Housing Benefit for under 25s

Yes JessM, this is a taste of what will happen if the Tories win the next election. I find the language used to describe the deserving, and undeserving poor reminiscent of Dickens or more recently, Angela's Ashes.

I agree. It's depressing.

I don't think there is any point in blaming the Conservatives in particular as this is an extremely difficult area to deal with and no party seems to have faced up to the problems. Do you just want things to stay as they were? I don't think that it was well thought out and changes could actually improve things. Children coming out of care are a different issue to someone loosing a job at just under 25 and would have to be treated differently.

Children coming out of care have been given the same support as a child living with a domiciliary parent where the other parent is obliged to pay support to them. Both stopped at 16 when that was the legal age for education but now young people have to be in education or training until 18 that has been raised for children in care as it has for support from a none domiciliary parent. It's not good in either case if everything just stops at age 18 but what do you see as the answer JessM?

I'm afraid just throwing money at any problem will not help. We really need to look at what is needed, and how to make what we can afford work best and I don't think any party has done that. Just growing the benefits bill often doesn't really help those it is meant to.

There is no way of facing the problem other than helping the under 25's to keep a roof over their heads. Do we want to go back to workhouses? I do blame the government . We cannot ignore the fact that there is a rise in suicides among young men .

This government has reduced aid to the most vulnerable in our society.

There is the other side to the coin. I have a young nephew by marriage living in a council flat with his girfriend. I am not sure if this girlfriend works or not. He does not work and has no intention of ever doing so, and rarely surfaces before 2pm daily. I would reduce his benefits and made sure that he started a training programme.

Just how many jobs are available after a training programme. A youngster aged 19 left school at 16 after his GCSE's , he went on a training course in a college forty nine miles away, did two years - plumbing- then needed to complete his training with a plumber, nothing available. He now has a job at Homebase on an eight hour contract, his parents support him, if he didn't have a family he would be in a desperate state , not knowing if he will work for eight hours in a week or thirty hours a week.

I'm glad I don't have to make these decisions. If I did I would put families before youngsters. I don't know what happened to people when I was young when there were no such benefits but I think we all took it for granted we would live at home until we could support ourselves. I do know there was no point in us putting our names down for a council house unless we were married and had children but now young people can get one on their own.

It must be very hard for politicians of whatever colour to decide how to cut the national cake when they are damned whatever they do. I have had difficulty at times deciding which to vote for because I like bits of each and dislike bits of each! Never understand how anyone can be totally for or totally against any political party

When I was 23, earning an average wage, I bought my first 3 bedroomed house.

Not many 23 year olds can do that these days.

Never judge a man until you've walked a mile in his shoes. My son is 26 and about to buy his own home, his mortgage will actually be cheaper than renting would have been - I worry for him, I really do. He is going to struggle so badly, no room for error or emergencies or unforeseen circumstances at all. I don't know where the people live who think anyone, let alone young single people, can just go along and get social housing but round here it certainly isn't the case.

When I was 25 I was actually on my third mortgage, having moved from a two bedroomed flat at 20 to a three bedroomed house in a different part of the country.

You're all heart, gracesgran. Children who come out of care do not have a family to support them That's why they are in care. Why should they be penalised again for not having parents who care about them? They have suffered enough already.
My parents sold their house to a charity which turned it into bedsits for kids leaving care at sixteen. They were taught how to budget and look after themselves until they were eighteen, and were then given a flat to rent from a housing association. That would not happen now. They'd be given enough housing benefit for a bedroom in a shared house until they were 25.
It is the Tory party which has done this. Hopefully they will get their comeuppance from all those under 25s who cannot get on the housing ladder, who have zero hours contracts, and who have no chance of leaving the parental home without sharing the rent with lots of others.

You're all heart, gracesgran. I really do feel very upset by your attacks on me durhamjen. You seem to think that anyone who does not say exactly what you think or agree wholeheartedly with your political stance cannot have any compassion.

What I was setting out about children in care was a historical fact. At the end of clarifying this I said ^ It's not good in either case if everything just stops at age 18 but what do you see as the answer JessM?^ Please tell me why this shows me as being "all heart" as you so acidly put it.

Good for the people running the charity you describe but that has little to do with how any party is suggesting we solve these problems. Blaming the Conservatives is taking a very small view as no recent government has faced up to the problems which is also what I said. I would have thought that would read to most people (who actually read it) as showing that I want to find a solution whichever party comes up with it rather than being narrowly partisan.

Beating your chest and blaming people does not help. Show me a party who actually has a workable solution rather than one that just calls the other one names and I will vote for them.

I don't think the Tories will get their comeuppance from this group because the people that all the things you mention affect are so damned disillusioned and generally ground down by life and how it treats them to be a***d about voting or have any belief that doing so will make any difference to them.

Not true of all of them, billiegirl. My granddaughter is 21, and she and her friends are very clued up and raring to vote. They had their first vote in the European elections.
Vote for the Green Party, gracesgran?
Have you actually read the changes that this coalition government has put in place for those it considers young people, who incidentally include those single people up to the age of 35?

I am probably at least as aware as you are durhamjen of the changes.

Holding a particular view does not make anyone a better person it just makes you person with a different view. I cannot imagine why you think it is OK to accuse me of having no heart.

It may well be true, as Gracesnan suggests, that the government needs to budget to make a limited amount of money go round.

HOW a Government choses to make savings is what defines it as far as I am concerned.

This Government targets those people who are at the bottom of our society, the relatively powerless and abjectly poor. It does not, for instance, take more tax from very rich people.

This won't be a popular thing to say but there is an outcry when it is suggested that wealthy pensioners (in the 40% tax band) should lose certain benefits like bus passes and winter fuel allowances.

We can't have it all ways. If older people keep their benefits, someone else has to go without (in this proposal the under 25s).

I suspect that if this government are elected again next year we will follow Australia where young people under 25 get no benefits at all until they have been unemployed for 6 months and during that time they must apply for 40 jobs a month. Most cannot even find that many to apply to and how are they even supposed to look for a job when they have no money to fund that job search. Moves like this will simply push young people into crime, despair and suicide unless they have family to support them

Actually the proposal was way back in 2012. Even though the other parties warned about the under 25s, it has now been extended to the under 35s by the coalition. Not by the Labour party.

This is why young people need more help.
falseeconomy.org.uk/blog/job-prospects-for-youngsters-outside-full-time-education-are-deteriorating

They have less chance than ever before of getting work. When we left school we walked straight into jobs. If we did not like them, we could hand our notice in and get another one the next week. The only time I wanted work and did not get a job straight away was when I moved from one area to another.
Our degrees were paid for, and we had grants to live on.

Petallus, old and young could keep their benefits if everyone and every company in this country paid their taxes.
Pensioners who pay 40% tax do not have to claim their bus passes. Neither do any others if they do not want to, so that is not a problem. You only claim money for the bus pass if you use it.

Here's a radical suggestion. Anyone who wants to pay back their winter fuel allowance can do so. All you have to do on your self-assessment tax form is lie about your income. Tell the tax man you get more than you do.
Will or does anyone do it?

Wouldn't that be fraud?

durham is it really necessary to be so unpleasant to Grace or for that matter anyone else who has a different opinion to you?

It is all very well to go around complaining about whichever party is in power but it would be more helpful to offer solutions to these problems wouldn't it? It is much easier to criticise than to be constructive.

Does anyone really think that any political party will put in their manifesto that they are going to take from the old and give to the young? No, of course not, it is the old who vote!

I do not agree with lying on a tax form (and not everyone has to complete one anyway) but there is nothing stopping anyone from giving as much as they like to charity. Many do.

It is also worth noting that the winter fuel allowance was given to pensioners instead of a pension raise so hardly counts as a 'benefit'. I doubt if enough pensioners pay 40% tax to justify the cost of reclaiming any benefits and don't see why anyone who has worked so hard that they have a big enough pension to do so should be penalised. No, I don't pay 40% tax but maybe those who do have given up a lot to have great careers and great pensions.

And anyway, I thought the WFA was not a means tested benefit.

I think it is probably safer just to write a cheque to HM Treasury, or make a donation to Crisis, than to falsify one's tax return.

I am in the US at the moment. It is noticeable that every store or restaurant we go into has far more employees (of all ages) than a similar establishment would have at home.
I know of course that the US has hideous problems of unemployment in certain places like Detroit, for example, but I cannot help wondering if the government provided more incentives to employers to take on young people, say by waiving the employer's NI contribution for all under 25's, and provide more training grants, there might be fewer young people in need of housing benefit.

Not sure, Ana. I know one year I put something down wrongly - can't remember what, some interest, I think - and ended up having to pay them £30 extra. When the correct documents came through, I could not be bothered to amend it and ask for it back.
I think it's only fraud if you pay them less, not if you pay them more.

Giving to charity is not the same as paying taxes, Nonnie. It is because the tax take is so low that benefits have to be cut.
Paying taxes properly is my solution, so why do you criticise me for criticising and not being constructive. Perhaps you should heed your own advice.

That is very patronising durham. Is it really necessary to be so horrid?

I think all Gns know the difference between giving to charity and paying taxes! We also know the difference between filling in a form correctly and telling lies! Maybe we simply have different values?

I don't understand your 'solution', how do you plan to get people to pay their taxes 'properly'? Saying it should be done is not actually a solution, to do so you have to suggest a foolproof way of achieving it. Its a bit like saying we should all drive better, there has to be a way of enforcing it or it is pointless.

petallus I think I would nuance things a little differently but I do agree with HOW a Government choses to make savings is what defines it as far as I am concerned

It would be expensive to means test pensioner benefits and would set up a whole new level of bureaucracy so I would role all these things into the state pension and then those who earn more would pay more tax. Obviously the government would not get the entire amount back but it would be a simpler system and the amount received would probably be about the same because of the lower admin costs.

Ana you are right, WFA is currently not a means tested benefit. Petallus was suggesting that we may have to look at whether it should be.