Here’s more useful information from Martin Lewis, the Money Saving Expert:
This means they get the National Insurance years that normally go to a parent who is off work looking after children (as you're working you'll usually be getting from work). This can add £1,000s to a state pension
More info: https://t.co/0AbhdVVbK8
— Martin Lewis (@MartinSLewis) October 10, 2022
So there’s no penalty for the parent if they’re working and earning NI credits from that.
Any good?
Meanwhile, in England and Wales: it’s not quite this bad but the death toll suggests it might as well be.
It’s easy to understand why the Scottish National Party is so popular north of the border – it actually fulfils its promises.
For example: it is replacing the hated Tory Personal Independence Payment for people living with disabilities.
The new Adult Disability Payment will be phased in next year, providing financial support to cover the extra costs faced by people with disabilities.
The SNP-run Scottish government has announced that the benefit will take a new approach, to ensure dignity, fairness and respect.
According to the Daily Record:
Social Security Scotland will make decisions about entitlement for ADP using the applicant’s account of their circumstances and existing supporting information, where possible.
The number of face-to-face assessments will be significantly reduced and will only be necessary when it is the only practicable way to make a decision.
Most consultations will be carried out over the phone, but can be face-to-face in a GP surgery or even at home – whatever works best for the person applying.
And claimants will no longer be asked to carry out tasks to demonstrate how their disability, long-term illness or mental health condition affects them as part of the application process.
This promises to be a huge improvement. Also helpful will be the provision of supporting material which may include a social care needs assessment, a report from a Community Psychiatric Nurse, and information from a carer.
As a carer myself, This Writer would have loved to be able to submit information to support Mrs Mike’s PIP (and ESA) claims.
But anything can seem good before it has actually been tested.
I would like to hear from claimants of the new benefit, once it starts coming in. Let’s hope they say good things about it.
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Less cash for senior citizens: this story was about the removal of an allowance for dependent adults from nearly 11,000 people’s pensions. There is no guarantee that they will receive top-ups of the same value from other benefits, despite assurances from the Conservative government.
Independent fact checkers have confirmed much of what This Site has said about the end of ADI – the adult dependency increase – on thousands of UK pensions.
But this has done nothing to allay This Writer’s fears about the use of so-called independent “fact check” services.
I stated that the Tories will be cutting £70 a week from around 11,000 people’s pensions – and this is confirmed by Full Fact.
I also expressed doubts about the government’s claim that people who are set to lose around £3,500 a year as a result of the cut will be able to get a top-up from other benefits – and this is supported by a comment in the Full Fact article.
There are reasons to believe that at least some pensioners who were in receipt of ADI payments may struggle to claim the money in other ways once the payments end.
From 15 May 2019, couples who aren’t both over the State Pension age cannot make a new claim for pension credit, unless one is receiving housing benefit for pensioners.
Changes to Universal Credit mean a couple where one person is below the State Pension age are considered working-age and will share a standard monthly allowance of £498.89. It can only be claimed if the younger partner is eligible.
Steve Webb, who was minister for pensions in the Coalition government from 2010 to 2015 and is a former Liberal Democrat MP, told Full Fact he was “deeply sceptical” that the loss of ADI payments would be offset with other benefits.
He said recent changes to pension credit mean any mixed-age couples who were not already receiving the payment “have little chance of claiming it when their income drops £70 a week”, while the Universal Credit rate is “so low” that that they may not “get much even if they qualified”.
I’m not convinced about the criticisms of other reports in the Full Fact site, though.
The fact was that “It is not right to suggest all pensioners will be £70 per week worse off, given how few receive this benefit.”
But the infographic on the Wear Red – Stand up and Be counted Facebook page (for example) correctly stated that “The £70 per week allowance for adult dependents is being scrapped from April”.
It could have been better-phrased, to make it clear that not all pensioners receive that allowance – but then, why should any reader assume that they all do?
Some of us have concerns about the use of so-called “fact check” facilities, because it is possible that they could be used to reinforce particular political viewpoints.
Claims that articles are presenting fake news, that are not correctly explained (such as the Full Fact piece), do not instil any confidence at all.
Source: Some pensioners will lose £70 a week, but Boris Johnson didn’t introduce the change – Full Fact
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Short-changing the elderly: the Tories love taking money from people who depend on it.
Statistics show older people constitute the majority of Conservative voters – I bet they never knew the Tories would stab them in the back so soon!
It’s even worse because the allowance for adult dependents is being phased out in any case – the Tories are simply cutting it earlier than it would have ended.
It turns out 11,000 pensioners are still receiving the allowance. From April, those people will lose £3,500 per year.
The DWP is claiming that current recipients of the allowance will be able to claim a means-tested benefit like Universal Credit or Pension Credit. Good luck with that, folks!
The simple fact is that Tories love to take state money away from people who depend on it.
And they don’t even care that they’re attacking people who helped put them in office; they think you’re so stupid you’ll vote for them again. Are they right?
Source: Government to cut £70 a week from thousands of state pensions – Mirror Online
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Kwashiorkor: The so-called “swollen belly disease” used to be a staple of news reports from countries facing starvation. Now the Conservatives have ensured that it is on the rise in the UK.
See the picture, above? Once upon a time, when British people saw images like that, they were being asked to reach into their wallets and help starvation-hit people in developing countries. Now the country in danger is the UK.
Due to Conservative government policies, malnutrition – the principle cause of the “swollen belly disease” kwashiorkor – has tripled in the UK since 2009. According to the Mirror, the government tried to sneak the figures out last week, while MPs were on holiday, but they have been picked up by eagle-eyed journalists.
Malnutrition cases treated by the NHS have risen from 2,893 to 8,537 since that year. Kwashiorkor is caused by a lack of protein and is almost always fatal if left untreated, or if treatment starts too late.
The Department of Health has said it is committed to training staff so the early signs can be spotted and treatment put in place.
That’s not the point!
The issue is the fact that the Tories have allowed this disease to arise in the first place.
As readers are no doubt tired of reading by now, the UK is the fifth-largest economy in the world. There is enough cash here to ensure that nobody goes without.
But the Tories have rigged the system so most of the money goes to people who are already rich, while the benefit and healthcare systems – that should save the people they have impoverished – have also been starved of the resources they need.
The Telegraph has said the vast majority of the increased admissions involve elderly patients, with malnutrition only diagnosed after they were admitted to hospital for other reasons, such as a fall.
That paper quoted charities who said the figures were “shocking,” with vulnerable people being left to starve for want of help at home or in care homes.
Yet a majority of pensioners still, it seems, religiously vote Conservative – despite the fact that Tory policies are threatening them with early death.
According to Welfare Weekly, the UK’s largest food bank network, Trussell Trust, provided a record 1.6 million three-day emergency food supplies to people in crisis between April 1, 2018 and March 31, 2019, a 19 per cent increase on the previous year. This included more than half a million children.
The charity blamed Universal Credit for leaving households without the financial means to feed themselves adequately.
And figures released on August 23 revealed that the NHS is spending only £3 a day on meals for each patient. How much nutrition are they going to get with that?
It seems clear that the Conservatives are failing vulnerable people across the spectrum, from children right through to pensioners – and justifying it with mealy-mouthed excuses.
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A claim by the Department for Work and Pensions that jobseekers with mental health problems are not classed as vulnerable and may be sanctioned with impunity is false, documentary evidence has shown.
Welfare Weekly revealed last week that JSA claimants with even the most serious mental health illnesses are not considered vulnerable by DWP. This has a knock-on effect when their Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) is reduced or stopped.
In that circumstance, everyone can apply for a hardship payment totallying up to 60 per cent of their JSA, to help cover the cost of food and bills while they have no other means of support.
Those classed as ‘vulnerable’ can normally claim this vital support immediately, but others may have to wait at least two weeks, and then go through what could be a lengthy application process.
In the case of claimants with mental health problems, that two-week wait could be extremely dangerous.
According to the article: “DWP guidance on hardship payments states: ‘Requests for hardship payments may be made by people who say they have a mental condition. A person will only be a member of a vulnerable group if the condition causes limitation in functional capacity because of a physical impairment.’
The guidance goes on to clarify that mental health problems without physical impairment include: “Affective disorder, Agoraphobia, Anorexia nervosa, Anxiety, Bipolar Affective disorder, Bulimia nervosa, Depression, Dissociative disorders, Nervous Debility, Neurasthenia, Neurosis, Obsessive-compulsive disorder, Panic attacks, Paranoia, Phobias, Phobic anxiety, Psychoneurosis, Psychosis, and Schizophrenia.”
Oh, really?
Vox Political has received information showing that both the Department of Health and the Home Office disagree with this definition – and the DWP has in fact made itself vulnerable to accusations that its own guidance is encouraging decision makers to abuse vulnerable adults.
The Department of Health/Home Office paper No secrets: Guidance on developing and implementing multi-agency policies and procedures to protect vulnerable adults from abuse adopts and confirms a broad definition of a “vulnerable adult” from a 1997 consultation paper entitled ‘Who Decides?’, that had previously been issued by the Lord Chancellor’s Department.
It defines a ‘vulnerable adult’ as a person “who is or may be in need of community care services* by reason of mental or other disability, age or illness; and who is or may be unable to take care of him or herself, or unable to protect him or herself against significant harm or exploitation” [bolding mine].
The paper adopts as a “starting point” for its definition of abuse, that it is “a violation of an individual’s human and civil rights by any other person or persons”.
“Any other person or persons” includes officials working for the Department for Work and Pensions.
It seems the DWP has a huge amount of explaining to do.
Please publicise this widely and pass it on to anybody who is vulnerable due to mental health issues, along with anybody dealing with such people in a professional context (including carers). Everybody needs to know about this.
Of course, anyone with serious mental health problems should be receiving Employment and Support Allowance rather than JSA, but of course the work capability assessment process used by the DWP is hopelessly inadequate at identifying people who need the alternative benefit – it was designed to be that way.
Anyone affected by the DWP’s discrimination against the vulnerable should also consider campaigning against the work capability assessment.
*For the purposes of this guidance ‘community care services’ will be taken to include all care services provided in any setting or context.
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Vulnerable children and adults with disabilities or high support needs may be forced to pay the Bedroom Tax, despite protestations to the contrary by Lord Freud, after it was revealed that creating more protections would cause ‘political embarrassment’.
Current rules mean some supported housing is protected from the Bedroom Tax, benefit cap and the effects of Universal Credit (if a working version ever arrives) – but this accommodation is not exempted if the landlord is not the care provider or when the landlord is a local authority.
This means that, for example, supported housing provider Habinteg has 1,200 wheelchair-accessible properties for the disabled – but only 516 of them are exempt from the benefit changes.
Lord Freud, who is minister for social security reform, said last April that the DWP was working to ensure all supported accommodation would be protected from what he called the “unintended consequences” of the government’s changes.
Freud famously worked for Labour before the last general election, but turned against his former employers and switched his allegiance to the Conservative Party in 2009 – for which was rewarded with a peerage.
Now it seems the government has turned against him. According to Inside Housing, “in a letter sent to housing organisations… the DWP [Department for Work and Pensions] said that while it still wants to protect supported accommodation from Universal Credit and the benefit cap, it no longer wants to protect non-exempt accommodation from the bedroom tax.
“A source said the government was opposed to the move because creating more protections from the bedroom tax would cause political embarrassment.
“Civil servants cannot change the exempt accommodation definition without also adding extra protections for the bedroom tax. This means all plans to protect non-exempt supported accommodation from welfare reform are on ice.”
Anti-Bedroom Tax campaigners recently discovered that people who had been living in social rented accommodation since before 1996, and claiming housing benefit for the entire period, were exempt from the Bedroom Tax.
But the latest development proves David Cameron’s protestations that the disabled were entirely protected from the Bedroom Tax were false and, instead of changing the rules to rectify the error, the DWP has made a worse liar of him.
How much humiliation is Cameron prepared to take before he curbs the excesses of this out-of-control organisation?
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