The UKs social security bill is forecast to be £303.3 bn next year 2024 to 2025 (!)... well actually £319 bn if you don't nominalilse it..... JESUS!
But some of that is (relatively) untouchable... namely the state pension. It'd be a potential next election loser if Labour got rid of the treble lock so let's disregard that...
It breaks down roughly thus...
- £137.4 bn on the state pension
- £137.4 billion on working age and child welfare, that includes UC
- £90bn on disable people
- £35.1 bn on housing benefits...
In terms of number of claimants (not including the state pension), stats are available here
Something fishy about Personal Independence Payment...?
I mean honestly I've seen this in my job, there are so many people milking this....
NB PIP isn't means tested, and there's no data on who is claiming it in relation to benefits or whether they are working.
I just feel it's highly unlikely we've got almost 2 million people more people suddenly genuinely eligible for PIP over the last 6 years. These stats are enough to make me suspicious!
What could we cut...?
Besides the pension and proper disability support I think everything else is up for slashing....
- Housing benefit seems like an easy win.... slashing that wld be painful but ultimately it would bring rentals down!
- UC could be a decent target at least once mechani
sms for getting people into work are place, such as effective child care. - And a we cld cut out a lot by dealing with fake PIP claims, which I've seen my fair share of in my job roles!
Hypotheticals on staffing benefits reductions...
I guess there are two staffing approaches to tackling the welfare Bill...
- Employ more staff to do reviews
- Employ more staff to write AIs to do reviews.
I mean the later is more human and quite cost effective....
Pay someone £30K a year and task them with axing £100K in benefits a year... money back!
That'd mean one person would have to remove around £400 in benefits per household per day - if they cld do one review per day working 5 days a week for 48 weeks a year.
NB obvs that one person on £30K a year would require some support so the pay-back wouldn't be that great, they'd need some IT back up and some management, but I imagine one manager could handle a few dozen staff and IT support a lot more than that.
NB - the upper daily living PIP award is £440 a month, standard around £280. So that £400 figure a day could be easily met by targeting the most egregious cases of PIP fraud, there are plenty.
One extra DWP caseworker per year, doing just one successful review a day could save the country £100 000 a year.
100 extra could save the country £10 000 000
1000 extra could save the country £100 000 000
But we'd need 10K extra employees to cut £1BN a year off the welfare bill at this rate.
A quicker closure rate....?
TBH I doubt if a caseworker could close more than one case a day, not if you wanted to build evidence and do it throughly.
Maybe AI could do it quicker....?
Or we need more joined up thinking...
Some way of making these benefits PAY for themselves... I'm not sure what that would look like, but ATM it's just not sustainable, and especially unfair for those earning just above that benefits threshold....
Just thinking out loud!
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