(Photo by Guy Smallman/Getty Images)
Last month the Minister for Work & Pensions, Liz Kendall, unveiled a new Green Paper outlining major reform to disability and sickness benefits. Here we look at the changes, the likely impacts and what some of the organisations we fund have to say.
The Government’s consultation is open until 30 June 2025.
Some positive steps
The worklessness crisis requires strong action, and some of the Government’s proposals could be positive steps – like the new ‘Pathways to Work’ support offer, and the ‘Right to Try’, aimed at reducing the loss of benefits fear that can act as a barrier to paid employment.
These measures have been informed by organisations such as Z2K – underlining the importance of listening to people who are on benefits.
The government also announced that it will boost the standard rate of universal credit above inflation, a welcome move.
Damaging cuts to disability and sickness benefits
But ultimately, these positive measures were overshadowed by the single biggest announcement: £5 billion worth of cuts to health and sickness benefits. This included tightening eligibility to Personal Independence Payments (PIP) and to the health-related element of universal credit.
Resolution Foundation figures show that the plans to restrict PIP mean that 800,000 people would no longer qualify for support, depriving each of them of up to £6,300 each year from 2029-30.
Most people can’t take that type of hit to their incomes. 70% of PIP claimants are living in families with the poorest half of incomes. These changes will disproportionately affect lower-income households.
Will the reforms work?
Ultimately, the sweeping reforms are framed as being about helping more people into employment. This is the right ambition. But research has shown that taking people’s income away doesn’t help them into employment (for example here and here).
Instead, these changes will push people into deep or deeper poverty. The government’s own impact assessment finds that a quarter of a million more people will be pushed into poverty because of these measures, including many thousands of children.
This is in sharp contrast to the government’s stated aims of ending child poverty – but also to its overall ambition, of economic growth. Poverty is expensive. And aside from anything else, we know that the wellbeing benefit of having secure benefits has a real economic impact.
The causes of the worklessness crisis fall outside the scope of the benefits system, and so do the solutions.
If the cuts are purely a cost-cutting measure, doing this on the back of low-income sick and Disabled people isn’t the right way to go about this.
What civil society groups have to say
Words by Release, who support people with a history of drug dependency. We fund it to provide clients with social security advice.
The proposed changes to Personal Independence Payment (PIP) will, if enacted, further entrench the harms of austerity and the pandemic for the young and disabled. It will disproportionately impact our client group and society’s most vulnerable, pushing them further into poverty.
The changes are said to be necessary to address growing welfare budget costs, but the savings projected, in comparison to the overall welfare budget and government spending, are tiny. The effect on the disabled will be huge. The changes buy in to the dangerous myth that the welfare state is overgenerous, and that the solution to the growing mental health crisis is to reduce entitlement and increase so called incentives into the workplace. Disabled people should not be financial pawns in the government’s attempts to balance its books and should be the last targeted for savings.
We see week to week the difficulties the most vulnerable have in accessing state support that often means the difference between feeding themselves and their families or going hungry, paying their energy costs or going without heating. Further restricting support for the most vulnerable will push more people who cannot work – and those who can but who need the additional financial support to do so - into poverty.
The announcement itself is having a chilling effect on our clients, with many terrified that their PIP entitlement will be taken away immediately. One of our clients awaiting a PIP appeal hearing attended an appointment with us recently and expressed that they had “lost hope” in the process because of the proposed cuts. For those with mental health issues, this decision by the Government, along with the comments by the Health Secretary of people being over diagnosed, is creating distress and dismay amongst many of our most vulnerable clients.
We strongly urge the Government to reverse these proposed changes and direct their efforts towards creating a progressive tax system that benefits our society as a whole.
From clients of the Arachne Women’s Group
Sophie, 53: “The news is making me panic so much. I’m worried about how I will survive, pay my bills. It’s causing me asthma attacks.”
Nicky, 60: “The uncertainty of all this is unbearable. Devastating really. I can’t sleep at night.”
Words by WinVisible, a grassroots Disabled women’s organisation. We fund its Disabled Mothers’ Rights Campaign.
We’re determined to stop these appalling cuts to Universal Credit disability addition and PIP which will hit women hard: especially women with mental distress, disabled single mothers, and family carers whose meagre allowance is tied to PIP.
As Disabled mums, we know we will struggle, leading to an increase in our children being removed. The Green Paper insultingly calls us all “economically inactive”, denying the value of our caring work and other contributions, our entitlement to income, and threatening our survival, along with the dangerous Assisted Dying Bill.
Welfare not warfare – if they can find the money to kill, they can find the money to support our independent living and our family life.
Words by Ruth Patrick from Changing Realities, a participatory online project working with over 100 parents and carers living on a low income across the UK.
"When a Government's own impact assessment says that their changes will directly push thousands into poverty, surely it's time to go back to the drawing board and think again.
"The Labour Government was elected on a mandate of change, but all we have seen from them to date is the same punitive approach of cuts and harmful rhetoric that totally misunderstands the root of the policy problem.
"Families in poverty need more support and access to better services, not the terrifying threat of further cuts to what is already a threadbare social security safety net."
Words by Mary-Ann Stephenson, Director of the Women’s Budget Group
“We believe that cutting £5bn from Disabled people’s benefits will undermine the Government’s efforts to strengthen the economy and support Disabled people into work. These cuts will have a devastating impact on some of the poorest and most vulnerable individuals, including Disabled women and carers – who already face significant barriers in accessing support and employment opportunities. Cutting their incomes will only exacerbate these challenges, leaving them without the essential help they need
“In fact, since we put out this statement it is clear that it is actually £6.5bn that is coming off disabled people's benefits, because the £1.5bn spent on supporting people into work comes off the money saved from the cuts.
“Recent WBG research shows that Disabled people, particularly Disabled women, have already borne the brunt of cuts to social security and public services, experiencing an 11% drop in living standards since 2010.
“These benefit cuts could disproportionately impact disabled victim-survivors of domestic abuse by making it even more difficult for them to access the benefits necessary to work and be financially independent from the abuser. Disabled victim-survivors are nearly twice as likely to experience economic abuse compared to non-disabled women, and are nearly four times more likely to have a partner or ex-partner stop them, or try to stop them, accessing benefits that they or their children are entitled to.”
Words from Z2k
"The green paper proposes significant changes to the rates of universal credit. The extra payment given to people who are too ill to work will be cut by almost 50% for new claimants, and frozen for three years for existing claimants. Alongside this, the green paper proposes a £7/week increase to the basic rate of universal credit.
"This would mark a huge cut in support for seriously ill and disabled people under universal credit. Particularly when accompanied by big cuts to disability support via PIP, the plans will see disabled people losing out on really significant levels of support. This will doubtless drive up destitution and lead to even more disabled people struggling to pay for essentials like food and bills.
"Z2K has long called for an increase to the low basic rate of universal credit, which is one of the lowest among comparable countries and which drives destitution and food bank use. But the government’s proposed meagre increase does not go anywhere near far enough, at a time where reliance on food banks has become widespread. The government must go further and set out a clear plan to meaningfully increase the basic rate of universal credit, so that we can truly begin to tackle poverty in this country."
What can I do?
The consultation is open until at least 30 June – anyone, an organisation or individual, can respond. The National Survivors Union Network is publishing guidance and templates on how to submit a response.
You can also write to your MP to make your voice heard, using Z2K’s tool.
Finally, it’s worth stressing that these changes are not in effect, and likely won’t be for some time. If you need help applying for PIP, you can use Turn2Us’ PIP Helper.
