With Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) boss Liz Kendall set to make a speech on Tuesday 18 March that lays out the department’s plans for health-related benefit reforms, briefings have suggested that cuts of around £6 billion a year are being discussed. Personal Independence Payments, known as DWP PIP, are potentially on the line for cuts as large as £5 billion per year. The health-related part of Universal Credit, known as LCWRA, is also reported to be targeted.
DWP cuts: how much?
New facts from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) show that if the rumoured total £6 billion cuts go ahead:
- It would be the biggest cut to disability benefits since the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) was created in 2010.
If the reports of a £5 billion cut to PIP are true:
- It would be a cut three times bigger than the cut that led then Work and Pension Secretary Iain Duncan Smith to resign in 2016.
If cuts to the LCWRA and PIP go ahead, taken together:
- This would be the largest social security cut since the summer of 2015, when a series of cuts and freezes to the system were implemented that have left the UK with one of the weakest safety nets in the OECD, according to a NIESR report out earlier this week.
Commenting, Peter Matejic, Chief Analyst at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said:
If the government cuts benefits, this will only serve to deepen hardship. As we’ve demonstrated, cuts on this scale would be unprecedented. It is no answer to the nation’s health or employment prospects. If a disabled person needs financial support to be able to live and work, taking that support away or freezing it risks pushing them further away from a job. It is an unethical and short-sighted approach.
A government that came to office pledging to end the moral scar of foodbank use clearly should not be taking steps that could leave disabled people at greater risk of needing to use one. History shows us what happened when previous Prime Ministers oversaw huge cuts, this Prime Minister should reflect on that.
What are the rumoured cuts?
On Friday 7 March, ITV reported what it said were details of DWP welfare cuts the government was planning to announce, amounting to cuts of over £6 billion a year from social security. These were:
- £5 billion in Treasury ‘savings’ by making it harder for people to qualify for DWP PIP.
- Freezing of PIP payments next year so that the award does not rise with inflation.
- Raising the basic rate of Universal Credit (UC) for those in or searching for work while cutting the rate of the benefit for those judged unfit to work (LCWRA addition in UC).
- £1 billion of the proposed cuts invested in employment support for those in receipt of health-related benefits who are looking for work.
On Friday 14 March the Times reported the following:
- A total of one million people facing a reduction in their benefits.
- People suffering from some mental health disorders or who have difficulty washing, dressing or even eating could be denied payments after changes to eligibility criteria.
Separately on 14 March POLITICO reported that plans to freeze PIP payments next year so that the award does not rise with inflation have allegedly been scrapped.
What is DWP PIP?
PIP, or Personal Independence Payment, is the main working-age disability benefit in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, it has been replaced by the Adult Disability Payment (ADP).
Scope’s Disability Price Tag research shows that even when taking disability benefits into account, on average, disabled households need more than £1,000 a month extra to have the same standard of living as someone who is not disabled.
PIP helps people cover these extra costs, for example the cost of specialist equipment such as a wheelchair, needing to bathe and wash more due to incontinence, paying for counselling and therapies that you can’t access on the NHS, needing to stay warm to manage a condition such as arthritis, or needing to use taxis rather than public transport because of autism.
It is a non-means tested benefit, so someone’s level of savings is not taken into account when considering awards. It is not affected by a person’s income and is paid on top of most other benefits or pensions a person might be receiving, including Universal Credit, housing benefit or Income Support.
Crucial to understanding the current discourse, it is not an out-of-work benefit and is payable whether someone works or not. It does not matter if they live alone or with other people, nor whether they have a carer or other help. Awards are based solely on whether they satisfy the entitlement conditions.
What are the current rates of DWP PIP?
There are different rates and components of PIP, reflecting the varying effects of a person’s ill-health on their life and the activities for which financial assistance is required.
There are two components to PIP, which relate to a potential claimant’s ability to perform specific activities related to daily living and mobility.
- The ‘daily living’ component for 2024/25 has a standard rate of £72.65, and an enhanced rate of £108.55 a week.
- The ‘mobility’ component for 2024/25 has a standard rate of £28.70 and enhanced rate of £75.75 per week.
Who qualifies to receive PIP?
Qualifying for either PIP component depends on an assessment of your ability to perform specific activities related to daily living and mobility. Each activity contains a range of statements (called ‘descriptors’), describing various levels of difficulty in doing that activity. Descriptors score between 0 to 12 points.
- For the daily living component, activities assessed include preparing and eating food, washing and dressing yourself and communicating verbally.
- For the mobility component, ability to plan and follow journeys and physically moving around are assessed.
The number of points you score for each activity within each component is added up. If your total score is between eight and eleven, you are awarded the standard rate of the relevant component. If your total score is 12 or more, you are awarded the enhanced rate of that component.
The real-world consequences of the cuts
An anonymous DWP PIP recipient with Multiple Sclerosis said:
Even with my husband’s income and my PIP payments, our finances just disappear each month. My MS means I have extra costs like taking supplements and accessing different therapies which can be expensive. And alongside that, our day-to-day living costs are increasing. We’ve not been able to afford a holiday for the last six years, our landlord is increasing the rent and we’ve had to borrow from family.
The thought of cuts scares the hell out of me. There’s this awful rhetoric about people on benefits being lazy and I just don’t understand it, MS is not a curable condition so I’m not going to get better even if I wanted to. There needs be better support for those who really can’t work.
A disabled person who wished to remain anonymous said:
DWP Benefits are the only reason I can work. I am disabled and rely on benefits, as I am too sick to work full time. If I were forced to work more hours I would become incapacitated. It was only through being able to claim disability benefits that I was in a position to get to the point I’m at now by slowly building up my work hours and reintegrating – at my own pace.
Featured image via the Canary
