Just as prime minister Keir Starmer has refused to budge on ramming through Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) cuts to chronically ill and disabled people’s benefits, another parliamentary select committee has unequivocally shamed the government’s plans.
Significantly, in a damning new report, the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Poverty and Inequality has outlined how the goal-post changes to Personal Independence Payment (PIP) could strip some claimants of nearly £10,000 a year in vital financial support.
The new report has thrown further cold water on the Labour Party government’s nonsensical claims that the cuts are about supporting chronically ill and disabled people into work. Instead, the APPG warned they will entrench ever-deeper poverty and cause “unprecedented hardship” for these communities.
DWP cuts: Starmer doubling down on callous plans
En route to the G7 summit in Canada on Sunday night, Starmer told reporters that his government would push the DWP cuts through parliament.
As the Guardian reported, he said:
We’ve got to reform the welfare system.
He continued that:
Everybody agrees with that proposition, so we’ve got to do that basic reform. It doesn’t work for those that need support and help into work, and it doesn’t work for the taxpayer.
So, it’s got to be reformed. The principles remain the same; those who can work should work. Those who need support into work should have that support into work, which I don’t think they are getting at the moment.
Those who are never going to be able to work should be properly supported and protected, and that includes not being reassessed and reassessed. So, they are the principles. We need to do reform and we will be getting on with that reform when the bill comes.
Starmer’s response followed DWP boss Liz Kendall’s confirmation on 11 June that the government is pressing ahead.
Reportedly, as many as 170 Labour MPs could rebel against the plans.
The outlet noted how this indicated that the government is not planning to make any further ‘concessions’ to quell MP discontent. To date, these so-called concessions Kendall had put forward offer pitiful ‘protections’, for a tiny proportion of claimants.
And on Monday 16 June, an APPG that includes more than 40 Labour members completely rebutted Starmer’s reasoning.
Evidence of the cruel impacts mounts up
Specifically, the Poverty and Inequality APPG published a new report slamming the government’s Green Paper plans.
As the Big Issue reported:
Some 800,000 people could lose PIP support entirely, the report finds, with some individuals set to lose £886 per month.
Siân Berry, Green Party MP and co-chair of the group, told the outlet that:
Disabled people are already squeezed beyond belief, they’re already living in much deeper poverty.
She said:
The public is being encouraged by the government to think that benefits are somehow generous or additional. They are not. Disabled people are already genuinely struggling to get by.
Berry, alongside co-chair and Labour peer Ruth Lister, therefore argued that:
Disabled people already face unacceptable levels of hardship. These proposals won’t remove barriers to employment – they will add new ones by stripping people of the income they rely on to survive.
The evidence is clear: these cuts will deepen inequality and force people further into crisis. We urge the government to listen to those most affected and change course immediately.
Many chronically ill and disabled people in work and not in work rely on the disability entitlement. PIP isn’t an out-of-work benefit, but the government has been attempting to blur this line with its supposed ‘reforms’. Instead, the benefit helps disabled people with the additional costs of living they incur in a non-accessible society built for non-disabled people.
Many have already pointed out how removing the benefit for some and reducing it for others will only have the opposite effect.
Meanwhile, it will also push those who can’t work into greater poverty. Disabled people already live in poverty at twice the rate of non-disabled people.
Labour has been lying all along
Starmer’s latest brazen, bare-faced spin over the government’s plans is nothing new. Ministers have repeatedly made fallacious claims on the impact the so-called reforms will have.
Just this week, Kendall ignored warnings from Work and Pensions committee chair Debbie Abrahams. In an obtuse response to a letter the committee chair had penned urging the government to change course, she wrote that:
With PIP caseload and costs forecast to continue rising, reforms are needed now to make the system sustainable, while supporting those people with the greatest needs. The rate of increase of the PIP caseload has outstripped the growth in disability prevalence – and this situation is not sustainable if we want our welfare safety net to exist for those who need it in future. However, I want to be clear that these changes are aimed at reducing the rate of
growth in PIP, not reducing it in cash terms. PIP spending will continue to rise in real terms even after the proposed changes, and the number of people on PIP will still increase, with 750,000 more people forecast to be on PIP by the end of the Parliament.
Of course, her claim the ‘reforms’ are not about reducing it in cash-terms are a blatant lie too. For many, this will be precisely the impact of the DWP cuts. Moreover, suggesting it will increase in real-terms because more people will claim it, is another farcical manipulation. Any rise in claims will likely reflect increasing ill health, and better awareness of entitlement to the support. In short, this does not represent a real-terms ‘increase’ for individual claimants.
Entrenching poverty for chronically ill and disabled people
From the start, the DWP’s impact assessment was considerably flawed.
For one, it misleadingly calculated its figures using the fact it had ditched previous Conservative plans for the Work Capability Assessment (WCA). The problem with this, of course, is that the previous government hadn’t actually implemented this policy. In other words, it isn’t the current situation for claimants. This didn’t stop the impact assessment offsetting the number of adults and children it would throw into poverty using this.
So it’s likely to be much higher than the 250,000, including 50,000 children, the assessment claimed. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has estimated this would be closer to 400,000 people, including 100,000 children.
The impact assessment already forecast a staggering average annual loss of £4,500 for some 430,000 PIP claimants. However, the new APPG report shows that, in reality, it will be much starker for many.
Moreover, Labour and the DWP have persisently lied about the number of people its Green Paper plans will affect.
DWP cuts to impact more than a million people
Research keeps exposing the devastating scale of the government’s planned DWP cuts. While its impact assessment calculated that 370,000 current claimants and 420,000 future ones would lose their DWP PIP entitlement, it’s likely to be much higher than this.
A Freedom of Information (FOI) request made by a member of the public unearthed that around 209,000 people getting enhanced rate DWP PIP Daily Living will lose it. On top of this, around 1.1 million people getting the standard rate will lose it.
In total, then, nearly 1.4 million people could, on reassessment, lose their Daily Living element of DWP PIP. However, as the Canary’s Steve Topple previously noted, this doesn’t tell us how many could lose their full PIP altogether. This is because the data does not show how many of these people get standard or enhanced Mobility Element of DWP PIP.
Nonetheless, it’s evident that the plans will be enormously detrimental for chronically ill and disabled people.
‘How am I meant to survive?’ Starmer ignoring disabled people’s fears
Now, the Poverty and Inequality APPG’s report has set out the real-world impact to claimants in no uncertain terms.
The publication reviewed a number of responses to the government’s consultation over its Green Paper. These revealed the harrowing reality and fears of chronically ill and disabled claimants reliant on the disability benefit.
As the Big Issue reported, one said:
The cuts/changes to eligibility for PIP will decimate my life if they go ahead. It will cost me £8,400 a year. How am I meant to survive?
Another wrote that:
In short: people will die. It remains to be seen if I’ll be one of them because, if things go ahead as planned, I don’t see a way forward.
Starmer doubling down in the face of these genuine and valid concerns shows something only too characteristic of this government. That is, its brutal belligerence in punching down on chronically ill and disabled communities – with neither concern nor remorse over the catastrophic impact its policies will inevitably wreak.
Featured image via the Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.