Tag: Disability Benefits

Winter Fuel Payments, Disability Changes, Garden Review and JGGI Webinar

The  Government has backtracked on scrapping Winter Fuel Payments except for poor folks like me (I’m joking). See BBC report here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c5yxvdl4d0pt . But it just adds one more needless complexity to the tax system.

The Government is also working on reforming disability benefits which are horribly complicated and where they wish to reduce the total expenditure. As a disabled person with minor problems I don’t qualify for PIP but I do get an “Attendance Allowance” which is not means tested.

If you want to get an impression of how complicated are disability benefits there is a good article in the latest Disabled Motoring UK magazine on the subject. The system needs simplifying!

The entitlement to a Free Car and associated costs under the Motability scheme is also clearly getting out of hand. See this for how to qualify: https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/benefits/sick-or-disabled-people-and-carers/help-for-disabled-travellers1/motability-scheme/getting-a-motability-car/ . Needless to say, I don’t qualify and the only contact I have had with someone who did was when a new scheme member ran into my vehicle after picking up her new car a few years ago. Exited a side road without looking or stopping. Seemed to confuse the foot pedals. She was very apologetic.

Our garden is looking very well now we have had some rain. Photo below.

The yellow-flowered plant is a bunch of Phlomis which is a hardy perennial. There is a purple variety which seems much less tough. The roses are mainly from David Austin and are good hardy ones with few diseases. Plants need to be tough to survive in our garden.

Yesterday I attended a webinar presented by JPMorgan Global Growth and Income Trust (JGGI) which I hold. First purchased in July 2022 and with an annual total return since of 8.5%. They run a global unconstrained portfolio of 50 to 90 stocks giving a yield of 4.27% (some paid out of capital gains) and with an ongoing charge of 0.43%.

It seems to be well managed and they certainly have a large investment research team of analysts.

I was positively impressed so I will continue to hold.

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Clamping Down on Disability Benefits

An article in the FT said this: “The rising cost of support for people with long-term health conditions — set to rise to a staggering £100bn by 2029-30 in cash terms on current projections — has become a huge source of pressure on the public finances for a government fighting to meet its fiscal rules”.

The rules on disability benefits are so complex I won’t even attempt to explain them. But clearly the cost of those benefits has been rising, particularly from mental health claims. There is a strong incentive to claim benefits on health grounds rather than simply being unemployed as the rewards are higher and can last a lot longer. And mental illness is easy to fake.

The Government would like to get everyone who can work (even if only in lower paid jobs with minimal skills required) back to work. But there is currently a strong incentive to create imaginary ills. Even the BBC reported that “Some people on benefits are ‘taking the mickey’, Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall has said, as the government seeks ways to curb welfare spending.

Incidentally I am one of the beneficiaries of the generous Government support for disabled people. I actually get an “Attendance Allowance” worth about £290 per month from the state because I have a minor physical disability. But I am aged 79 now so I hope the Government does not expect me to go back to work, from which I retired over 25 years ago. There is no means testing of Attendance Allowances which might be worth reviewing but I doubt such a review would substantially cut the cost.

In essence this is a difficult problem to solve. If there is something for nothing then folks will exploit it. There is a feeling that recent immigrants are often claiming benefits with no expectations of actually working or repaying the state for its generosity.

Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://x.com/RogerWLawson  )

You can obtain notifications of new posts in future by following me on Twitter (now “X”) – see https://x.com/RogerWLawson where new blog posts are usually mentioned.