The national Campaign for Disability Justice is urging the public to sign an open letter to the Labour Party government. This demands that it to commit to including disabled people in the development of its future plans over welfare. In particular, the letter comes as Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) boss Liz Kendall announces work has begun to review Personal Independence Payment (PIP). Part of this also entails its plans to effectively scrap the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) by aligning it to the PIP application process.
Specifically, the letter is calling on the Labour government to fully involve disabled people and their organisations in reviews of WCA, the PIP assessment process, and the Access to Work scheme.
The open letter also calls for an urgent multi-discipline safeguarding review, and funding to develop a national strategy for local independent advice services.
The group will send the letter to the prime minister and key MPs at the end of the current consultation period on the government’s controversial Pathways to Work Green Paper.
DWP PIP review begins…
This comes as Social Security and Disability minister Stephen Timms has now started work on reviewing DWP PIP.
Notably, in March, the government’s flagship and controversial Green Paper set out its plans to both:
- Change the PIP assessment rules – effectively tightening the criteria around eligibility. Notably, the DWP is targeting certain claimants in particular, namely, young, neurodivergent, learning disabled, and those with mental health disorders with this.
- Roll the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) into one single assessment. The DWP would align this to PIP.
Now, as Benefits and Work reported:
In a desperate effort to distract attention from the growing anger over the proposed personal independence (PIP) cuts, Liz Kendall announced that work has begun on designing a new assessment which will combine the doomed work capability assessment (WCA) with the PIP assessment.
On Monday 12 May, Kendall announced this review to parliament:
Personal independence payments are a crucial benefit that makes a contribution towards the extra costs of living with a disability. I know how anxious many people are when there is talk about reform, but this Government want to ensure that PIP is there for people who need it now and into the future. In our Green Paper we promised to review the PIP assessment, working with disabled people, the organisations that represent them and other experts, and we are starting the first phase of that review today.
In a nutshell, rolling the WCA into PIP assessments means that to get the health-related (LCWRA) component of Universal Credit or the ESA support group, applicants will have to also be awarded PIP.
However, the Canary’s Steve Topple has previously pointed out a number of serious issues with this. Specifically, he noted how:
The WCA and PIP criteria are completely different, as are the benefits. The DWP may be asking people for the same information about their illnesses or impairments. But the context is completely different. The WCA looks at what sick and disabled people can do regarding work. The PIP health assessment looks at what support people need. To combine both these assessments is simplifying people’s health. But more often than not, people’s health is not simple at all.
In other words, currently, DWP PIP is about the extra costs chronically ill and disabled people need to live. Or more to the point, it’s completely separate from whether or not they are in work, or can work. However, Labour now seems set on blurring this line.
PIP and the WCA: dangerous plans afoot
What’s clear now is that Kendall is leaning into this to justify the move. In a response to Labour MP Imram Hussain, who challenged her over the DWP’s PIP cut plans, she said:
I hear very clearly what my hon. Friend says, but I also want to be clear to the House: if people can never work, we want to protect them; if people can work, we want to support them. The truth is that a disabled person who is in work is half as likely to be poor as one who is out of work. We want to improve people’s chances and choices by supporting those who can work to do so and by protecting those who cannot.
In short, Kendall was tying people claiming PIP to being out of work. She did so again in an interview over the DWP’s reforms with ITV. Listing off a range of the government’s plans to push people into work, she again justified the cuts to PIP and UC’s health element, and rolling the WCA into one. In one telling moment, she said:
A life on benefits for so many people – it is not a good future.
Overall, one thing that was notably absent from Kendall’s response to MPs and ITV, was an acknowledgement of how those plans are connected. Specifically, aligning the WCA with PIP right as the DWP tighten the criteria for claiming PIP will invariably deny many access to the health part of UC. Significantly, more than 600,000 chronically ill and disabled people could lose their health element of UC if this goes ahead. This is because they do not receive PIP or DLA, so would no longer qualify.
In short, the DWP is both looking to change the PIP assessment process itself, and do-away with the WCA. And both have every potential to deny huge numbers of disabled people access to PIP, and UC’s health element.
The government’s failure to involve them in shaping changes to these has been one part of the problem. So that’s what the Campaign for Disability Justice wants to now change.
A call for the DWP to centre disabled people’s lived experience
It calls on the public to support its open letter. This, it argues, will help show the strength of public feeling about the lack of consultation on key proposals and demonstrate a desire for genuine collaboration on workable solutions for everyone.
As well as calling for the government to avoid making any cuts to benefits, the campaign is looking ahead to how the government can, and must, include disabled voices in conversations and reviews of key services, systems, and policies that impact them.
The current consultation’s failure to properly consult on the key proposals highlights their lack of insight into safeguarding risks and undermines its claim to be about “helping people into work”.
Notably, as the Canary previously reported, the government is not consulting on many of the most significant plans in its Green Paper. This includes its cuts to PIP, and the scrapping of the WCA.
Plans to restrict DWP PIP, a non-employment-related benefit, that actually helps many disabled people to remain in their jobs, demonstrates this point perfectly.
Pan-disability Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisation (DDPO) Inclusion Barnet is coordinating the campaign. Beyond being against cuts, it argues that groups must forge a pathway for collaboration in future.
Campaign founder Caroline Collier said:
Disabled people, who constitute nearly half of all low-income households in the UK, face disproportionate impacts from these Green Paper proposals. Despite this profound effect, the glaring lack of genuine engagement with Disabled people on these vital systems is deeply concerning. We must learn from the past and avoid the catastrophic consequences that can arise from ill-informed benefit changes. This Campaign is a crucial step toward centring lived experience in shaping the future of these crucial support systems.
The campaign has until 29 June to collect signatures from the public. You can add your name to the open letter here.
Featured image via the Canary
