Changes to benefits: £23 billion in benefits unclaimed every year*

What are the preconceptions of being on benefits?

Transcript

00:00 We give support for the first two children, but your third child, fourth child, no support

00:06 at all. And that puts the whole family into financial insecurity. All the children are

00:11 struggling. A third of our children in the UK are living in poverty at the moment. It's

00:16 a national disgrace. So get rid of that third child limit and that immediately bring a couple

00:21 of hundred thousand children out of poverty.

00:23 PM Rishi Sunak was quoted saying that welfare should not be a lifestyle choice. He went

00:28 on to say that he plans to change the rules in the future so that welfare recipients who

00:33 do not try to take on work or try to meet the conditions set out for a year would lose

00:39 all of their benefits.

00:41 The DWP knows that on average people are a bit concerned about applying for benefits

00:45 and often wait as long as nine weeks before they put in their benefit application. If

00:49 they then are successful and get a five week wait before their first payment, that's 14

00:54 weeks without income, by which point people are in a really, really difficult financial

00:58 situation that is much harder to get out of. So firstly, ban the five week wait for the

01:03 first payment.

01:04 Michael Clarke, who also represents Turn To Us, a charity which supports people in financial

01:09 difficulty, expressed serious concern over the change.

01:14 People who live in poverty for a long time, of course, are going to become pretty unwell

01:18 because it's incredibly stressful. If you don't know how you're going to feed your children

01:21 this evening, it's going to be really stressful and that raises all sorts of cortisol and

01:26 stuff in our bodies. It makes us less able to live well. But we also know that if you've

01:30 got very poor mental health and work becomes very difficult and we see really significant

01:36 increases in mental ill health among the younger people for the first time in generations,

01:41 then people are going to find it harder to stay in work. Policy and Practice, another

01:45 organisation last year, found that £23 billion in benefits go unclaimed every year.

01:51 And that's something like £2,700 per family or per person.