The rising sickness and disability benefits bill is “devastating” for the public finances and has “wreaked a terrible human cost”, the prime minister has said.
Keir Starmer penned an op-ed for The Times on Wednesday, after his government announced a £5 billion cut to welfare.
The government announced a raft of welfare measures Tuesday, which it said will help bring more working age people back into jobs and save the taxpayer billions of pounds.
Among the most significant moves is the tightening of eligibility for personal independence payments (PIP), a benefit aimed at helping those with disability or long-term illness with increased living costs.
Around one million people will be affected by the changes to Pip eligibility, the Resolution think tank has said.
Elsewhere, ministers will scrap the work capability assessment for universal credit, the test of whether someone can get incapacity benefit payments based on their fitness for work. This will be replaced by 2028 with a single assessment considering the impact a person’s disability has on daily living, rather than their fitness to work.
***Politics.co.uk is the UK’s leading digital-only political website. Subscribe to our daily newsletter for all the latest news and analysis.***
Starmer has said to the 2.8 million working age people out of work because of long-term sickness is a “damning indictment of the Conservative record” on welfare.
He said: “The facts are shocking. One in eight young people are not in education, employment or training and 2.8 million people of working age are out of work because of long-term sickness.
“In every other G7 economy, the employment rate is now higher than before the pandemic — not here.
“Meanwhile, the proportion of people deemed “unfit to work” by the work capability assessment has skyrocketed. In 2011, it stood at 20 per cent. Now, it has risen to 67 per cent.
“This is a damning indictment of the Conservative record. In 2013, George Osborne pointedly castigated Margaret Thatcher’s legacy of leaving millions to languish on incapacity benefits as “quick-fix politics of the worst kind”.
Writing for The Times, Starmer added: “The result is devastating for the public finances. By 2030 we are projected to spend £70bn a year on working-age incapacity and disability benefits alone.
“But more importantly it has wreaked a terrible human cost. Young people shut out of the labour market at a formative age. People with complex long-term conditions, written off by a single assessment.
“People who want to return to work, yet can’t access the support they need. All this is happening at scale, and it is indefensible. An affront to the values of our country and Labour’s history.”
Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here.
Politics.co.uk is the UK’s leading digital-only political website. Subscribe to our daily newsletter for all the latest news and analysis.
Source: Politics
