The Labour Party government has announced it will ram through plans to scrap the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) under Universal Credit. Instead, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) will be rolling this into a single assessment tied to Personal Independence Payment. However, shamefully, it’s gearing up to do so without consulting the public – meaning those it will impact, namely chronically ill and disabled people, will get no chance to input over this.
It could mean more than 600,000 chronically ill and disabled people losing their health related out-of-work benefits. On top of this, it would also entail the department denying it to many more who need it in future.
And, if that weren’t already devastating enough – Labour has also laid out plans to cut the benefit for chronically ill and disabled people anyway.
Scrapping the Universal Credit WCA without consultation
On Tuesday 18 March, DWP boss Liz Kendall announced the details of the government’s long-awaited disability green paper to Parliament.
The Canary’s Rachel Charlton-Dailey has detailed the key points from Kendall’s speech. You can read her analysis of Labour’s main plans for disability and income-related benefits here.
One significant revelation was that the Labour government plans to scrap the WCA.
In particular, the paper laid out that it’s continuing with the Tory’s plans to roll the WCA into the PIP assessment. It’s an option previous Conservative governments have floated in some form since as far back as 2019. So now, it seems Labour is following through on this.
Kendall and the DWP’s paper tried to temper this blow with the frankly pointless promise to ditch the Tories’ other WCA plans. These were of course the ones the High Court found the consultation over to be unlawful in January. That also happens to be the consultation the Labour government shamelessly decided to defend in court – at an eye-watering half a million cost to the taxpayer.
Notably, these changes would have tightened the criteria, to in effect, deny health-related Universal Credit to certain claimants. So, Labour has now purportedly dropped these plans – by doing away with the WCA altogether. And crucially, it has a devious plan to avoid the inclusion and respecting disabled people’s rights pitfalls that the Tories encountered with their consultation. The ingenious solution it has found? Not running one at all.
Serious issues rolling them into one assessment
In a nutshell, rolling the WCA into PIP assessments means that to get the health-related (LCWRA) component of Universal Credit or the ESA support group, applicants will have to also be awarded PIP.
However, the Canary’s Steve Topple has previously pointed out a number of serious issues with this. Specifically, he noted how:
The WCA and PIP criteria are completely different, as are the benefits. The DWP may be asking people for the same information about their illnesses or impairments. But the context is completely different. The WCA looks at what sick and disabled people can do regarding work. The PIP health assessment looks at what support people need. To combine both these assessments is simplifying people’s health. But more often than not, people’s health is not simple at all.
In other words, currently, PIP is about the extra costs chronically ill and disabled people need to live. Or more to the point, it’s completely separate from whether or not they are in work, or can work. However, Labour now seems set on blurring this line.
Moreover, the way the DWP’s outsourced providers assess for these are completely different. For one, the PIP form is a notoriously complicated process – at longer than 40 pages long and requiring substantial medical evidence. Of course, this is not something every chronically ill and disabled person will have, made no less difficult by the inaccessibility of NHS services and specialists. Plus, PIP’s assessment is massively inaccessible – so many chronically ill and disabled people are simply unable to go through the lengthy, traumatising, and complex process anyway.
So now, Labour wants to make it so that far fewer chronically ill and disabled people unable to work can’t access health-related out-of-work benefits.
Stripping hundreds of thousands of claimants of health-related benefits
Yet, if all that weren’t bad enough, the key issue is that Labour proceeding with this could strip hundreds of thousands of people of their health-related out-of-work benefits. This is because there are many people who currently get them, but not PIP or DLA.
In 2023, policy adviser Ken Butler at Disability Rights UK told the Disability News Service (DNS) that:
The health element proposals will mean that around 632,000 disabled people who receive the employment and support allowance or universal credit support component will lose this as they do not receive PIP or DLA.
Specifically, as Topple also detailed, this will most likely impact chronically ill people and those living with mental health conditions.
The DWP’s current statistics don’t paint a rosier picture. As of August 2024, 780,250 Universal Credit claimants getting the health-related part also claimed PIP or DLA. There were around 1.4 million in the LCWRA group – meaning that just little over half of Universal Credit claimants eligible for the health part were also getting PIP or DLA.
In short, figures have little changed from this. What the Green Paper didn’t confirm however, is whether this will apply to people getting reassessments. However, given its accompanying emphasis on conditionality – in particular by increasing the number of assessments for people getting health-related out-of-work benefits – it seems likely this will be the case.
More than 600,000 chronically ill and disabled people could therefore lose their out-of-work benefits with Labour pressing ahead on this.
Denying chronically ill and disabled people a say
So, given the enormous stakes for chronically ill and disabled people with this move, you might think the DWP would seek their views on it. Wrong. Instead, Labour’s green paper spelled out that it would drive these Universal Credit changes through WITHOUT public consultation.
Specifically, the paper states that the government will:
implement this change via primary legislation. Further details will be published in the forthcoming White Paper. We are not consulting on this measure.
In short, it will bring forward a Bill to make this change. MPs will of course get to vote on it, however, given Labour’s enormous majority, it likely anticipates it will be easy to get this through.
Appallingly, it isn’t intending to consult the public ahead of putting together the legislation.
Of course, that’s hardly surprising from this Labour government. To date, it has failed to include chronically ill and disabled people in much of its policy-making that would affect them. This green paper was no exception to that.
At present however, it hasn’t laid out a timeline for putting this in motion – just that more details will come in an upcoming white paper.
Moving the goalposts as ever
The paper claims that rolling the WCA into PIP assessments will:
de-couple access to the health element in Universal Credit… from work status, so people can be confident that the act of taking steps towards and into employment will not put their benefit entitlement at risk.
But the reality is that it will just make it harder for people to claim these. Of course, that’s precisely the point. Labour doesn’t want as many chronically ill and disabled people applying for it – so by linking it to PIP, it’s moving the goalposts on this.
At the same time, it’s planning to tighten the criteria for PIP, restricting the number of people who can get it.
It’s worth bearing in mind however that Kendall’s scaremongering about the number of people claiming that is also preposterous. Charlton-Dailey has pointed out that in reality, the vast majority of chronically ill and disabled people AREN’T claiming PIP:
Labour are making a huge fuss of how many people are claiming pip (3.6 million).
But there are 16.1 million disabled people in the UK. That means 12.5 million disabled people AREN’T getting PIP or any support.
— Rachel Charlton-Dailey (@RachelCDailey) March 17, 2025
Yet, disabled households on average have additional costs of £1,010 to meet the same standard of living as non-disabled people. In other words, all chronically ill and disabled people in the UK should get extra help with the costs of living – and most aren’t.
To sum up then, Labour wants less people getting PIP, and by rolling the WCA into the PIP assessment, ergo, less people getting health-related out-of-work benefits as well.
But let’s be clear: stripping chronically ill and disabled people who can’t work won’t push them into it. It will push them into deeper poverty.
Universal Credit changes: callous beyond belief
And just to cement that fact, the green paper revealed that Labour wants to follow through on one of the dangerous plans leaked to ITV. Specifically, it wants to raise the basic rate of Universal Credit for those in or searching for work while cutting the rate of the benefit for those judged unfit to work (LCWRA addition in Universal Credit).
Specifically, it’s planning to:
- Increase the Universal Credit basic rate from £364 every four weeks to £392 (£91 a week, to £98) for a single person over the age of 25. It’s planning to bring this in from 2026/2027.
- Freeze the Universal Credit health-related part of Universal Credit at £97 a week until 2029/2030. In other words, it won’t rise with inflation. This also applies to everyone found LCWRA prior to April 2026 who gets a reassessment before then – and is still found LCWRA.
- New claimants will see a 50% cut of the health-related component – taking it down to £47 a week. It wants to bring this in for April 2026/2027.
For this plan at least, Labour is consulting on it through the green paper. Nonetheless, the fact it’s even proposing these is atrocious. The government is knowingly putting plans forward that will cut chronically ill and disabled people’s benefits, or deny them altogether.
People will die
Ultimately, none of this is actually about supporting chronically ill and disabled people into employment. It’s about punching down on vulnerable people so Labour doesn’t have to tax the super-rich and corporations. It’s to frame sick and disabled folks as burdens to society – and make them feel that way – more than they do already.
And all it will do is impoverish and kill more chronically ill and disabled people. So it’s little wonder Labour doesn’t want them to have a say over its plans for doing away with the WCA.
Featured image via the Canary
