The prime minister has been accused of whipping up hostility towards disabled people, and demonising and scapegoating claimants of disability benefits, with a new series of “chilling” reforms that will weaken the social security safety net.
Rishi Sunak announced plans for new cuts to personal independence payment (PIP), a faster rollout of universal credit to disabled people, and an end to what he called a “sicknote culture”.
But most of the reforms will only be introduced if the Conservatives win power at the next general election, almost certain to take place within the next six months.
Sunak’s speech (pictured) came only days after campaigners warned that the “dangerous” rollout of universal credit to half a million more claimants was a potential threat to the “safety and well-being” of disabled people who currently rely on so-called “legacy” benefits to survive.
Now ministers plan to accelerate that rollout so that, rather than most of them not facing the “migration” to universal credit until 2028, all those disabled people receiving income-related employment and support allowance will now receive so-called “migration notices” by the end of next year, with the process beginning within months.
Further details about the government’s plans for PIP are expected within days, but Sunak claimed the increase in successful PIP claims was “driving up the cost of the disability benefits bill at an unsustainable rate”.
He said he was “worried about it being misused” and that, in some cases, “it probably isn’t right that we’re paying an ongoing amount every year”.
He particularly focused on PIP claimants with mental distress, speaking of the need for a “more objective and rigorous approach that focuses support on those with the greatest needs and extra costs” and the need to make the system “fairer and harder to exploit”.
He said that, since 2019, the number of people claiming PIP who were citing anxiety or depression as their main condition had doubled, and he suggested that the PIP system was “undermined by the way people are asked to make subjective and unverifiable claims about their capability”.
The Disability Poverty Campaign Group described Sunak’s speech as “chilling” and “threatening” and said his words continued a trend that was “stigmatising, harmful, and inaccurate”.
On the same day as Sunak’s speech, Labour revealed figures showing the rate of suicide among 15-19-year-olds had increased by 64 per cent since 2010, while over the last 12 months, 780,000 children and young people have been in contact with mental health services, an increase of 200,000 since April 2021.
Sunak also ignored experimental figures published by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) earlier this year, which showed that nearly half of all individuals in families with at least one disabled child and one disabled adult in the UK were living in poverty by 2021-22.
Just four days after his speech, Sunak announced an extra £75 billion in defence spending over the next six years.
Nima Cas Hunt, in an article published by National Survivor User Network, which described the destructive impact on those with mental distress who have had their PIP removed, said Sunak’s speech was designed to “drip feed a nation with an extremely ableist rhetoric intended to radicalise, scapegoat and ostracise”.
She wrote: “We are being demonised for our suffering – and for those of us who experience mental ill-health and distress, our suffering has been openly ridiculed and minimised.”
Rhian Davies, chief executive of Disability Wales, told BBC Radio Wales (listen from 14 minutes) that the prime minister’s language was “shocking and appalling” and had “ramped up the vilification of disabled people instead of the UK government looking at the policies that it has brought in that have contributed to the high levels of stress and anxiety that people face and social exclusion”.
Sunak also announced reforms to what he repeatedly referred to as the “sick note” system –actually known as fit notes – with the prime minister calling for an end to Britain’s “sick note culture”, and announcing a call for evidence on the proposals.
He said this could see responsibility for issuing fit notes shifted away from GPs and towards “specialist work and health professionals who have the dedicated time and expertise to provide an objective assessment of someone’s ability to work and the tailored support they may need”.
There are concerns that this will mean the privatisation of fit notes, with the system outsourced to private contractors in the same way as disability benefit assessments have been outsourced to companies like Capita, Atos and Maximus.
DWP refused to say if this was what was being planned, but it did say that only registered healthcare professionals – doctors, nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists and occupational therapists – would carry them out.
Sunak used a phrase repeated by generations of ministers – but first tested out by Labour’s Alistair Darling in 1999 – to call for a change in emphasis towards “what work you can do, not what you can’t”.
Sunak’s speech, in which he also spoke of the “unfairness” of the out-of-work disability benefits system and the “irresponsible burden” for future generations that would be caused by “spiralling increase in the welfare bill”, had clear echoes of the scapegoating of disabled people by Conservative ministers in the post-2010 austerity years.
In October 2020, prime minister David Cameron had told the Conservative party conference: “If you really cannot work, we will always look after you. But if you can work, and refuse to work, we will not let you live off the hard work of others.”
The following month, work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith told The Sun newspaper that he was “appalled” at how easy it had been for people to claim incapacity benefit and cheat the system.
In response to Sunak’s speech, Fazilet Hadi, head of policy for Disability Rights UK, said: “Once again the government is targeting disabled people for a failing economy.
“Yet it is government policies that have fuelled increases in disability and sickness.
“Under resourcing of health services, social care, education, housing and transport, are excluding disabled people from opportunity and driving us into poverty.
“Deepening poverty is driving increases in disability and sickness.
“The prime minister’s approach to systemic inequalities caused by government policies and underfunding of public services, is to further penalise, punish and threaten disabled people living on inadequate benefits.”
Labour MP Debbie Abrahams raised a point of order in the Commons on Tuesday, describing Sunak’s speech as “grossly offensive” for “implying that people who are economically inactive due to ill health or disability are not genuine, but malingerers”.
She said his speech “ignored the overwhelming evidence from epidemiologists such as Professor Sir Michael Marmot, which shows that over the last 14 years we have become a sick nation, living shorter lives and less of our lives in good health”.
In his speech, delivered at the Centre for Social Justice, the right-wing thinktank founded by Duncan Smith, Sunak also confirmed plans to give DWP new powers to investigate fraud and “make seizures and arrests”.
And there was a threat for those on mainstream out-of-work benefits – which will include hundreds of thousands of disabled people – that new legislation in the next parliament would see anyone who has been on those benefits for 12 months and fails to comply with conditions set by their work coach having “their benefits removed entirely”.
It was not clear how people in those situations, which will include many disabled people unable or unwilling to follow their work coach’s orders, will be expected to cope without any benefits.
Alison Burton, whose disabled father-in-law Errol Graham starved to death after DWP stopped his benefits when he failed to turn up to a work capability assessment, said the prime minister’s speech – and particularly his “completely ignorant” comments on mental health – had felt like “a punch to my stomach”.
She said her years of campaigning and legal attempts to hold DWP to account had been focused on DWP’s lack of care and understanding of mental health, and the need for it to have a legal safeguarding duty.
She said Sunak’s words, and policies, would only cause greater mental distress to people like Errol Graham.
She said: “This government have got no care whatsoever when it comes to people like Errol.”
Inclusion London said the reforms were “clearly” driven by reducing costs and would “cost lives and unleash misery”.
It said it was “appalled that the government is yet again mounting another brutal ideological attack on disabled people, after 10 years of austerity, disproportionate Covid deaths and a cost-of-living crisis.
“The social security system should be there to promote and protect our rights.
“Instead of focusing on improving the inclusiveness of the workplace, the government chooses to demonise those disabled people who are not able to work.”
Labour declined to raise any concerns about the fit note plan, the universal credit announcement, the PIP review, the fraud measures, or the prime minister’s language.
Vicky Foxcroft, Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, said that PIP “isn’t working for disabled people and needs reform”, and she said Labour would analyse the details when they were published by the government.
A three-month consultation on the PIP plans is expected to be launched within days.
She said: “A healthy nation is critical to a healthy economy, but the Tories have completely failed on both.
“The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, first proposed the exact same reforms to fit notes back in 2017, when he was health secretary.
“After 14 years of failure, the Conservatives are completely out of ideas, and working people are forced to pay the price.
“Labour will build a healthier nation and get people back into work, tackling the root causes of economic inactivity by bringing down NHS waiting lists, reforming social security, and supporting people into good jobs in every part of the country.”
She added: “The government have lost control of fraud in the benefits system, with benefit fraud and error skyrocketing to £8.3 billion in the last financial year, after the record high of £8.7 billion the year before.
“Labour is unreservedly committed to tackling fraud. We will crack down on the criminal gangs and fraudsters who try to take money from the public purse illegally, while ensuring that those who have been victim of error in the benefits system are treated fairly.”
Meanwhile, new information released by DWP shows that the number of disabled people affected by existing plans to tighten the work capability assessment (WCA) will be even higher than previously thought.
By 2028-29, DWP’s estimate for the number who will be forced to carry-out work-related activity as part of their universal credit claim, when previously they would not have had to do so – due to removing the “mobilising” activity in the WCA and weakening the substantial risk safety net – is now 424,000, an increase of 53,000 on the original estimates released last November.
And the estimated number who will be found fit for work and placed in universal credit’s “intensive work search group” by 2028-29 – due to amending the “getting about” part of the assessment – is now 33,000, a rise of 4,000 on the previous estimates.
Last week, disabled activist Ellen Clifford was granted permission to bring a judicial review of the government’s consultation on its plans to tighten the WCA, which she said in December appeared to have been “a smokescreen for cuts”.
Picture by Simon Walker/No 10 Downing Street
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