Linda Burnip looks at the government’s horrific changes to the social security system.

Last Friday, April 19^th, Rishi Sunak launched an all-out attack against disabled people and their rights. It seems the timing of this may have been related to the government receiving the latest damning report from the UN Disability Committee.

The report highlights the government’s shameful failure to make any significant progress with human rights for disabled people since 2016. Further, there has been actual regression in the government’s policies and their implementation and the continuation of the government’s “grave and systematic violations” of disabled people’s human rights.

The report outlines many of the major discriminations which disabled people continue to experience, including the appalling poverty in which many live; the increasingly dire welfare benefit system; the ongoing issues around employment; the unacceptable levels of neglect, coercion, abuse and deaths in psychiatric hospitals; the continuing need to put an end to all forms of institutionalisation which has been increasing and to ensure that disabled people can live independently in the community and achieve their whole potential. 

This report was produced before the horrific changes Sunak announced to the social security system.

Sunak attempted to justify the proposed changes by saying the system lets people down by not being focused enough on work and what disabled people might be able to do, while totally ignoring the multitude of barriers faced in getting and keeping employment. Not least of these is the six month backlog in assessments for Access to Work funding –  and if you’ve ever looked into the lack of jobs based solely on working from home, you’ll know they are non-existent.

Some of the disastrous changes proposed by Sunak include a change to the Fit Note process, stopping all payments if someone does not comply with conditions set by a Work Coach, and a pledge to “tighten” the Work Capability Assessment.

He also announced that Personal Independence Payments (PIP) will be given a major overhaul, with a new consultation set to launch in the near future, specifically looking at changes to the eligibility criteria, assessment process and types of support that can be offered particularly, but not solely, affecting people with a Mental Health condition.

The Prime Minister said that “people with less severe mental health conditions should be expected to engage with the world of work” as he set out the UK Government’s new plans. He quoted a figure of 1.35 million people having anxiety and depression but failed to say that of these 1 million people had anxiety and depression as a secondary condition which I’m sure in many cases is due to the ever-growing waiting lists for NHS treatment.

The PIP reform would only apply in England and Wales as people in Scotland currently on PIP will move to Adult Disability Payment (ADP) and the devolved Social Security Scotland IT system before the end of 2025.

So what exactly are Sunak’s plans?

Removing benefits from the long-term unemployed who do not accept a job

New legislation will be put forward in the next Parliament to change the rules so that anyone who has been on benefits for 12 months and doesn’t comply with conditions set by their Work Coach – including accepting available work – will have their unemployment claim closed and their benefits removed entirely.

Amending Work Capability Assessments

Sunak explained that the UK Government is committed to removing the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) entirely and introducing a new personalised, tailored approach to employment support, with the aim of helping disabled people and people with health conditions into work. However, these assessments would be carried out by Department for Work and Pensions staff with no medical training or qualifications, which potentially is an even more frightening prospect than having an Occupational Therapist or Physiotherapist assessing someone’s mental health condition, as is the situation currently.

The planned reforms are expected to reduce the number of people assessed as not needing to prepare for work by 424,000 by 2028-29.

Review of the Fit Note process

The Prime Minister has also announced a review of the Fit Note system to stop people being signed off as “not fit for work”. As part of this, the UK Government will consider shifting the responsibility for issuing the Fit Notes away from GPs, while creating a system where yet more medically unqualified staff will decide if you’re ill or not. This of course may simply be a good way to hide the falling numbers of GPs that there are now following Brexit. The other major flaw with this plan is: how would people in work get signed off if ill for more than five days?

Employment experts, however, say that the number of fit notes issued last year hasn’t risen since before the pandemic.

Accelerating legacy benefits move to Universal Credit

The rollout of Universal Credit will be accelerated to move all those left on Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) onto the modern IT system, although there seems to be much confusion within the DWP itself about when this could actually happen.

Changes to Administrative Earnings threshold

The UK Government has already set out regulations to increase the Administrative Earnings Threshold (AET) in Universal Credit based on how much people currently earn and how many hours they work. Anyone earning below the AET, will be placed in the Intensive Work Search Group and are required to regularly meet with their Work Coach. This of course is likely to be very negative for disabled people as many work part-time on a self-employed basis.

The threshold will rise from £743 to £892 for individual claimants and £1,189 to £1,437 for couples – or the equivalent of 18 hours at National Living Wage a week for an individual from May.

Cracking down on fraud

The Data Protection and Digital Information Bill will already enable the DWP to access people’s bank account details but Sunak says a new fraud bill will be introduced in the next Parliament which will give sweeping new powers to the DWP to carry out warrants for searches, enforce seizure of property from homes and carry out arrests. These are powers normally reserved for the police.

Figures for overpayments of PIP show that in the year ending 2023 overpayments of PIP due to fraud was a mere 0.2% which, when compared to the levels of tax evasion seemingly practised by many Tories, is an utterly insignificant amount of money.

Linda Burnip is co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts.