Any opportunity to persecute: the DWP has found a way to force suffering onto people who had to claim Universal Credit because of Covid-19.
This is another classic con from the Tory-run Department for Social Security.
Last year, the DWP suspended face-to-face identity checks for Universal Credit, in anticipation of a glut of claims as Covid-19 bit into people’s jobs.
But now the government department has reinstated identity checks – retrospectively – even demanding ID from people who have closed their claims and could not receive the notification.
As a result “significant” numbers of people have failed to provide this information within the DWP’s 14-day deadline and have been judged to have been overpaid amounts up to £13,000.
Worse, people who have uploaded proof of their identity to their online Universal Credit journal have discovered that their claim has still been terminated and demands made for repayment.
And to top it all off, the DWP has arranged with employers to have money deducted from claimants’ pay packets at a rate of up to 20 per cent of their earnings.
The Child Poverty Action Group is helping some of the people affected and said many of the cases involved people who were unaware the DWP wanted retrospective evidence because they were no longer claiming universal credit, and no longer checked their online journal for DWP messages.
CPAG said the DWP had presumed that claimants’ failure to respond to a request for evidence a year after they claimed meant they were not entitled to the award in the first place.
The charity says this behaviour by the DWP is unlawful.
The Guardian approached the DWP for comment and – in typical style – it avoided the issue.
A spokesperson asserted that it is “right and lawful” that the department seeks to recover payments to which claimants were not entitled.
It seems the DWP has nothing to say about the possibility that it is wrongly taking money from people who did not know that any attempt to contact them or prove their identity had been made – until money started disappearing from their bank accounts.
If cash went missing from my bank account, I would call it theft and take appropriate action.
But the best advice, for any of the 99,000 people who claimed Universal Credit and didn’t have a face-to-face interview, who hasn’t – to their knowledge – been contacted, is to get in touch with the DWP yourself.
Contact them by the fastest possible method to find out whether they want proof of ID. Provide some ID pre-emptively if you feel like it. And keep a personal record of the information you send, in case it is (accidentally?) deleted from the Universal Credit journal or a correspondence file.
Then, if anyone tries to deduct cash unilaterally, you’ll be able to provide evidence that you have done your part and it is the DWP that is at fault.
Turn the tables on them. That’ll be fun, won’t it?
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Clueless: when Starmer was talking up Labour’s barely-scraped-together win in the Batley and Spen by-election, who knew that this gesture was his explanation of his policies – a shrug.
Isn’t it the job of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition Party to say what it would do if it was running the UK?
Here’s Labour’s Shadow Financial Secretary to the Treasury – also known as James Murray – taking nearly two minutes to avoid giving a straight answer to a straight question: whether Keir Starmer’s newly right-wing party would reinstate the £20/week Universal Credit uplift:
He said: “I’ve been really clear.. it’s really important to be clear about this.”
Then he said three times that Labour opposed the cut, but he wouldn’t say if the party would reinstate it. That’s shifty, not clear.
His problem is that Labour is now sympathetic to the miserly billionaires who store all their cash in offshore tax havens, and this means it has no tax option to fund the £6 billion/year that would be needed to make it viable.*
For the same reason, Labour can’t commit to a higher-than-inflation public sector pay rise after Tory Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced that he was ending the current pay freeze:
Labour refusing to commit to an above-inflation pay rise for public sector workers pic.twitter.com/GIalyeu3ab
It makes Labour look like the Tories poorer little sister – unable to offer even a more imaginative alternative to big brother’s failed plans.
*We all know that the UK government can use the Bank of England to create as much money as it needs, but to be responsible it must prevent inflation via tax, right? Labour’s normal policy is to redistribute the nation’s funds (all money belongs to the government via the Bank of England, remember) by taxing the rich to pay for large-scale public services, but Keir Starmer wants to change that to a Conservative approach, and this means no cash for badly-needed social changes.
See:
“Let us be clear. The Government can create any amount of money they wish to shape a society which is good for all of us. If that money creation is inflationary, they can remove some of it from the rich through redistribution” @premnsikka in the House of Lords, last week. Spot on
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Bottomley: the Father of the House of Commons doesn’t think MPs earn enough and says they should have as much as GPs. In the interests of “levelling up”, perhaps Boris Johnson should consider making their £100k-a-year the National Living Wage?
What an inconsiderate narcissist Peter Bottomley is!
On the day Universal Credit – the main unemployment benefit but also the subsidy paid to working people to make up for the failure of businesses to pay them a living wage – was cut, plunging 4.4 million people into poverty, he complained that his £82,000 MP’s salary isn’t enough.
Tory MP Peter Bottomley asks for a pay rise because he can't manage on his £82k a year. So insulting & insensitive considering the £20 cut to UC. Who are these people?!
— SueHsy #BDS💙💜Cult member 054- (@Thehopper7) October 7, 2021
He thinks he should get around the same amount as GPs – slightly more than £100,000 a year. Average salary – which is skewed upwards by the top 10 per cent of earners – is £31,000.
Strangely, he admitted that he is not suffering financially himself:
Although he said he currently is not struggling financially, he believes the situation is ‘desperately difficult’ for his newer colleagues.
The representative of Worthing West in West Sussex added: ‘I don’t know how they manage. It’s really grim.’
That didn’t stop people like his former colleague Michael Portillo leaping to support him on TV, with what can only be seen as a false argument:
Conservative MP Sir Peter Bottomley says some MPs are finding it “really grim” to live on a salary of £82,000 and their annual salary should be higher.
Ben points out these comments may not be welcomed especially at a time where the cost of living is increasing dramatically. pic.twitter.com/UwzvKEVSlz
Portillo was saying it must be hard for older MPs to put up with receiving the same amount as their younger colleagues, when Bottomley was saying it must be harder for younger MPs.
They can’t even get their story straight!
And the comparison with GPs doesn’t work, either, because doctors are paid according to the amount of time they work and MPs aren’t:
An MP gets paid over £6000 a month even if they only work one hour MPs pay should be paid by the hour like the rest of us.
— Jen Wood – est optimum simpliciter (@unojen_wood) October 7, 2021
This Writer doubts it would work if we paid MPs by the hour; it would just give them another opportunity to submit false claims (expenses scandal, anybody?).
Bottomley deserves all the sympathy he received from satirical songwriter Mitch Benn:
For most of the rest of us, £82,000 a year is an impossible dream. That’s why Bottomley has received a huge amount of criticism for his selfish words. Here’s one of the milder rebukes.
Still, Boris Johnson likes to talk about “levelling up” and he’s currently waffling about wages to anybody who can still be bothered to listen.
So, what about it, Boris? The Father of the House thinks wages should rise.
How about accommodating him, and increasing the National Living Wage to £100k all around?
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Time of her life: Therese Coffey danced (badly) and sang (off-key) as her government removed the Universal Credit uplift that has been a lifeline for millions of people.
This was more ‘dirty dealing’ than Dirty Dancing:
5.5 million families woke up £1040-a-year worse off as their universal credit was cut.
While they were sleeping, the secretary of state for work and pensions was doing karaoke. pic.twitter.com/8OSEN5lwNc
Therese Coffey seen dancing barefoot singing "I'm having the time of my life" at a Tory conference after-party whilst the £20 per week uplift to Universal Credit officially came to an end.
Government Minister in charge of the largest welfare cut since 1921 celebrates her evening just as the welfare cuts came into effect. pic.twitter.com/Y5mi0xg8Mf
The move not only shows astonishing hypocrisy on the part of the Work and Pensions Secretary…
Member of Parliament for Suffolk Coastal Teresa Coffey. Has claimed more than £201,000 in parliamentary expenses between 2019 and 2020. "While having the time of her Life" she cut the Universal Credit uplift of £20 to millions of people.
The politicians who are taking £20 a week from poor people get £25 a night food allowance when they stay outside of their constituencies for absolutely no reason. If we really can't afford to feed poor people, why the hell are we feeding wealthy MPs?
… it was also utterly illiterate in economic terms:
The maddest thing about the reduction in Universal Credit is it doesn’t even make sense on an economic level!That £20 gets spent in shops, cafes, playcentres, online & in high streets THAT WEEK! It doesn’t get squirrelled away & saved offshore or in high interest pension account
On a national level, the cut tells us much about the Conservative government’s priorities…
So we can afford to spend £44.6 billion a year on defence but we cannot afford to spend 6 billion to keep the £20.00 per week Universal Credit uplift to prevent the most vulnerable people being pushed into poverty.
Why is it always, "We can't afford to feed poor people," and never, "We can't afford this nuclear submarine that could wipe out the entire world but will never be used"?
… but it is on a personal level that the cut will hit home – and this is what the Tories are hoping because it means those who won’t lose cash because of it won’t be bothered by it, and they probably won’t associate it with harm to the economy that will attack them too.
If anyone says politics doesn't matter, tell them about Sophie, a single mum from Coventry, and the cruelty of the Tories' cut to Universal Credit:
“I’m terrified. How am I going to feed my child this winter? How am I going to cope? I can’t stop crying."https://t.co/1tcLqrdBZF
Wondering where the money for Universal Credit has gone? The Tories have given £3.5 billion to their donors and wasted billions more on unsafe, useless PPE.
Here’s a very simple idea – stop giving taxpayers’ money to your mates and stop cutting support for low-income families.
Sir Day-Late-And-A-Dollar-Short does it again! The day the UC cut actually comes into force, he decides it's time to oppose it. If this isn't performative, I really don't know what else it is. Give me strength…. https://t.co/A3O5Q8bK2S
— CrémantCommunarde#TimeToBreakthrough 🕊️⚖️ 🟠🌤 (@0Calamity) October 6, 2021
… and in any case, Labour leader ‘Little Keir’ Starmer has apparently said he would not restore the uplift if elected into government:
Labour are refusing to pledge to restore the £20 weekly amount that the Tories have just cut from Universal Credit.
Meanwhile the Tories and their allies in the media are building a false impression that the cut is a good thing…
Phillip Schofield, Holly Willoughby, Gyles Brandreth and Vanessa Feltz all guffawing and describing Tories dancing and doing karaoke as ‘epic’ and ‘glorious’ whilst people starve and lose £20 a week in universal credit
Some Tories are saying other systems are in place to take the bite off the cut. Nadhim Zahawi has pointed to a £500 million fund available to local authorities…
Minister denies PM 'ignored' universal credit cut as he comes under pressure to offer alternative support https://t.co/sd3NvJc29o
… but councils are facing an economic squeeze of their own; the Tories aren’t giving them enough to run their services properly. In any case, the UC uplift cost around £4.5 billion per year – nine times as much as is on offer in the scheme Zahawi mentioned.
In the iNews article (link above), Tory backbencher Steve Baker says it would cost £10 billion to sort out all the problems created by his own government’s mishandling of UC.
And what of the prime minister?
Boris Johnson once described the quarter of a million pounds he received alongside his salary as an MP, writing a column for a Sunday newspaper, as “chicken feed”. Is that why he doesn’t seem to think the UC cut matters?
• Boris Johnson described his £250,000 a year second salary job as ‘chicken feed’.
• It’s the same as a week’s worth of Universal Credit Uplift for 12,500 families. pic.twitter.com/8gdAs3KTHB
The facts – for those of us who have to work in Johnson’s post-Brexit, passed-out Britain – are enormously different from his distorted viewpoint:
Time for a reality check!
A single parent working 3 days a week, 8 hours a day, on £10 an hour, would need to increase their earnings by a THIRD to offset the cut to Universal Credit (h/t @resfoundation)
If @BorisJohnson wants to raise wages by a third, bring it on!
His entire plan – if he can be said to have had a plan at all – appears to be to bleed every last penny out of the UK’s working people and give it to the idle rich, who squirrel it away in offshore tax havens (see the Pandora Papers for details).
It seems the aim is to turn the nation into a zombie economy where working – and working-class – people are worked like slaves to service an ever-increasing national debt, while the super-rich members of his own class live it up on the profits and put nothing back.
Notably absent from this year’s Conservative conference has been any opposition to it from the Labour Party. Keir Starmer has abdicated his responsibility.
Into the breach steps former footballer Gary Neville. He – along with others of his profession like Marcus Rashford – has become the de facto opposition to Tory tyranny, in the absence of Starmer and his cronies.
It was Neville who responded to the cancellation of the £20 Universal Credit “uplift”, plunging millions of people into poverty and insecurity at a time of hugely-rising costs.
Tory grandee and food poisoning expert (ha ha!) Edwina Currie told ITV’s Good Morning Britain:
“What we have to realise is that we have got something like a million vacancies advertised in this country. We have record numbers of vacancies. We have whole industries desperate for people to come in from catering, to the care industry. Businesses are desperate and pushing up wages so it doesn’t make any sense to pay people to stay home.”
When presenter Susanna Reid pointed out that 40% on Universal Credit are already in work, the former health minister said: “We are taking about very large numbers of people not in a job.
“We need to train people to make better choices about how they live and how they spend their money. There are 30 million people out there who I would tell ‘the best benefit is a job’.
“It is wrong for us to pay people to stay at home when the economy needs people to get into work and we need to get people into better jobs and we need to push employers to pay their workforce better.”
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
What a pathetic excuse for an Opposition leader Keir Starmer is!
He has (rightly) come out against the removal of the £20 Universal Credit “uplift” that was introduced to protect people from the effects of Covid-19.
But his claim that it is the “biggest overnight cut in the history of the welfare state” is a long way off the mark!
Here’s Sue Jones to explain:
When the leader of the opposition party forgets that ill & disabled ESA claimants lost £30 per week under the Tories, and claims that £20 per week uplift loss is the 'biggest overnight cut in the history of welfare state.' It isn't, however, NEITHER cut should ever have happened https://t.co/s3Xw3Cxshx
It tells us much about Starmer and his priorities.
Once again under the control of neoliberals, StarmerLabour couldn’t care a fig about people who cannot work because of illness and/or disability.
As Starmer’s Shadow Chancellor once claimed, Labour is once again oriented only towards working people. Anybody else can go hang.
And let’s be honest: even if you’re working, Starmer is only really interested if you can hand him large amounts of cash in donations, to shore up his party’s failing financial position. Everything else – including his stance on Universal Credit – is just a pose.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Therese Antoinette: £20 per week means very little to her, because she is a member of Parliament and has been receiving enormous pay rises ever since she was elected there. The situation is very different for the people whose benefits she has been deliberately cutting.
Tory parasite Therese Coffey has been caught in a huge – and hugely significant – lie while trying to justify the cut in Universal Credit.
While trolling through the morning media round yesterday (September 13), she claimed that the loss of the Universal Credit uplift means claimants would have to work only two hours more to make it back, at minimum wage.
It is a particularly nasty double-lie.
Firstly, for many claimants the minimum wage (what the Tories mockingly call the National Living Wage, even though you can’t live on it) is not £10 an hour as she was claiming, but £8 and change.
Secondly, the 63 per cent “taper rate” on Universal Credit means for every hour’s money earned above the basic amount of £293 a month, claimants take home just £3.30.
They would have to work more than six hours – nearly an extra day – simply to make up the £20 loss.
And then they’d have to pay National Insurance – which is increasing, of course, and they would also have to find ways to pay for other goods whose prices are increasing because of Conservative incompetence in government.
Do you think that’s fair?
Here’s Peter Stefanovic to explain the situation on video – and he doesn’t pull his punches!
It’s becoming impossible to do these reports without a deep sense of gut wrenching anger. It now falls to all of us to put the record straight every time these charlatans say anything https://t.co/C81aybWkji
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which works to solve poverty, has demonstrated that cutting £20 from Universal Credit will make a mockery of Boris Johnson’s claim to be “levelling up” the UK and of his ambition to “build back better”:
Particularly worrying is the fact that none of the TV or radio presenters interviewing Coffey had the presence of mind to point out her error.
Were they not properly briefed – or were they specifically told to ignore any such lie and let the public think the liar was telling the truth?
At least ITV’s Paul Brand managed to make one decent point:
Work and Pensions Secretary says those facing the loss of £20 universal credit could work extra hours to make up for it.
Not sure that’ll go down well with carers on min wage we have met who are already working a 60 hour week at times just to cover all the care calls they have. https://t.co/jdukqjyEXs
Personally, This Writer is looking forward to seeing a motion in Parliament, tabled by any of Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition parties, to establish that Therese Coffey would reasonably have known that she was providing false information and should retract and correct it – publicly, in the same places she told the lies (because that’s what newspapers have to do when they publish false information).
It’s what Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle has demanded, after refusing to accept that legislation is required that would impose harsh penalties on any government minister found to be knowingly misleading.
After a few dozen such motions (per week?) he’ll get the message and we might see the change we need.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Despite warnings of soaring poverty and homelessness, the Department for Work and Pensions has confirmed it has still not produced a formal impact assessment of the £20 a week Universal Credit cut.
The Tories don’t actually give a shit who starves, do they?
So poverty will rocket and the sick will take the biggest hit.
And the Tories are hoping to avoid criticism by saying they haven’t done an official impact assessment.
It’s like children looking away from a huge mess and telling their parents they don’t see anything wrong.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
“I’m going to apply the pincers and drag every last penny out of the poor”: Boris Johnson explains how he’ll make sure rich people don’t have to pay a penny towards their social care, so they can pass their millionaire mansions to their kids [no, he didn’t really say that. But it is what he intends to do].
Boris Johnson’s announcement of a rise in National Insurance, claiming it will pay for social care, was expected. It seeks to camouflage a new catalogue of his lies and hide the fact that he is making the poorest pay for the care of the richest.
Basically… the Tories want to fund care by making every British worker pay an extra £260 tax per year.. so that billionaires and big businesses don't have to.
Quote of the day from an anonymous Tory MP, speaking to the FT about Boris Johnson’s plan to increase National Insurance: “We are asking people on low incomes to pay more tax so that privileged kids can inherit expensive houses.”
Firstly, Johnson was lying in 2019 when he said he had a plan to overhaul social care. It is clear now that he didn’t. His current proposals are to fund the existing – predominantly privately-owned and poorly-functioning – system rather than replace it with one that actually works.
In 2019 – pre-pandemic – Boris Johnson said he had a ‘clear plan’ to fix the crisis in social care. We know his ‘plan’ did not involve a massive hike in NI because he pledged not to increase it. So what was the plan? Was he just lying, again? pic.twitter.com/LACJjlHyWi
Yes indeed: he is imposing a 10.42 per cent increase on National Insurance contributions that are paid by people earning between £9,500 and £50,000 per year. People earning more will pay nothing extra.
National Insurance drops from 12% to 2% if you earn over £50,268/year. Raising it, while taking up to £1,000 off of those on Universal Credit – 40% of whom are in work – instead of taxing wealth, mansions, or high incomes is a choice to redistribute from the poor to the wealthy.
Do not be confused: this is a 1.25 percentage point increase – NI contributions will rise from 12 per cent of earnings to 13.25 per cent – but this represents a rise of more than 10 per cent in the contributions themselves.
National insurance contributions will go from 12% to 13.5% for those earning between 9.5k – 50k a year, after which it drops to 3.5%.
This is policy written by a government who have a vested interest in protecting the richest in society (in case you had any doubt)
He is also imposing a 10.42 per cent increase on profits from shares in companies, saying that this means rich people will pay a significant amount towards the cost of social care. This is a lie. Shareholders will merely pass the cost onto employees by denying them wage increases. It means the de facto increase in payments for people earning between £9,000 and £50,000 is 20.83 per cent (the slightly lower-than-double figure is due to roundings-up and -down).
The changes are expected to raise around £12 billion a year – a paltry pittance in comparison to the amount that would have been raised by former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who had proposed a tax on the UK’s wealthiest people.
Johnson has said that none of the money raised will go towards social care for three years after the NI increase is imposed in April 2022. Instead, it will be used to ease the backlog of NHS treatments that has been caused because Johnson’s Tory government had weakened the health service so badly that it could not cope with Covid-19 and continue to carry out these procedures at the same time.
Johnson has not said how much of the annual £12 billion will eventually be diverted to social care. Nor has his health secretary, Sajid Javid.
It’ll all be given to private companies owned by Tory donors. As usual.
Crucial response from that press conference for me was Sajid Javid admitting he can't say how much money social care will actually get and when, because it all depends on how NHS gets on with clearing the backlog. NHS bosses say it could take ten years…
After April 2023, this extra payment will become a separate tax – called the Health and Social Care Levy – on earned income. It will show up separately on payslips.
Unlike NI, people who work beyond retirement age will also pay this Health and Social Care Levy, meaning Johnson’s already-broken promise to keep the pensions ‘triple lock’ is smashed to smithereens and pensioners will be punished hard.
The government says people earning £20,000 a year will pay £130 to the new levy. Those on £30,000 will pay £255; those on £50,000 – £505. It provides figures for people on £80,000 (£880) and £100,000 (£1,130) but these must be notional amounts as their NI payments will be unchanged. People with shares that provide those amounts in dividends (as already noted) will merely pass the burden onto employees.
Johnson has said the increased payments will fund changes meaning that, from October 2023, nobody will pay more than £86,000 for care costs (excluding accommodation) in their lifetime. Is that a permanent commitment? So even as inflation means £86,000 is worth less and less as years pass, people will still have to pay no more than that amount? This Writer doesn’t think so. I reckon Johnson was lying again.
Once people have paid this amount, their ongoing costs will be paid by local authorities. Those with between £20,000 and £100,000 in assets will get means-tested help from their council; those will less than £20,000 won’t have to pay from their assets but might have to contribute from their income – an additional burden for low-earners.
It means people are still likely to have to sell their houses to pay for care – unless they are rich.
As far as I can see, the exception if spouses still live in the family home still applies.
That’s a lot to take in. It is likely that Johnson is hoping ordinary people will not recognise the enormity of the impact his plan will have on poor and working people.
Fortunately, we have clever people available who are able to work out the facts.
Here’s the headline:
You can’t fund social care by making the poor pay for the rich.
The rise in National Insurance means graduates earning over £27,295 will now pay a marginal tax rate of 42.25% once student loan repayments are included.
So such a graduate would take home slightly less than £16,000 a year.
And do you remember that measly three per cent pay rise for NHS workers? It is now, once again, a pay cut:
The so called 3% "pay rise" for NHS staff will be wiped out by the National Insurance rise. Ironically to pay for the underfunded NHS & Social Care. What a disgrace. Pay NHS staff the 15% they deserve. Tax the wealthy NOT the poor. #NHSPay15#WealthTax
And people employed in the social care system – such as it is – will now pay more towards it than their bosses, who profit from it:
How can it be right that a low-paid social care worker pays a bigger proportion of her income to fund social care than the private equity magnate who profits from asset-stripping care homes?
It's time for a tax on wealth to fund social care.
so confirmed now that national insurance contributions going from 12% to 13.5% for earnings between 9.5k – 50k, after which it drops by 10%. hard to think of a more regressive tax, which is what it is. make that £328.39 worse off annually for the average (median) earner.
… and if you earn less than the average, you get hit by the Universal Credit cut as well…
By my calculations, 2.5 million working households will be affected by BOTH the cut to Universal Credit and increase in national insurance. On average, they will lose out by £1290 in 2022/23. 2.5 million working families on low incomes losing £1290 – not a progressive solution.
Johnson has tried to justify this new attack on low earners by claiming that the Covid-19 crisis has cost the nation billions of pounds. That could not have been foreseen when he promised no tax increases in the run-up to the 2019 election, and that is the reason this measure is necessary. He was – of course – lying.
The government created new money to pay for the Covid crisis; there was no cost to the nation at all. So the situation now is exactly what it was in 2019, as far as tax increases are concerned.
And there is the issue of what Johnson did with all the money that was created to handle Covid – like blowing £37 billion – more than three times what he expects to raise every year with his NI increase – on Dido Harding’s ‘test and trace’ service that did not work at all.
The PM argues that breaking his promise re NatIns is justified by Covid being an unexpected burden on the public purse. It’s worth pointing out the billions he bunged to Tory friends like Dido Harding would have paid for social care several times over.@BorisJohnson
Back in 2016, Johnson campaigned for the UK to leave the EU, in a big red bus emblazoned with the message, “We send the EU £350 million a week. Let’s fund the NHS instead”. The UK has now left the EU and not a single penny of that so-called “Brexit bonus” has reached the National Health Service. Instead, Johnson is taxing the poor on the pretext that they will pay for it.
Johnson’s apologists have leapt up to praise him for doing something about the social care crisis in the UK – but they haven’t been able to hide the fact: what he has done is worse than nothing.
Laura Kuennsberg on News at 10 “Boris Johnson has decided it’s better to take an imperfect action than do nothing at all.”
I’m not convinced those are the only two options..
I've lost count of how many times political reporters have repeated the obviously Downing Street-briefed line that 'Johnson is a PM who's prepared to take tough decisions'.
On what planet is it a tough decision to put the greatest burden on those with the least wealth and power?
Not a single highly qualified, well paid, very experienced Daily Express journalist asked the PM about the £350M promised in blood and written in stone…
it is almost funny that Boris Johnson rejected a junk food tax and a fuel duty rise, because they would be taxes on "working people" – but wants to increase national insurance, which is literally a tax *only* on working people.
The failure of the mainstream, mass media to hold Johnson and his government to account has been monumental – if expected. That doesn’t mean it should be accepted:
At the risk of sounding hopelessly naive, it is a national scandal that, as the Tories condemn millions of people to lifetimes of hardship, and secure the inordinate wealth of their class for generations to come, self-professed progressive journalists are sitting on their hands.
… but Labour’s philosophy has always been that tax is fine, as long as it has a purpose and is fair. Johnson’s plan for social care demonstrates neither of those traits but Starmer couldn’t – or wouldn’t – see it.
He has become a sick joke, as critics have been quick to point out:
Worse, Labour had solid plans for a well-funded National Care Service – along NHS lines – under former leader Jeremy Corbyn – as he, and some Labour MPs, remember:
The crisis in social care can't be fixed by the Tories unfair proposals.
We need a National Care Service for all, funded by progressive taxation, including a wealth tax.
I can guarantee you social care would have been funded more efficiently and fairly had Jeremy Corbyn been elected PM. #socialcare
— John Smith (son of Harry Leslie Smith) (@Harryslaststand) September 7, 2021
Do you know how much a wealth tax would bring in? See for yourself:
A Robin Hood tax- a financial tax of 0.05% on the wealth sales of shares, bonds, derivatives & dividends. Estimated to raise £250bl a year. And the Tories are imposing NI tax rises. How the wealthy elite must be laughing at us.
But Starmer has thrown Corbyn’s plans away because they would lift people out of poverty – and he seems uninterested in helping poor or working people (a strange stance for a Labour leader).
Starmer's doing an excellent job…of containing and neutralizing Labour as a political force. He's really earned his bonus from the establishment, and his replacement will do exactly the same
Another Twitter user, @aconda_an, added – referring to Corbyn: “They had someone with solutions and meaningful policies. They didn’t want it. Shame on them.”
And shame on everybody who voted Conservative in 2019 because they believed Johnson’s lie that he wouldn’t tax them. He’s a Conservative – it is his nature to lie.
You only have yourselves to blame, and you have dragged the rest of us down with you.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Benefit claimants facing poverty because the DWP is threatening to claw back hardship payments they claimed – after being sanctioned – have a ray of hope after a recent court case.
The Department for Work and Pensions has now admitted that any action to take back these payments is discretional and it may waive its right to do so.
The DWP has written an open letter to explaining how Universal Credit (UC) claimants can apply for recoverable hardship payments after a sanction, and the process by which claimants can request that hardship payments are waived.
The change follows a successful judicial review by a client of the Public Law Project (PLP).
The organisation explains the main points of the new process, with important points from DWP’s letter in bold, and PLP’s additions in italics:
When a sanction is imposed the DWP should inform the individual of the details of the sanction(s) in a letter uploaded to the UC journal, along with the option to claim hardship payments. If the individual thinks the sanction is wrong, they can request a mandatory reconsideration from the DWP. If that is unsuccessful, the claimant can appeal the DWP’s sanction decision to the tribunal. There is guidance on challenging a sanction from Citizens Advice and Mental Health & Money Advice.
A claimant that receives a sanction can apply for hardship payments by calling the UC helpline.On the call, the DWP official will ask about the individuals’ living costs, so the individual should make a note of these in advance. The individual will need to explain why the sanction has made it hard for them to meet their basic needs (such as food or utilities costs) and what they have done to find other sources of financial support. Citizens Advice have published useful guidance on getting a hardship payment.
Hardship payments are recoverable (meaning the DWP can ask for them to be repaid), and when a claimant applies for a hardship payment the DWP official will ask them to agree a ‘declaration’ that they will repay it once their sanctions are lifted. If a claimant’s application for hardship payments is refused, this decision can be challenged by making a mandatory reconsideration request to the DWP.
Once the claimant’s sanction has ended the DWP will take steps to recover the hardship payment by making deductions from the individual’s UC. However, importantly, DWP does have a choice not to recover hardship payments. This choice applies in all cases, including where the individual’s sanction has been subsequently overturned, for example following mandatory reconsideration or a tribunal appeal.
If the claimant cannot afford to repay the hardship payment they can ask DWP for the deductions to be reduced and / or request that the hardship payment be waived in full. This is not affected by the fact that the claimant has agreed a declaration that they will repay the hardship payment.
Getting hardship payment debt waived
PLP has produced a note on how to request a waiver of hardship payment debt and what to do if the DWP refuses.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
Vox Political needs your help! If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers) you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. This includes scrolling or continued navigation. more information
The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.
