Is it fair….
…..that people who have chosen to live in sunny Spain (or elsewhere) continue to receive Incapacity Benefit at a cost to the taxpayer of £1m per week? Since 1998 over 109,000 people have claimed IB while living abroad, according to new research revealed by the Liberal Democrats, at a cost to the taxpayer over the last 10 years of almost half a billion pounds.
Danny Alexander, LD spokeman on Works & Pensions said:
’It is issues such as this that leave hard-working people feeling that the whole Benefits system is unjust. It completely goes against people’s sense of fairness that UK benefits are paid to those who move abroad and benefit from lower living costs at the expense of the taxpayer.’
These benefit claimants are immune from medical examinations, allegedly. What are your views on this?
EDIT Jenny has posted a comment and I have to say she makes some valid points. There are indeed some people (and I number some amongst my nearest and dearest) who genuinely, honestly merit the Incapacity Benefit payments that they receive. I don’t dispute that, but I am merely asking the question ‘Is it fair that some people…etc’. I did not intend to ‘tar all with the same brush’ and if this was how my post came over, then I shall have to watch my wording in future.
3 Comments
have your say
This is more of the inflamatory nonsense I have come to expect from all parties, who treat the sick and disabled as dishonest greedy scroungers.
Firstly: those who receive Incapacity Benefit are already rigorously tested, and continue to be so when abroad.
Secondly: They receive the benefit because they have contributed to it all their working lives.
Thirdly: Politicians should rejoice that those who move abroad are no longer a drain on the over-stretched services in the UK - towards which most of them still contribute in their taxes, incidentally.
Fourthly: These people are breaking no laws, and they are not ‘cheating the system’, as some would have us believe. The system allows them to do it, and quite rightly: someone who is disabled should have the same rights as any other person to choose where to live. No doubt soon, as the public are once again whipped up into a righteous frenzy by our self-serving politicians, the law will be changed. Until then, please stop persecuting them!
Who polices the benefits system whilst these people are claiming benefits when away from our shores? How many slip into remunerative work whilst still claiming benefits and fail to notify this change in circumstances?
I would invite Jenny to state how these ‘rigorous tests’are carried out. It’s amazing how many benefit claimants suffer miraculous recoveries from the illnesses or disablities they are allegedly sufferring from once that alight from a plane in Spain.
The biggest abuse of the benefit system in this country is DLA claimants using the ‘motobility scheme’, making motobility vehicles the largest fleet in the World second only to the Chinese army.
I would invite Veronica to pursue her questions through her party and hopefully in the House of Commons.
I would say to Jenny, ‘contribution does not mean automatic entitlement’ you are not paying subs to a club. Disability does not mean that you cannot work, some have not attempted a working life to even contribute!!
I have no problem about those who are cheating the benefits system being rooted out. My problem is with the behaviour of politicians of all parties, who, apparently ‘innocently’, put it about that the majority of people on Incapacity Benefit are cheats or freeloaders. Then, without having to produce any evidence, they can sit back and let the public do their dirty work for them, in a trial by tabloid and blog. If this defamation of character was being done to an individual, it would be considered libellous; towards a group of sick and disabled people it is apparently considered acceptable. Sorry, Veronica, I will not now be voting for your party.