Young disabled people will ‘earn or learn’ or lose their benefits, Kendall’s unpublished comments suggest

Young disabled people – including those with significant mental ill-health – will lose their benefits if they do not accept offers of education or employment, according to previously unpublished comments made by work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall.

The comments, made by Kendall in an interview with the BBC’s economics editor Faisal Islam, were described as extremely concerning by disabled activists this week.

They follow nearly 35 years of attempts by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to reduce spending on out-of-work disability benefits, with evidence showing that its policies caused hundreds, and probably thousands, of deaths in the post-2010 austerity era*.

Kendall’s interview took place in October, more than a month before she published last week’s employment support white paper.

She was responding to a claim by Islam that she would either have to cut the level of out-of-work disability benefits, or remove those benefits from some current recipients.

In her response, according to the transcript – obtained from DWP through a freedom of information request – she claimed that “good work is good for mental health and for young people, there’ll be no option, no option of not earning or learning”.

She said that was “an absolute part of our youth guarantee”.

When Islam asked to clarify if the “youth guarantee” meant “no option other than earning or learning” for young disabled people, with their incapacity benefits being removed if they do not accept either option, she said: “I believe that young people with a real chance of earning or learning will take it. And we will say, you have to.”

She added: “Look, there’s been conditions in the benefit system ever since the original Beveridge report that there are opportunities to work, to get rehabilitation, to get skills, and there’s a requirement for you to take those up. I’m very clear about that.”

Last week’s white paper promised a “youth guarantee” in England, so every young person aged 18 to 21 has access to “further learning, help to get a job or an apprenticeship”.

But it did not clarify whether this would apply to all young disabled people, and what would happen to those who refused an offer of work, education or training.

Now Kendall’s comments strongly suggest that young disabled people will lose their incapacity benefits if they refuse the “earning or learning” offer.

Rick Burgess, a spokesperson for the grassroots, user-led mental health group Recovery in the Bin, said the transcript of the interview suggested that young disabled people would have to pick either working or learning or have their benefits removed.

He said DWP needed to issue “a clear unambiguous statement that the government recognises that some disabled people require long-term support to live independently and well, and not have that contingent on being working or in education.

“If that statement is not made clearly and without qualification we are right to fear a worsening wave of repression, harm, and deaths.

“The media and politicians have to raise the standard of their knowledge here and be better informed of the issues because this ignorance costs lives.”

John McArdle, co-founder of Black Triangle Campaign, said he was “extremely concerned” by Kendall’s comments, which suggested that young disabled people were “less disabled” than older disabled people.

He suggested that such a policy could breach the Equality Act.

He said: “They are putting them in danger. It’s a catastrophe waiting to happen if there are no safeguards.

“By focusing on one sub-section of the disabled community simply because they are young, it’s discriminatory.”

*The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP, is published by Pluto Press 

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