Tag Archives: benefit

[Image: Black Triangle Campaign].

Here’s yet another shocking admission from the Conservatives: they have rushed in changes to disability benefits without bothering to research whether they will harm people with complex or invisible conditions.

I have a stake in this. Mrs Mike has long-term illnesses and disabilities that are not immediately visible. She may fall foul of the new assessment system (although I am heartened that it is informed by assessments for the Personal Independence Payment, which she already receives).

The DWP

has been unable to say how many people could be vulnerable to losing out on payments because it does not have the data available.

Labour MP Marsha de Cordova asked in a written parliamentary question how many universal credit claimants cannot work due to a health condition or disability but do not receive PIP. DWP minister Tom Pursglove responded to say the Government would publish these statistics in the future.

iunderstands the DWP does not currently hold this data.

Vicky Foxcroft, Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, said it “beggars belief that the Government have announced a major policy change without any idea how many people it impacts”.

The DWP has stated:

“We will take time to carefully consider how best to implement the changes – and give security and certainty to claimants, continuing to engage with disabled people and people with health conditions, and our stakeholders, as our proposals develop, before the reforms are rolled out on a staged basis.

“We will put protections in place to ensure that no one experiences financial loss at the point at which the reform is enacted, while improving our offer of tailored support to help people find and stay in sustainable work.”

Of course, getting people into work is the point but whether it is achievable under these policies is highly questionable.

Source: Disability benefits: Ministers cannot say how many will be hit by changes that could leave them out of pocket

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Never mind the Budget: you’ll be paying a lot more in April with less cash

Tory benefit changes mean around 1m people may be forced into work they can’t do

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[Image: Black Triangle Campaign].

The Tories are bringing this nightmare back again.

Jeremy Hunt’s Budget announcement that he is ending the Work Capability Assessment has turned out not to be the relief so many benefit claimants with long-term illnesses thought it would be.

He is ending the Limited Capability for Work-Related Activity element of Universal Credit, meaning that people who received it may now have to seek work under the new Personal Independence Payment system.

They’ll need to claim the new UC health element, and to do that they must also be eligible for Personal Independence Payment – and under this system they may also be required to seek work or accept job offers.

Additionally, assessments will now be carried out by work coaches from the Department for Work and Pensions, rather than the (so-called) health professionals who currently carry out the much-maligned WCAs.

There are fears that these civil servants will not have the proper training to identify claimants’ conditions and needs, and may be set target numbers of people they have to try to force into work, which they will impose on disabled people.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies think tank has estimated that a million people could be forced into work and 600,000 could lose an estimated £350 per month in support as a result of the change.

Hunt has been up-front about the intention behind the change: it’s to push people into work who would not otherwise have sought it.

The problem is that it may push people into work who simply cannot do it.

Experience has shown us what happens when the government forces people with long-term illnesses and disabilities to seek work:

They are rejected by employers – or find that they simply cannot do the work. Unsuitable for employment, and unable to claim benefits, they either starve to death or die of their health conditions.

We have seen it before – many times, in the years since the Tories came back into office in 2010.

It is scandalous that Jeremy Hunt is talking up a change that may make unendurable the lives of people who are already among the UK’s most vulnerable.

Source: Disability benefit changes: ‘My disability means I cannot work but I worry I’ll be forced to by the new rules’

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Hunt’s disability plans put a million people at risk of losing £350 a month | The Guardian

[Image: Black Triangle Campaign].

At last it seems we get the facts about the plan to ditch the Work Capability Assessment for people with long-term illnesses – and it isn’t pretty.

It seems an inferior test, for PIP (Personal Independence Payment) will be used instead and up to a million people will lose a lot of money:

Up to 1 million people claiming incapacity benefits could lose hundreds of pounds a month as a result of plans outlined in the budget to push ahead with the “biggest reforms to the welfare system in a decade,” experts have said.

The warning came as ministers unveiled a range of measures to try to drive more people back into the workplace, including scrapping controversial “fit for work” tests for disabled claimants and stepping up the threat of benefit curbs against part-time workers.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies said up to 1 million people currently on incapacity benefits could lose about £350 a month as a result of dropping the work capability assessment (WCA), which assesses capacity for work, and using the personal independence payment (Pip) test, which measures only the extra living costs of disability.

It said the logic of the plan meant those who had conditions that prevented them working – such as people with short-term or fluctuating illnesses – but who did not claim Pip, or incur major additional living costs, would no longer receive extra support. Pip tests are widely distrusted and currently take 14 weeks to process.

Source: Hunt’s disability plans put 1 million people at risk of losing £350 a month, IFS says | Disability | The Guardian

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Do you qualify for the 2023-24 ‘cost of living’ payments?

Do you qualify? Well, depending on when you receive any of the benefits and tax credits listed below – or a pension – you might. But all depends on when you’re receiving them.

The Conservative government has announced a new set of ‘cost of living’ payments for people on benefits and low incomes, for 2023-24.

People receiving certain benefits or tax credits will be able to receive up to five payments. These benefits include:

income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance
income-related Employment and Support Allowance
Income Support
Pension Credit
Universal Credit
Child Tax Credit
Working Tax Credit

Recipients will get payments of £301, £300 and £299 if they are claiming those benefits on certain dates.

You may be entitled to a Disability Cost of Living Payment of £150 if you get any of the following benefits on a certain date:

Attendance Allowance
Constant Attendance Allowance
Disability Living Allowance for adults
Disability Living Allowance for children
Personal Independence Payment
Adult Disability Payment (in Scotland)
Child Disability Payment (in Scotland)
Armed Forces Independence Payment
War Pension Mobility Supplement

It would be paid some time during the summer of 2023.

If you are a pensioner entitled to a Winter Fuel Payment for winter 2023 to 2024, you will get an extra £150 or £300 paid with your normal payment from November 2023.

The full amount of Winter Fuel Payment (including the Pensioner Cost of Living Payment) you will get for winter 2023 to 2024 depends on when you were born and your circumstances during the qualifying dates.

You can get a Winter Fuel Payment for winter 2023 to 2024 if you were born before September 24, 1957.

Qualification for the payments is automatic – you don’t have to apply, and if you receive any communications asking you to apply, the government urges you to report it in any of the appropriate ways described here.

The qualifying dates for each payment have not yet been announced – and will not be until they have passed. The government says this is in an effort to “minimise work disincentives and fraud risk”.

Some of us may have trust issues about that.

Cost of living: People with long-term illnesses or disabilities are thinking of suicide

Despair: people with long-term illnesses and disabilities are being driven towards suicide because they can’t afford to live in Tory Britain.

You just know the Department for Work and Pensions is already considering this a “positive benefit outcome”:

More people are contemplating suicide as they “cannot cope” as a result of rising costs, charities have said.

Charities supporting those with chronic diseases or disabilities have called for an overhaul of the benefits system.

One woman who has multiple sclerosis (MS) said her costs had almost trebled.

MS Society Wales, said many who come to them were “at the end of their tether”, with the stress often affecting their condition and exacerbating their symptoms.

Disability Wales said it had also seen an increase in mental health issues resulting from the cost of living crisis.

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Work Capability Assessment to be scrapped for benefit claimants. But what will replace it?

Uncannily accurate: The Conservative government’s genuine policy towards PIP claimants may as well have been as it appears in this cartoon from 2017. But what will replace the assessment system it satirises?

I should be pleased.

This Site has campaigned against the Work Capability Assessment for sickness and disability benefits, practically since I started publishing it at the end of 2011.

In my opinion, it has been misused, as a tool to force people who are too ill to work onto job-seeking benefits that carry sanctions if a claimant fails to carry out particular tasks – tasks which the long-term sick and disabled are often clearly incapable of doing.

In many cases, the results have been fatal. I know this because it took me two years to force the Department for Work and Pensions to release figures showing that 2,400 people died within a limited period (two weeks) after being found fit for work, between dates in 2011 and 2014.

That’s right – these people had been found fit to go to work by this hopelessly flawed tick-box assessment system, and then they had proven themselves to be nothing of the sort.

And the Tory government carried on as though nothing was wrong.

I also have personal experience of the system’s flaws. After my partner – Mrs Mike; remember her? – was wrongly put in the work-related activity group for Employment and Support Allowance, she appealed in the hope of being relocated to the support group.

Instead, whoever received her letter slapped a “Do Not Contact” tag on her file for no discernible reason and allowed her claim to end after 12 months, while she waited – in considerable confusion and distress – for a response that was never going to come.

Fortunately, I was around to kick up a stink and get the situation sorted out. But that just highlights the fact that many thousands of people don’t have that kind of help at hand.

And now, we’re told, the Work Capability Assessment is to be scrapped.

But we’re not being told what will replace it.

This Independent article has comments from a couple of organisations that have a stake in what happens:

Trades Union Congress general secretary Paul Novak [said:] “Scrapping the work capability assessment will be welcome if it means an end to assessments that cause anxiety instead of helping people achieve their aspirations,” he added, while urging greater investment in public services to get people off NHS waiting lists and reduce barriers to training.

James Taylor of the disability equality charity Scope said axing the assessment was “the minimum change needed to even begin improving a welfare system that regularly fails disabled people”, and stressed the need for “a more person-centred system” offering “specialist, tailored and flexible” support.

“Those that want to work should be supported. But for some, that’s not an option and disabled people shouldn’t be forced into unsuitable work,” he said. “There is a lot of work to do for the government to restore trust in our benefits system.”

Notice that they both mentioned ways of getting more people back into work; this is Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s aim with the changes to the benefit system.

And that’s why I fear for the future of sickness and disability benefits in the UK.

I think the odious Hunt is planning another push to put sick people into jobs they can’t do. If I’m right, his plan will fail on many levels.

Is Jeremy Hunt planning to push disabled people into work with his Budget?

Jeremy Hunt: is he planning to pull the rug out from under disabled people, to fill the gaps in the labour market? If so, he’ll probably make matters worse.

Bad news? Or just the same old story?

Apparently Jeremy Hunt is planning to “reform” (we’ve heard that word before!) disability benefits in order to push people back to work.

According to The Independent, the economics editor of the Financial Times, Chris Giles, said there would probably be a “carrot and stick” approach, although it seems to be more “stick” than “carrot”:

“The charitable way of putting it is that people are better off in work rather than out of work and have better lives and maybe they need a push. That’s not how a lot of people will see it but that’s how the government will see it.”

It looks like the expected inflation-matching benefit increase isn’t going to happen for people on disability or sickness payments!

Either that, or Hunt will make receipt of the benefit conditional on seeking work of some kind – which is a partial contradiction in terms because PIP is supposed to support disabled people in their lives, whether they are in work or not.

The trouble is, people aren’t better-off in work because the policy for the last 13 years and more – across the board – has been to push wages down in order to maximise profits.

That’s why we’ve got so many billionaires at the moment – most of whom didn’t do anything meaningful to get that cash.

Secondly: work won’t give disabled people better lives; it is far more likely to make their condition worse – if employers even bother to take them on.

You don’t get a better life in a low-waged job that creates physical or mental stress that is harmful to your health – possibly because it doesn’t pay enough to cover the bills.

And experience shows that most employers won’t even hire a person with a disability – so that person is left struggling on a benefit that is even less likely to cover the bills, because it has been designed to be that way.

So trying to force disabled people into work isn’t even likely to succeed.

Finally, let’s be perfectly clear about this: more people are on disability benefits now because of the Tories’ cack-handed handling of the Covid crisis.

It’s also because they’ve created huge stresses with low-paid work; people are having nervous breakdowns and physical health problems because employers and the government have made it impossible to make ends meet.

The Independent article makes clear the correlation between the pandemic and benefit take-up:

A new report revealed that a huge wave of early retirement following the Covid pandemic was the biggest cause of labour shortages across the UK. [It said] that the workforce outlook for the UK was “bleak”, finding that economic inactivity has increased by 565,000 people since the start of the pandemic.

There was also a stark increase in long-term sickness since the start of the pandemic, with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) finding that 217,000 people not in work in the year to July reported long-Covid.

However, the report highlighted that most of the rise in sickness-related inactivity was among people already taking leave and those leaving jobs were more likely to be ending their careers early.

Giving up, in other words.

So, in typical Tory fashion, these idiots have created a problem for them to solve… with cruelty.

As Kate Bell, assistant general secretary of the TUC put it:

“The government usually reaches for benefit conditionality when they don’t have anything to say.”

“I think it might happen because they see it as easy and cheap.”

Source: Budget ‘could bring disability benefit reform to push people back to work’ | The Independent

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Tag Archives: benefit

My fellow carers: check now to find out if you could qualify for the cost-of-living payment

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The Tory government hasn’t bothered to check who will be harmed by disability benefit changes

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Never mind the Budget: you’ll be paying a lot more in April with less cash

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Universal Credit, PIP and pension to increase

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Hunt’s disability plans put a million people at risk of losing £350 a month | The Guardian

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Cost of living: People with long-term illnesses or disabilities are thinking of suicide

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