An update has been issued amid rumours that Personal Independence Payments are to be frozen and some of those with the most extreme disabilities are set to lose money. Labour is carrying out a massive review of benefits payments after costs soared, as did numbers of people claiming them in the last few years.
With the UK facing serious financial issues including having to spend a lot more on defence, Ed Balls on Good Morning Britain today said ITV was reporting that serious cuts impacting the disabled are being planned. ITV reported that the government is planning to unveil more than £6bn of welfare savings that will see far tougher tests imposed for a key disability benefit, and some payments frozen in 2026.
He said: “We’re talking about ways to help people into work. ITV reporting at the weekend, part of this is going to be freezing those, those personal independence payments. Under these plans, even those with extreme disabilities in the unfit to work category are likely to lose money.” He asked Accessibility Consultant Shani Dhanda: “How do you react to the chance of that?”I
She said: “It’s so cruel, it’s so cruel because on average disabled people face unavoidable extra costs of £1,010 a month. That takes into consideration you receiving PIP. So even if you do receive that benefit, you’ve still got to find an extra £1,000 pounds a month. So if they’re gonna cut it even more, where are people gonna get this money from? Where are they getting it from now?”
According to reports the radical package of reforms will see:
- £5bn in savings by making it harder to qualify for Personal Independence Payments
- Further savings by freezing PIP payments next year, so they do not rise with inflation
- Raising the basic rate for Universal Credit paid to those searching for work, or in work, while cutting the rate for those who are judged as unfit for work.
- A billion pounds of savings ploughed into a major investment for employment support for those who are looking for a job
Susanna Reid said: “Shani Dhanda, £100 billion by 2030. That is a huge amount of money. Can you see why the government would want to cut it back?” Ms Dhanda replied: “Absolutely, and I don’t disagree that we do need to reform the system. I agree, but not like this, not at the expense of disabled people. Nearly half of everyone that already lives in poverty is a disabled person or they’re a carer of of a disabled person.
“And a high percentage of people that live in destitution are also disabled. If we’re going to cut support to the people that need it most, it’s only going to push even more people into extreme deep poverty with the backdrop of the assisted dying bill.”
Ed Balls asked: “The government says that what’s happened over time is that the system has stopped helping people get into work and then actually the financial incentive means that often people are worse off if they take a job and therefore you have people in their 20s who are going to be stuck on sickness benefit for 20 – 30 – 40 years.”
Ms Dhanda replied: “I think we absolutely need to encourage employers to do much more, but when we actually look in terms of the rates that people get, it’s very difficult to even be eligible for something like PIP. The form alone is 40 pages that you need to fill in, you need to back it up with so much medical evidence, and it’s less than £200 a week that people get. How many of us can really live on that much amount of money?”
Susanna said: “Mark Littlewood, you’re director of popular conservatism, you used to be director of the Institute of Economic Affairs and and were an advisor to Liz Truss when she was Prime Minister. Why do you think these benefits have ballooned so much, and do you accept that they might have ballooned for very legitimate reasons?”
Mr Littlewood said “Well, it’s possible. I mean, it seems to me most likely it’s some sort of post-COVID psychological reason. And the government’s right to tackle this. We have a worklessness crisis in Britain, worse than any other G7 country in terms of getting people back into work after COVID. We’ve just seen those numbers that we might see this bill increase to 100 billion by 2030. Well, nobody thinks that illness and disability is going to increase. That sort of level.
“So why would the bill increase? There must somewhere be an incentive problem in the system. So the government’s right to tackle it. I would agree with Shani, it’s got to be done incredibly sensitively, but we do need to get people back into work. We, we’ve got 1 in 8 young people who are not in education, not in training, not in work. That’s a huge number.”