Proposals for significant cuts to disability benefits announced in today’s health and disability benefits green paper would mean people with severe health conditions and disabilities being plunged into deep poverty, warns anti-poverty charity Z2K, which provides expert frontline advice and representation to people receiving social security support.
The government is proposing significant restrictions to the eligibility criteria for personal independence payment (PIP), a non-means tested benefit for working-age disabled adults. The proposals would make it harder to qualify for an award of the daily living component of PIP, by requiring that a claimant must ‘score’ at least 4 points under at least one activity in order to be eligible.
Currently, a significant number of disabled people qualify for support by scoring between 1 and 3 points across a range of activities, and would lose out under the new proposals.
Although PIP is not a means-tested benefit, the vast majority of those receiving it do receive means-tested support, meaning they are on low incomes. Given that seven in ten people who use food banks are disabled, Z2K fears that the measures being proposed would plunge families who are already struggling into deep poverty. Significant cuts to disability support will also deepen child poverty, as Z2K has set out previously.
Liz Kendall claimed at the dispatch box that the government’s reforms to disability benefits will ‘focus support’ where it is needed. But data from Z2K’s advice services indicate that the measures being proposed by the government are in fact poorly targeted, and will see severely disabled people denied support. The case studies below demonstrate how the specific measures being proposed will deny support to people with very significant physical conditions, including stroke survivors and amputees, and people with severe mental health problems including psychosis.
Anela Anwar, Chief Executive of Z2K, said:
‘These shocking and dangerous proposals would have a devastating effect on families who are already living in poverty. The plans make a mockery of the government’s commitments to tackle child poverty and the widespread reliance on food banks.
‘These plans will remove support from people who have the most severe health conditions, many of whom have virtually no prospect of entering the labour market any time soon. It cannot be right for the government to seek to balance the books on the backs of those who are most in need of support.
‘Despite the government’s rhetoric, the truth is that these are panicked cuts which represent a return to the same old failed approach of prioritising short-term savings over real reform. An approach which not only fails disabled people, but which has also been shown to fail to generate long-term savings for government.
‘If the government is serious about meaningful reform, it must rethink these reckless proposals to ensure that those with the most severe disabilities are protected. We need a social security system that we can all rely on in times of need.’
