Benefit levels are too low to meet disabled people’s needs, MPs hear

The government should commission an annual independent assessment of the level of benefits because they are “demonstrably” too low to meet people’s needs, a disabled people’s organisation (DPO) has told MPs.

The Commons work and pensions committee was hearing evidence yesterday (Wednesday) on the adequacy of benefit levels in the UK.

Ken Butler, welfare rights and policy adviser for Disability Rights UK, said he believed most DPOs and disability organisations would agree that such a test was “essential” and that benefits “are inadequate to pay for the essentials of life” for sick and disabled people.

He said that most people who do not claim benefits “assume that some thought has gone into them to make sure that people can afford the bare essentials of life”, when in fact it has not.

Butler said current levels of benefits are “demonstrably” not sufficient to support disabled people adequately during the current cost-of-living crisis.

James Taylor, director of strategy at the disability charity Scope, told the committee that the standard allowance of universal credit was “not sufficient” and was “at the lowest level it’s ever been as a proportion of earnings”.

He said: “The rates are not adequate and they need to be updated.”

Taylor added: “These levels [of benefits] have been set, some of them 50, 60 years ago, and have just been inflated every year but it’s not capturing people’s lives and their expenses in the correct way.

“There needs to be some greater transparency, involvement and engagement with claimants and people who experience these costs to set them at a level that is deemed adequate and decent.”

Tom Lee, a senior policy analyst at Child Poverty Action Group, said: “I would agree that the standard allowance is too low but [there is also a problem with] adequacy across the whole system.”

He said child benefit had lost 25 per cent of its value, while Conservative governments had imposed a two-child limit on child benefit [in 2017] while also imposing a benefit cap.

He added: “Also we know from families that in-work poverty is a massive issue because earnings don’t go as far when you have to cover for a whole family.”

Debbie Abrahams, a Labour member of the committee, said the biggest cuts had fallen on sick and disabled people in recent years.

She pointed to the proposals laid out in the government’s Transforming Support white paper.

She said: “Given what we have seen over the last 12 years, it’s very understandable that sick and disabled people are concerned that yet again changes in how people are meant to be supported actually ends up with cuts… and what that will mean for them.”

Butler said: “Many meetings I went to about the green paper [which preceded the white paper] with the DWP, it was the first thing they said: ‘We know people don’t trust us.’

“It was like their mantra. I don’t think disabled people now trust the DWP through the white paper proposals.”

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