On 1 July, MPs will vote on the biggest package of cuts to welfare since George Osborne’s years of austerity. The Government’s own assessment predicts that 250,000 people will be pushed into poverty as a result of the proposals – including 50,000 children. But these are a gross underestimate of the real scale of the cuts.
There are already 700,000 disabled people living in poverty, and a further 800,000 that are likely to lose out by the end of the Parliament. In addition, around 150,000 carers could lose their allowance if the person they are caring for fails to qualify for PIP.
Under the plans in the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment (PIP) Bill, individuals will need to score 4 points in at least one of the daily living categories to qualify for payments. Charities predict that those who need help to wash, prepare food or go to the toilet are likely to miss out. The rate of Universal Credit will also be halved for new claimants and frozen for those who already qualify. Added together, these changes will raise between £5bn and £7bn. It’s difficult to therefore see how this isn’t a change that’s being driven by the numbers, rather than the need to properly reform the benefits system.
The Government suggests there is an unsustainable rise in the benefits bill, but as a % of GDP, we are spending the same amount on working age benefits as we were in 2015. Cuts to social security are not an economic necessity – they’re a political choice. Contrary to some of the suggestions, the figures show that PIP is actually an underclaimed benefit – with less than half of the disabled people that are eligible making a claim. It’s pretty clear that the recent increases in the numbers of claims being made are therefore largely the result of declining public health, combined with increased financial hardship.
Rightly, ministers talk about the positives of helping more people who can work, to find a job. But this isn’t the root and branch overhaul that the benefit system needs. We know that currently the support for disabled people is complex and confusing, payments often fail to cover the essentials of living, the process of claiming is time consuming and we have five outsourced private companies who carry out the assessment into people’s eligibility. Seven out of ten of these ends in an appeal. These are the aspects that need reforming.
Even the proposed additional £1bn for employment support doesn’t fully come into force until years after the cuts to benefits have been made, and The Learning and Work Institute estimates that only 45,000–90,000 people might find work through the proposed programme anyway. This is hardly then the answer to those who either cannot work or find their benefits are cut, but still can’t get a job.
In fact, PIP is not an out-of-work benefit, so cutting it is likely to undermine efforts to get disabled people into employment, rather than supporting them into gainful work. Too often, it’s the attitude of employers that is the real barrier to disabled people finding a job. The reluctance to offer flexible working patterns, harsh sickness absence policies and disability discrimination are the real blockers that disabled people face.
The misguided view that cutting expenditure or tightening belts will bring savings also relies on the same, discredited arguments made about austerity. We know this approach shrinks the economy and leaves everyone worse off.
According to the New Economics Foundation, the Government’s projected savings could be entirely wiped out due to depressed economic demand in local communities and cutting disability benefits will inevitably lead to increased costs elsewhere — such as rising pressure on the NHS and local authority social care.
The Government therefore needs to recognise the unpopularity of this proposal among voters across the country, withdraw the Bill, start redesigning a new benefits system in conjunction with disabled people’s organisations and begin investing in employment support programmes for those who are able to work – including the right to try a job without losing benefits.
When there are other more progressive levers that Government could pull to raise much-needed funds, it seems impossible to justify a rather crude and hurried attempt to raise money from some of the poorest people in society, and this isn’t something I can support.
Cutting PIP is based on the same discredited arguments used to justify austerity – I will vote against this change
