Disability Reforms Risk Widespread Poverty

Cuts to the disability living allowance (DLA) will leave disabled people, their carers and their children in poverty.

Disabled people – and those living with and caring for them – are more likely than non-disabled people to face poverty and restricted chances in life. The current failing of the allowance is not that it is paying too much, as the Government believes, but it is not generous enough to provide disabled people with a decent standard of living.
Limiting the different rates of the allowance will mean many claimants could lose the benefit.
The new allowance due to replace the DLA – the personal independence payment – is much less generous and will be available to far fewer people, and seems to have been designed primarily to cut government spending.
DLA claimants are all too often portrayed as malingering benefit dependants, but evidence shows that fraud is rare. Recipients of the current benefit rely on it to pay for basic food and accommodation. Any cut in the allowance would reduce the living standards of disabled people, and risk leaving them and their children in permanent poverty.

Changes to the mobility component of DLA could see older disabled people particularly hit by the loss of vital income, and left isolated in care homes and hospitals.

Last month the TUC quite rightly reacted cautiously to the publication of the Government’s incapacity benefit reassessment programme.While we welcome the Government’s commitment to implement the Harrington Review to improve the operation of work capability assessments, these trials were carried out under the old system where 40 per cent of appeals were upheld, due to problems the government acknowledges still exist.

Even among those who do not appeal, many of the people judged as ‘fit for work’ in these trials are disabled, and will face additional barriers moving into the jobs market – particularly as they are likely to have spent a long period out of work and live in areas where unemployment is high.

News that Dame Carol Black and David Frost are to carry out an independent review into sickness absence should receive a cautious response.We would welcome a genuine attempt to support those on long-term sickness back to work but there is concern that it will end up as just another part of the Government’s cost-saving onslaught on the income and rights of those at work, and those on benefits.
The fact that the review is being conducted by a leading voice of employers’ interests, with no corresponding involvement from unions representing workers affected by sickness absence, gives little confidence in the outcome.