Cost-of-living payments scrapped as spring budget ‘completely ignores disabled people’

The government has been accused of “another missed opportunity” to support disabled people, after ending all cost-of-living payments, including the annual payment to those on disability benefits.

Disabled campaigners warned that Jeremy Hunt’s budget could lead to further cuts to disabled people’s support and that it had “completely ignored disabled people”.

Budget documents confirm there will be no payment for those on disability benefits in 2024-25, following the £150 paid in 2022 and another £150 paid in 2023-24.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has also ruled out extending the cost-of-living payments that were set at £600 in 2022 and £900 in 2023-24 and which provided support to those on means-tested benefits, and the pensioner cost-of-living payments made in 2022-23 and 2023-24.

Instead, the focus of the budget was on further cuts to national insurance, which will only help those in work.

Hunt (pictured delivering the budget) announced just six months more funding – £500 million – for the Household Support Fund, which assists “vulnerable” households in England with the cost of essentials such as food and utility bills.

And he extended the repayment period from 12 months to 24 months for benefit claimants who take a universal credit advance loan, while abolishing the £90 charge for debt relief orders.

He also announced another £105 million to fund an “additional wave” of 15 segregated special free schools across England, but no extra money to fund support in mainstream schools.

Disabled people’s organisations warned the budget was likely to lead to further cuts in support.

In January, Disability News Service reported how the government’s own figures, using a new measurement of poverty, found that 46 per cent of people in families with at least one disabled child and one disabled adult were living in poverty in 2021-22, even before the cost-of-living crisis.

Svetlana Kotova, director of campaigns and justice at Inclusion London, said the budget was “another missed opportunity to support disabled people”, with Hunt providing “little droplets of good news and a scary prospect of further austerity and cuts to support”.

Although Inclusion London welcomed the extension of the Household Support Fund, Kotova said another six months of funding was not enough, and she urged the Department for Work and Pensions and local authorities to ensure a greater proportion of households with disabled members benefited from the fund.

She said: “The cost-of-living crisis continues, and we are disappointed there were no announcements for further payments and nothing to support disabled people with high energy needs.

“Instead, the budget reconfirms plans for tougher sanctions for disabled people who get benefits, including those who work.

“There is no investment in social care and the only investment in education is to build more special schools.

“At the time of huge gaps in funding and struggling public services, this budget is likely to lead to future cuts in the already minimal support disabled people get.”

Rick Burgess, a spokesperson for Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People, said: “Nothing in this budget addresses 14 years of austerity that has been condemned by the UN for its devastating impact on disabled people.”

He said that “paltry consolations” such as another six months of the Household Support Fund “only underline that social security and social care remain in crisis, they do not pay enough to live on, and rather than small funds to address the worst poverty, we need to end austerity and put tens of billions back into public services.

“This investment would then begin to rescue the economy that this chancellor has tanked.”

Caroline Collier, chief executive of Inclusion Barnet, said it was “a huge disappointment that the chancellor has avoided saying or doing anything about poverty or the adequacy of disabled people’s incomes, in or out of work”.

She said: “In recent times, there has been some topping-up of low incomes through cost-of-living payments.

“Although never a substitute for a decent benefit system, these have now stopped altogether.

“The Household Support Fund has been temporarily reprieved, but only for six months.

“It is also highly questionable to prioritise what are effectively tax reductions when public services are in desperate need of further support.”

Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) said the budget appeared to “give rich people more and poorer people nothing”.

Paula Peters, a member of DPAC’s national steering group, said Hunt had “completely ignored disabled people”.

She said: “The government failed to renew the cost-of-living payments when the cost of living is still high – high food prices, high energy costs and council tax across the UK has risen again.

“Renewing the household fund for another six months is not enough. With local authorities setting tough criteria to access the support, many are turned away.”

She said 14 years of “brutal government austerity” had seen disabled people left “isolated and marginalised” and “paying a heavy price, falling into deeper poverty, freezing in cold homes, chased by bailiffs for social care costs, [and facing] punitive sanctions and stressful disability assessments”.

Peters said 14 years of “brutal Tory austerity” had seen thousands of disabled people “paying a tragic price with their lives”.

She added: “We cannot wait for a general election to hold the government to account for their failings and the tragic impact their ideological policies have had on disabled people’s lives.

“That’s why we have returned to disability resistance and street action (see separate story).

“We will continue to oppose austerity policy and community service cuts.”

GMCDP co-chair Dennis Queen added: “It’s essential that disabled people of all kinds keep coming together to fight back through groups like our coalition, DPAC and by joining other local campaigns fighting against the oppression faced by so many communities right now.

“We didn’t gain the rights we had without fighting for our liberation together, and we’ve been losing ground for far too long now.

“So please, we need more of our community to join us in the streets and behind the scenes, however you can, if you can – and if you cannot, just share everything you can and know that you are not alone.”

There were few mentions of disability in the budget documents, and no mention of disability or disabled people in Hunt’s speech.

But the budget documents do reveal more funding to “support the processing of disability benefit claims”, increasing the system’s capacity “to meet increased demand” and to handle “both new and existing claims”.

Neither the Treasury nor the Department for Work and Pensions had been able to clarify how this money would be spent by 11am today (Thursday), or to explain why they had decided to end cost-of-living payments.

The government will also underwrite the UK’s bid to host the 2027 Invictus Games in Birmingham, which it said would “ensure that injured service personnel and veterans are not forgotten” and “showcase the power of sport in recovery and rehabilitation demonstrating that there is life beyond disability”.

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