If people "genuinely" cannot work - probably about 1m through mental health or disability the state needs to provide for them. That doesn't include those who don't want to work and use disability as an means to an end.

With regards to what the minimum wage needs to be this is trade off between paying benefits and receipts from business in the form of CT and employers NI. What you could do is increase minimum wage to £10/hr and personal allowance to £20k and take all those on minimum wage completely out of the tax picture. Then you wouldn't need to pay benefits - much more efficient - but then you would have a load of civil servants with no job?

So your solution is what? To raise minimum wage and the personal allowance? That requires funding. How about raising CT and 45p tax rate to pay for it all?

"According to figures quoted in a parliamentary report, there are major misconceptions among the general public about the scale of benefits fraud in particular. It says a 2013 survey found Britons believe almost a quarter, 24 per cent, of all benefits were claimed fraudulently, 34 times greater than the official 0.7 per cent estimate."

When you slavishly follow a particular dogma, I imagine facts are really annoying?

It's also smaller than the amount of money underpaid to those entitled to it. And a fraction of the amount of tax avoidance.

Exactly, the Tories peddle this Striver vs Skiver narrative is nonsense to set the lower orders fighting amongst themselves for the crumbs off their table, while they carve up the hog roast amongst themselves and their friends.

Indeed:

"According to figures published by the government in October, the tax "gap" for 2013/2014 stood at £34bn, or 6.4 per cent. This is the shortfall between what is estimated by HMRC to be due in tax and what is actually collected.

This eye-watering figure includes as much as £14bn in uncollected income tax, national insurance and capital gains tax and £13.1bn in uncollected VAT.

It should be noted, however, that these estimates are based on a lot of assumptions about what was due in the first place and that deliberate and illegal evasion is only a small part of the problem. This was deemed to account for £4.4bn of the lost duties, while legal but dubious avoidance accounted for £2.7bn. The rest is spread across various issues such as duties not paid on smuggled goods, non-payment because of bankruptcy or hardship, or simple errors.

It's also only fair to note that the percentage uncollected each year is one of the lowest in the world, although some argue the HMRC figures underestimate the scale of the problem and the gap is more likely to be in the region of £120bn."

I never quoted a figure - so your quote is of no relevance in this argument.

Surely you wouldn't want anyone to pay more tax than they are legally obliged - or is just the well off that its ok for?

Because rather than having huge departments to calculate and pay out who is owed what benefit you sort it out at the first stage.

It doesn't require anymore funding as the businesses would fund it through lower CT - why pay over the CT to pay it out again?

Its called working smarter more efficiently.

The quote is very relevant; you decided arbitrarily that a million people make legitimate claims because they can't work, and that the rest are slackers who are making a choice not to work. You're wrong, and that quote is a factual rebuttal, which illustrates the misconceptions of the general public - misconceptions which I'd argue are created and fuelled by the right wing media, and those who repeat as facts what they read in the Daily Mail and The Sun.

There is no argument here - you were just wrong.

No i'm not how many people would you say are mentally physically unable to work 20 years ago when we had far more manual labour jobs the total was 1.1m - so despite advances in medical science, better H&S at work and far less manual labour the number has trebled!!

So in a reasonable well off country 10% of the workforce are unable to work due to disability really?

Yes. Presumably you are in favour of owners of rabid right wing newspapers living in off-shore tax havens while persecuting the poorest in society?You are in favour of 4 out of the top 10 FTSE companies paying no tax? The Sun 'newspaper' paying £1 tax?

That's a global issue and not so easy to resolve. What these companies do do is produce well paid employment. Jezzas targeted 5%

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If its within the law absolutely - I wouldn't want to pay more than I should nor would I want any member of my team doing so either - the fact you think its OK is bizarre but totally understandable given your views about rich people.

I would suspect BP actually lost money on its UK operation - they will be losing minimum $30 a barrel for every barrel they get out of the north sea.

Vodafone are a different matter - but unless you change the laws why would they not do it?

Tighten the law close the loop holes - its pretty simple - then they would have to comply

Please tell me what are my views of rich people?

Perhaps you need to read the post - off shore living stealing money from the needy!!!

No wonder we are so unproductive if 20% of the working population is disabled - really!!!

I know - how annoyingly inconvenient of the lazy disableds; what would you suggest we do with them all, to improve our productivity?

Same as the US, actually. Around 16% of the world's workforce overall has some form of disability.

Maybe the disabled should be culled to save money on disability benefits? Also if you are out of work maybe you should be put in a workers camp so you wont get 'Money for nothing' from the state. I'm sure no one else has ever thought of these ideas

HIV, being fat, allergies, stammering, Dyslexia, diabetes, cancer, skin conditions all come under the disabilities list of the Equality act. No wonder the % is so high.

With that in mind we have a disabled PM.

The idea behind the Act is to make reasonable adjustments so people with disabilities can be employed, rather than unemployed.

To quote a Daily Mail reader



What are my views of rich people?

So actually the number of people with mental and physical disabilities that prevents them from working is?

Does the 1.6m unemployed exclude those claiming disability?