Dickens
Whoever made the suggestion that the WFP should be removed from Pensioners and given to those struggling on UC - needs to give his/her head a wobble.
Hardship is hardship whether you're old or young, and plenty of pensioners are suffering under it.
Or, perhaps the suggestion was to remove it from those pensioners whose income is over a certain level, and that bit's been forgotten in the OP? I mean, does anyone in the UK really believe that those reliant only on the State pension are not impoverished?
The whole system of pensions and benefits, credits, etc seems to be a cumbersome mess - goodness only knows what it costs to administrate. I realise that 'one size does not fit all' but wouldn't it be better to simply pay every pensioner a reasonable level of income and do away with all the add-ons? And those on UC who are working - should they not be paid a wage they can reasonably live on? How much money are we actually saving by trying to save money?
And, before anyone points it out - I understand that higher wages mean higher prices and increased benefits mean increased taxation, but I would argue that we've been virtually indoctrinated to believe that taxation is an evil we must continually fight against. But the ridiculous thing is, we still expect the same level of services from the NHS and other service 'providers', we still want our roads, highways and byways to be maintained... we want the whole infrastructure to function at its best - but we don't want to pay for these things. And we want our cheap goods, our 'stuff' from Amazon at low prices... but complain about our low wages... We just cannot simply pay little and expect more.
Of course, this is purely a personal POV and I respect that others will not agree and see the issue quite differently. But, the fact remains that the pensions and benefits system is unwieldy and cumbersome and therefore costly in both time and money.
Some excellent points here. You may want to visit the YouGov page and have a look at the green paper on disability benefit reform - the government is proposing yet more far reaching reform to the structure of disability benefits under the guise of ‘providing more support’ while trying to reduce the cost. They’re even looking at merging PIP (an extra cost benefit and currently not means tested) with UC/ESA, thereby means testing it by the back door and putting millions of already disadvantaged disabled people into more hardship. If they’re honest they know that the only way to reduce the cost is to make more disabled people ineligible to claim, but they continue to dress it up as ‘support’. As you pointed out @Dickens, if we want a proper NHS and a robust welfare safety net, then among other things, increased taxation and encouraging employers to pay better wages is the way forward, instead of constantly putting the squeeze on the most vulnerable because they’re an easy target.