Dole office to roll out digital benefits to north-west – 6 months early

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I'm sorry, but aren't there enough people leaching benefits already? I know that there are plenty of people out there who are genuinely on benefits because they need them to survive. But there are so many people I see / saw while I was on job seekers who turn up smelling of alcohol and cigarettes to claim their benefits. Then five minutes later when I go over to road to asda to see if there were jobs going those same people are in there buying a six pack and a packet of smokes.

Yes making it simpler to apply for is probably a good way to save money on hirign people to explain the system to oldies and idiots, but for god sakes while your at it make it more secure too.

I mean really, what we need for the benefit system is a cap on the amount people can claim, and I'm talking about a reasonable cap, not this £40k per household crap, if the minimum people might earn on full time employment in the UK is 14k per anum, the most they shoudl be able to claim is 30k not 40

Likewise, stop giving them money, give them actual benefits. There are parents getting more money from benefits than I get from my money earned. And they complain that they don't have money because they waste it all. They don't have enough money to buy their kids new clothes, but they have enough to buy some cigarettes. They don't have enough money to pay rent, but they can afford takeout each night.

Benefits should be allocated directly to where they need to go. A benefits account which can only be withdrawn from with approval and only as DDs for paying off the monthly rent, and bills. Any extra money at the end of the month should be converted to vouchers they can use at asda / tesco etc to buy food and clothing.

Not cigarettes, not alcohol.

Likewise those on JSA should be forced to work, sure there may not be jobs out there as such, but one or two days a week of charity work should be enough for them to earn jobseekers. And if they're forced to work it might actually stop some people from claiming and actually get a real job, especially if the charity work is degrading stuff like picking up litter since a lot of the benefit scroungers have egos to maintain.

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Sorry for the ranting, i just hate the benefit culture we're seeing at the moment.

Be scared

The DWP doesn't have a great track record with system implementation.

Likewise, they don't have a great record at keeping your data 100% safe.

this is a fantastic policy

First off - the issue of identifying and stopping benefit fraud is completely seperate from how the benefits are applied for or calculated. So put that to one side.

Secondly, I think the argument about what level benefits are paid at is also completely seperate to this policy. There are arguments both ways on that one.

The main point here (as I understand it) is that under the current system if you are on benefits and want to get back into work, you can end up trapped because if you earn a very small amount/work a couple of hours you lose eligability to specific benefits which in total is more than your wage. Hey presto its not worth (or possible) to take the job.

By having a universal benefit you work out a base entitlement and then remove it in a tapered way as people start to earn - so it should be possible for someone on benefits to do say 8-10 hours a week if thats all they can find or as a bridge from long term unemployment.

How is that not a fantastic idea? The economics suddenly become "its always better to have a job"

Please dont confuse either fraud levels or even the level of benfit paid with what this is actually about.

Do none of you people understand??

The government doesn't pay benefits out of the goodness of their hearts. They pay benefits to stop your elderly mother being mugged at a cashpoint by someone who needs food but has no money or job.

Some of you need to wake up and smell the coffee.

Unbelievable.

Their thinking is if it copes with Scouseland it'll cope with anywhere.

Are there no prisons, no poor houses?

For the AC...

Dear Ac as many have said you are wrong.

I agree there are some that scam the system and some that completly take the piss, I know I burnt off some Karma for a year and a half working in a bens office dealing with them. The vast majority do not actually fiddle the system though.

However there is something called the benefit trap this means that to come off of bens you need a certain wage to help keep you in the standard of living that you have been on.

Note this does not neccessarily have to be a high wage, I'd say some of the biggest problem comes from min wage and short hours (anything over 16.5 hrs is considered full time work). Once you factor in travel to work, rent, council tax you know have to pay, NHS, dentist then sudenly staying on benefts is actually just a logical descision versus say being a single male being offered 30hrs at min wage.

Raising the min wage is not really going to solve it because that hits employers, lowering benefits is not either because apart from that small subset the daily fail always reports on its probably fair to say that more people are on the breadline or finding themselves becoming indebted due to unemployement than buying luxury cars.

Personally I think the best way to solve it is to raise the chance of you being able to claim some help back. If you get a job but now when you sign off, you still get say 20% of your council tax covered, you can claim a bit of working tax credit and rent relief etc then it suddenly becomes more attractive to return to work, theres a point to know that the difference caused by working is a few extra quid in your pocket, rather than you being no better or actually worse off.

Yes that still means some money is coming from the taxpayer, however I would argue that its a lot less than what was being taken before, and the knock on effect of someone being employed also means that the goverment gets a bit of tax from the employers, from VAT on the working persons new purchases etc.

The system at the moment does not work unfortunately it seems most ways of fixing it are derivatated from what the headlines say rather than a realistic view of what actually is happening.

@AnonCoward:

Do you actually know how much people are paid on benefits? On average it is £70 per week for a single person over the age 25, living on their own.

This is £280 per month, utilities (gas & electric) will roughly be £20-£30 per week, so £80 - £120 per month, so for the sake of argument we will round utilities down to £100 per month.

You now have £180 per month to survive on, but you still have to pay some council tax, in my area it will roughly be £25 per month on average. So now your monthly figure has dropped to £155 to survive on, which gives you £38.75 per week.

You need to buy your food on this money, so usually cheap foods, beans, noodles, etc. Miss out breakfast, lunch and supper. 7 main meals a week and you may have £10-£20 left spare for yourself, if you're lucky.

Some of the money will be used to buy the cheapest clothes from charity shops, but usually you wear your clothes until they are threadbare. Other parts of the money is spent on public transport, to and from appointments.

Too skint, to have a telephone, internet, decent clothes (for interviews), and if you are lucky to be offered a job, you may have to wait up to 6 weeks before being paid, therefore that £20 has to be stretched to cover your daily transport costs, food, heating and other bills, just not possible, and in an area with mass deprivation, it is likely everybody is just as skint as you, so you cannot rely on friends or family financially to bail you out until the first pay packet.

Being on benefits is not an easy ride, as some think it is. Anyone who thinks living of the benefits system is easy, they should try it for a change, walk a mile in another persons shoes. I can guarantee you will not like it.