In yet another U-turn, the Labour Party-led Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) looks set to press ahead with plans to ‘reform’ the WCA, outlined by the previous Tory administration. These will strip health-related benefits from nearly half a million claimants.
This is according to the Financial Times reporting from anonymous sources “briefed on the plans”. Currently, the government hasn’t confirmed all this.
It all comes amidst DWP boss Liz Kendall’s drive to coerce chronically ill and disabled claimants into work. The move will purportedly make annual cuts of £1.3bn to disability benefits. However, if it proceeds with these plans, it will come at the cost of chronically ill and disabled people’s lives.
DWP WCA reforms: Labour picking up where the Tories left off
To date, the new Labour government has been tight-lipped about its plans for dangerous health-related benefit reforms to Universal Credit set out by the previous Tory administration.
This was the former Conservative government’s planned reforms to the Work Capability Assessment (WCA). It ran a consultation on these between September and October 2023. As the Canary’s Steve Topple previously detailed:
the DWP is planning to change the WCA. Specifically, it’s planning on taking out or changing the following features:
- Factoring in people’s mobility.
- Bladder or bowel incontinence.
- The inability to cope in social situations.
- People’s ability to leave their homes.
- Work being a risk to claimants or others – a clause which means that an individual is “treated as having limited capability for work and work related activity “
In November, the then Tory-run DWP responded to the consultation. Notably, it laid out how it would proceed with a number of these. Specifically, it decided to take forward changes to:
- Work being a risk to claimants. Specifically, it will tighten the criteria for this. Notably, it stated that: “We will specify the circumstances, and physical and mental health conditions, for which LCWRA Substantial Risk should apply.” In other words, the DWP will decide who this will apply to going forward – and will obviously move the goalposts.
- People’s mobility – which it’s removing as a descriptor altogether.
- People’s ability to leave their homes – which it will now reduce the points for in the assessment.
Particularly with the last two, the DWP essentially decided that they should instead have to work from home. In both cases, it claimed it would “protect” people who this would harm. However, again, it’s the DWP that will decide who that is. That means to say, assessors with a history of denying benefits to people that need them, and linked to benefit-related deaths, will have the say on this in practice.
Overall, as Topple pointed out, it’s all in an attempt to:
reduce the benefits bill by forcing more chronically ill and disabled people into work.
Another alarming U-turn
Of course, these DWP WCA reforms were all put in motion by the previous Tory government. Both before, and since Labour took power, disability rights campaigners and activists have called on Kendall and ministers at the DWP to drop these dangerous reforms.
Now, “people briefed on the plans” – presumably civil servants at the DWP, or perhaps ministers – have leaked that it intends to plough ahead with these. So, it seems that, one year on from the Tories’ consultation, Labour will be picking up and running with all this. This is according to revelations from the Financial Times which wrote that:
Work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall will press ahead with £1.3bn in annual cuts to UK sickness benefits announced by the previous Conservative government, according to people briefed on the plans.
The Labour government is expected to retain contentious changes to the “work capability assessment” that were introduced last year by then-prime minister Rishi Sunak, in a move that is likely to cause concern among disability rights activists.
At the Labour Party conference in 2023, then shadow minister for disabled people Vicky Foxcroft had told the Disability News Service (DNS) that it would not follow through on these. Of course, this was before Labour’s top brass snubbed Foxcroft for the role of disability minister. Instead, it installed her as a whip. In other words, it both sidelined her in the DWP, and curtailed her ability to hold its ministers to account in Parliament. Therefore, it’s perhaps little wonder seems it’s about to make another, massive U-turn over this.
Most gallingly of all though is the fact Labour will be doing this, knowing full well the impact it will have.
Labour to strip 450,000 people of health-related benefits
In particular, these changes will mean that the DWP will strip health-related benefits from over 450,000 people. For each change, the DWP’s own figures showed a breakdown of just how many people would lose out due to DWP WCA changes. As Big Issue reported, this was:
- 163,000 for tightening the criteria on work as a risk to claimants
- 260,000 for removing the mobility descriptor
- 33,000 for changing the points awarded for people’s ability to leave their homes
Specifically, this applies to new DWP WCA-related claimants, or those who’ve had to reapply for them.
What’s more, Big Issue highlighted that the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) had these would mean just 5,100, 8,800, and 1,500 more people finding work respectively as a result of these changes. In other words, out of 457,000 people the DWP would deny benefits, just over 15,000 of those would actually likely move into work. What’s more, this says nothing of the mental and physical health impacts it will have on people – either in losing their benefits, or being forced into employment.
Of course, this should be obvious, given that there aren’t enough jobs available. Moreover, many employers don’t make roles accessible to chronically ill and disabled people anyway.
Notably, as has been an ongoing trend after 14 years of the Tories wrecking the economy, job vacancy number continue to decline. So far, Labour hasn’t bucked this either – the Office for National Statistics (ONS)’s latest figures detailed that:
The estimated number of vacancies in the UK in July to September 2024 was 841,000, a decrease of 34,000, or 3.8%, from April to June 2024.
That is, there are only just over the number of jobs than there are those long-term sick and disabled Labour wants to force back to work.
On top of this, the FT article also stated that:
the Department for Work and Pensions intends to deliver savings through its own reforms in the coming months, including via support to help disabled people into work, the people said.
Naturally, neither these briefed “people”, nor the FT elaborated on precisely what this would entail. However, it’s likely this will be things like Kendall’s job advisers in hospitals scheme. Ostensibly, this is yet another ploy to push disabled people with “serious” mental health problems into the workforce.
Callous continuity Tory on DWP WCA
Obviously, Labour’s DWP ministers couldn’t just come out and say what the government’s plans are with their chest. Instead, in what has so far been a persistent feature of the Labour-led DWP, we had to find this out from anonymous tip-offs. And conveniently, these were to its biggest cheerleaders for repressive, callous DWP WCA and benefit reforms – the right-wing corporate media.
Of course, the timing of this has slotted in alongside a sweep of other controversial announcements this week. In particular, these have been contentious moves to bring down the so-called benefits bill.
At the end of the day though, Kendall is forging ahead with these new DWP WCA plans. She’s doing so in the full knowledge that it will deny hundreds of thousands of people vital benefits.
At the same time, forecasts project that it will actually result in very few of those people actually entering employment. Therefore, it will leave the majority with no or less income as a result.
Unsurprisingly, Labour has also separately refused to release a key document on the DWP WCA. This would show the recommendations that have been made over the last five years for its improvement. In particular, this would be in light of claimant benefit-related deaths.
Ultimately, the Tory-led DWP refusing chronically ill and disabled people benefits led to tens of thousands of deaths.
Now, the news about the DWP WCA shows that Labour will be doing more of this – and putting countless more lives at risk in the process.
Featured image via the Canary
