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UK charities are urging ministers to scrap plans to tighten eligibility for sickness benefits, warning they could cause severe hardship without clear benefits to the economy or public finances.
Proposed changes to the work capability assessment, a test used to identify people who qualify for a higher rate of benefits without being require to be searching for work, could be a centrepiece of a broader push to cut the welfare bill in Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement.
As the Conservative party seeks to draw dividing lines with the Labour opposition, the chancellor has already signalled he will look to tighten sanctions on benefits claimants who fail to look for jobs. Together with Mel Stride, work and pensions secretary, he is considering reducing the value of working-age benefits by breaking their link with inflation
Going further by cutting the bill for incapacity benefits, which has risen in real terms from £15.9bn in 2013-14 to £25.9bn in 2023-24, could also help Hunt make space for a fiscal giveaway in the run-up to the next election, expected next year.
Prime minister Rishi Sunak has questioned the sharp rise in the number of people eligible for incapacity benefits, calling it a “national scandal” that more than 2mn people were assessed as being unfit to work.
“Are people three times sicker today than they were a decade ago? No, of course not . . . I refuse to accept this,” he told the Conservative party conference in early October.
But Tom Waters, associate director at the Institute for Fiscal Studies think-tank, said the proposed changes to the assessment for incapacity benefits would ultimately make little difference to the public finances, going by similar reforms in the past. “On paper, these things always look as if they will save money . . . In practice they often fail to do so,” he said.
Under the proposals published in September, people who struggle with mobility, social engagement or bladder control could from 2025 be expected to look for work while losing £400 a month in benefits.
Ministers have framed this as a reform that will help people realise their potential, arguing that employers have become more willing to accommodate remote and flexible working since the pandemic.
But with a brief eight-week consultation set to end on Monday, charities are warning that the changes could remove vital support from vulnerable people.
“We’re very, very worried,” said Rebecca Rennison, policy manager at the charity Citizens Advice, arguing that while the government had framed its aim as helping people into work, “actually it just means less money and tougher conditionality”.
One proposed change, to scrap a provision that exempts people from looking for work if it would pose a “substantial risk” to their mental health, could be dangerous, driving some people to leave the benefits system altogether in order to avoid the stress of the sanctions regime, she added.
Rory Weal, senior policy manager at the Trussell Trust charity, said seven in 10 people referred to food banks were disabled, and that any policy change that led to disabled benefits claimants being denied the correct level of support would be “deeply worrying”.
Waters also noted that the new regime would soon become “irrelevant” if the government followed through on longer-term plans, set out in March, to scrap the WCA entirely.
The Department for Work and Pensions said the government wanted to ensure that claimants were “not unnecessarily excluded” from help to access the benefits of work and that any changes would form part of welfare reforms that would also channel an extra £2bn into support for those with health conditions and disabilities to stay in work.
