1741.jpg

Benefits crackdown ‘to save £5bn by 2030’, claims Liz Kendall as disability charities say cuts are ‘immoral’ – UK politics live

by
World

Disability charities urge government to abandon ‘immoral and devastating’ benefit cuts

Liz Kendall, who is still taking questions in the Commons, is arguing that sick and disabled people will be better off from these plans. She said that people able to work would be helped back into a job, making them better off, and that people never able to work would enjoy new protections.

But if there is anyone in the disability world who is taking that positive a view of what is being planned, they don’t seem to have spoken up yet. The initial reaction from disability charities is overwhelmingly damning.

Here are extracts from some of the statements that have already dropped.

From Charles Gillies, policy co-chair at the Disability Benefits Consortium, an umbrella body representing more than 100 charities and organisations

These immoral and devastating benefits cuts will push more disabled people into poverty, and worsen people’s health …

Any targeted cuts to disabled people on universal credit and employment and support allowance will largely hit those who are unable to work and rely on these benefits to survive.

We are united in urging the government to abandon these cruel cuts.

From James Taylor, executive director of strategy at Scope

The biggest cuts to disability benefits on record should shame the government to its core. They are choosing to penalise some of the poorest people in our society. Almost half of families in poverty include someone who is disabled.

Life costs more if you are disabled. Ripping £5bn out of the system by 2030 will be a catastrophe for disabled peoples’ living standards and independence.

From Sarah Hughes, chief executive at Mind

Mental health problems are not a choice – but it is a political choice to make it harder for people to access the support they need to live with dignity and independence.

These reforms will only serve to deepen the nation’s mental health crisis.

Key events

Around 900,000 people now getting UC sickness top-up could lose £2,400 a year from 2028-29 under reforms, IFS says

The government has not yet published its impact assessment that will show how many people will be affected by the cuts to sickness and disability benefits announced today. That will come out next week, alongside the spring statement.

But the Institute for Fiscal Studies has published an analysis that does give some figures for the number of people likely to be affected. Here are the key numbers.

  • The IFS says that about 900,000 people who currently get the health element of universal credit (UC) – top-up payments because they are sick (see 12.27pm) – but who do not get Pip (the personal independence payment) would be worse off by £2,400 a year from 2028-29. That’s because the new rules imply they would lose the top-up, it says.

  • People claiming the UC top-up for the first time under these rules will get £2,500 a year less under the new system than they would have done under the old one, the IFS says.

The IFS also says that the changes are designed to incentivise more sick and disabled people into work. But it says some of the measures could be counter-productive. By linking receipt of the UC health top-up to claiming Pip, the new rules could encourage even more people to apply for Pip. And, by increasing the value of basic UC, that could reduce the incentive for people on it to get a job, the IFS says.

Commenting on the plans, Tom Waters, an associate director at IFS said:

This package is a fundamental break from the past few decades of welfare policy. The increase in basic out-of-work support, while not very large, is the biggest permanent real terms rise since at least 1980. With it is promised even higher support in the period shortly after job loss in the form of contribution-based unemployment insurance.

At the same time the health-related benefit system will be tightened, cut, and entitlement will no longer depend upon whether you can work or not.

The hope is more employment and fewer people in the disability and incapacity benefit system.

The risk is that it’s precisely the individuals receiving health-related benefits that are least responsive to financial incentives to work, and perhaps most in need of extra financial support.

Share

Updated at 


Source link

Tags: No tags

Add a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Gravatar profile