On Tuesday 18 March this year, Liz Kendall confirmed fears from anticipatory leaks over the previous weekend, and announced devastating cuts to benefits, in particular targeting sick and disabled people, a group I joined 13 years ago. It is no exaggeration to call these cuts terrifying, and welfare support calls to Mind are surging.
The amount the government is seeking to cut from the benefits bill is colossal: £4.5bn every year by 2029/30. To put this in context, the government currently spends £48bn on health-related benefits, so this is a cut of just under 10%.
How the cuts will be achieved
The primary vehicle the government will be using to make these cuts is the eligibility criteria for the daily living component of Personal Independence Payments. If that sounds extremely technical, that’s because it is. And that’s part of the point. I’ve gone through the PIP assessment process four times now, and I barely understand it. What I can tell you is that this process is confusing, adversarial, and deeply, deeply humiliating.
Targeting cuts through this complex process means that headline writers and TV news anchors will skip talking about these issues in favour of ones that make a snappy tagline. Of course, disabled people, as a group famously blessed with vast amounts of free time, energy and financial resources, will find it easy to lobby their MPs, flood TV studios, and write endless op-eds to fight for their rights! I jest, obviously – writing this brief article has taken me a full three days.
So, what are these complex and technical changes? The two benefits that will change are PIP and the health element of Universal Credit, and we’ll look at them separately, then see how they interact.
Changes to Personal Independence Payments
The primary eligibility change is to do with the scoring matrix by which claimants qualify for the daily living component of PIP. This is a list of 10 areas of life with descriptors of ability that award different points. For example, if you need help to get in or out of the bath or shower, you get 3 points under the washing and bathing activity. Up until now, getting between 8 and 11 points qualified you for the standard rate, and 12 or more for the enhanced rate. However, under the new rules, claimants need to score at least 4 points in one single activity in order to qualify for even the standard rate of assistance. And if you remember our example above, that means being unable to wash by yourself will not qualify you for assistance.
A Freedom of Information request reported this week in the Big Issue revealed that, “87% of the 1,283,000 working age people currently receiving the standard daily living PIP payment scored less than four points in each of the ten categories in the PIP assessment – meaning that they would no longer qualify for the daily living PIP benefit under Labour’s proposed new rules.” And further, that, “13% of the 1,608,000 working age claimants receiving the higher, ‘enhanced’ daily living PIP payment would also fall foul of the planned changes – giving a total of about 1.325m current PIP claimants who would be rendered ineligible by the DWP’s proposals.”
These huge numbers give us an idea of how the government intends to hit that £4.5 billion reduction target – by taking all support away from people who can’t cook and are reliant on microwave meals (2 points), can’t eat and use a nasogastric tube for nutrition (2 points), need supervision to use the toilet (2 points), can’t dress their lower body by themselves (2 points), use an aid or appliance to speak (2 points), who can’t make any but the simplest budgeting decisions on their own (2 points). It’s impossible to look at this list without seeing the cruelty of these cuts, and wonder how on earth the 1.3 million people who will be affected will manage when all support to manage these challenging conditions is removed.
Changes to Universal Credit
And then there’s Universal Credit. Currently, the health component of UC is awarded via the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) giving access to the Low Capacity for Work Related Activity (LCWRA) group. Current claimants who qualify for this benefit receive £97 per week.
The new plans call for the abolishment of the WCA and an alignment with the PIP criteria, meaning that all those people scoring only two points per descriptor because they can stick something in the microwave and speak using a communication board will be considered to be as fit for work as an olympian just retiring from their professional sporting career.
In addition, those lucky enough to get enough points in the right places will, if they have the misfortune of applying after April 2026, receive only £50 per week. And only if they’re over the age of 22. What disabled people under that age are supposed to do is left unanswered, but by now you should be seeing where that increase in calls to suicide hotlines is coming from.
People will die as a result of these changes. There is no sugar-coating this. These cuts force us to conclude that Labour is no longer the party for the working class, but only for workers. And they are sending a clear message to all working-age people in the UK, no matter their health and ability: work, or die.
