being helpful and that he was signed off for a few months at most. Does this seem to match what happened? Fuck knows but I never met that many helpful advisers myself in our local Job Centres. Most of the front desk staff would never have offered any useful advice and most of the back room staff seemed very keen to get people off sickness benefits as fast as they could possibly do it.
tl:dr Data is not the plural of anecdote and we are operating in a propaganda-rich environment so be careful of extrapolating, but it is plausible that your friend and his friend were signed off sick for a few weeks or months when perhaps they should not have been. This did not make them officially 'disabled'.
Hmm, not sure. It was a few years ago and based on a single informal conversation. It could well have been Incapacity Benefit that he was claiming. But I do recall him describing himself as "officially disabled" and we laughed at how ridiculous it was. Whether or not he was embellishing the story, misunderstood the true situation, or whatever else, I cannot say.
I certainly don't dispute any of the points you raised. My evidence is anecdotal at best and I didn't mean to present it as anything else. I'm certain your knowledge and experience of these matters is far greater than my own and I'm happy to defer to you on this.
Sorry, I didn't mean to come at you like a ton of bricks :( It is the deliberate misrepresentation by our superiors who should know better that really gets my goat