Downing
Street considers U-turn on cuts to benefits for disabled people
Controversial
plans to cut personal independence payments (Pip) may be shelved after a tense
cabinet meeting and backlash from Labour MPs
Toby Helm
and James Tapper
Sat 15 Mar
2025 19.30 GMT
Ministers
have left the door open to a humiliating U-turn on their highly contentious
plans to cut benefits for disabled people, amid mounting uproar over the
proposals across the Labour party.
Both Downing
Street and the Department for Work and Pensions did not deny they were about to
backtrack on plans to impose a real-terms cut to the personal independence
payment (Pip) for disabled people, including those who cannot work, by
cancelling an inflation-linked rise due to come into force next spring.
The plans
had been earmarked for inclusion in a green paper scheduled to be published on
Tuesday and had been one of several elements of a wider package of welfare cuts
designed to save between £5bn and £6bn on the ballooning benefits bill.
Ministers,
who are facing the wrath of Labour MPs and peers over the plans, are understood
to have taken fright after being accused in meetings with MPs of planning
measures rejected as unfair even by former Tory chancellor George Osborne
during the Conservative years of austerity.
In his
Political Currency podcast last week with former Labour shadow chancellor Ed
Balls, Osborne said: “I didn’t freeze Pip. I thought [it] would not be regarded
as very fair. What I did try to do was reform Pip.”
Balls, who
is married to the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, infuriated Downing Street by
saying on the same podcast that the plan would not work if its aim was to get
more people back into work, adding that “it’s not a Labour thing to do”.
At a tense
cabinet meeting last Tuesday, several serving members raised their concerns
about how the Labour government would be viewed if it froze Pip and made it
more difficult to receive payments.
Any plan to
freeze Pip or change eligibility rules would require primary legislation,
running the risk that they could become the focus of a sizeable Labour
rebellion in the Commons and the Lords. Several Labour MPs have made it clear
to the Observer that they could not support the plans in any parliamentary
vote.
Speaking to
the Observer, Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, insisted that
Labour was sympathetic to those unable to work because of disability.
“I know as a
constituency MP for 14 long years under the Tories that there will always be
some people who cannot work because of the severity of their disability or
health condition,” she said. “Protecting people in genuine need is a principle
Labour will never compromise on.”
But she also
insisted that the system badly needed reform to ensure that people did not
spend a lifetime on benefits and to prevent the overall benefits bill from
soaring even higher. “Being trapped on benefits if you can work is terrible for
people’s living standards, health and opportunities,” Kendall said.
She added:
“It’s terrible for the country too, as spending on the costs of failure soar.
The sickness and disability bill for working age people has increased by
£20bn since the pandemic, with a further £18bn rise to £70bn projected over
the next five years.
We must fix
this broken system for the people who depend on it and the country as a whole.”
In a further
measure to placate furious Labour MPs, sources said Kendall would move to
legislate to create “a right to try” guarantee to ensure sick and disabled
people could take a job safe in the knowledge that they would not be forced to
undergo a new reassessment and the possibility of losing their benefits as a
result.
One million
people would see their benefits reduced under the government’s proposed
reforms, according to the Times.
The Joseph
Rowntree Foundation said that it would be the biggest cut to disability
benefits since the Office for Budget Responsibility was created in 2010.
Ministers
are said to be examining changing eligibility for Pip in such a way that it
would not be available for people who need someone else to help them wash below
the waist, or need to be reminded to go to the toilet to prevent them having an
accident.
The new
rules would, in effect, mean that only the most severely disabled would
receive Pip, while those with mental health conditions would not.
Ministers
are also planning to scrap the work capability assessment, which is used to
decide if people receiving universal credit are fit for work. It is separate
from Pip, which is intended to help cover the extra costs of being disabled,
whether or not they can work.
About 4.8
million people receive Pip or the benefit it was designed to replace, the
disability living allowance.
Campaigners
say the problem facing disabled people is that even those who are desperate to
return to the workforce find they cannot cope, or employers are not willing to
accommodate them.
A government
programme that supported 286,000 disabled people over the past seven years who
wanted to find work was only able to secure jobs for one in five.
Anna
Stevenson, a benefits expert at the disability charity Turn2us, said: “These
were people who, although they were unwell, thought they were probably well
enough to work and really keen to work.”
Stevenson
said that if the government was serious about helping more disabled people
into work, it needed to change employment law.
“If you want
very high employment among disabled people, one of the things you need to
change is how easy it is for employers to fire people when they’re ill. But
that has the potential to distort the labour market. There are always
trade-offs.”
In the
1970s, employers would put workers on “light duties” if they were unable to do
harder, physical jobs, but that practice has all but vanished, leaving disabled
people to rely on the state instead.
“We have a
duty to get the welfare bill on a more sustainable path and we will achieve
that through meaningful, principled reforms rather than arbitrary cuts to
spending.
“That why as
part of our Plan for Change we will bring forward our proposals for reform
shortly that will unlock work to help us reach our ambition of an 80%
employment rate, and is fairer to all.”
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário