Benefits

TUC Disabled Workers’ Conference, meeting two weeks after the general election, resolved to mobilise and take direct action – and called on the full Trades Union Congress to do the same. Nearly 200 delegates debated and passed a variety of resolutions and discussed issues and strategies with guest speakers. An emergency motion about the general election from the Disabled Workers’ Committee stated that “With the Conservatives promising £12 billion cuts, we can anticipate further cuts in benefits levels and entitlements, privatisation and closure of health and support services, and new attacks...

The Tory majority government will be disastrous for disabled people, even more than it is already. Over the last five years disabled people have borne the brunt of the cuts — losing nine times more, in financial terms, from their benefits and services, than other people. If you add all the current and already proposed cuts in benefits and services together, the total financial loss for disabled people up to 2018 will be £28.3 billion. Things like the ending of the Independent Living Fund, the ending of the Severe Disability Premium with the introduction of Universal Credit. Now the Tories want...

The Tories are committed to cutting public spending by £30 billion over the next four years. This will mean annual cuts twice the size of any year’s cuts over the past five years. Although they have not identified all their cuts it is already clear to some degree where the axe will fall. Policies include debarring unemployed under-21s from claiming Housing Benefit and cutting the annual benefits cap — the maximum payable to any claimant, whatever their circumstances — from £26,000 to £23,000. Jobseekers Allowance for 18-21 year-olds will be replaced by a six-month Youth Allowance, after which...

In the run-up to this week’s General Election, the Tories have consistently failed to answer questions as to where exactly they intend to cut the welfare budget in order to hit their target of reducing it by £12 billion in the first two years of the next Parliament. One of the areas in which cuts are already being made is benefits for sick and disabled people. Incapacity Benefit has already been replaced with Employment and Support Allowance – an even tougher regime than IB for those unable to work because of a health condition with testing administered by private sector providers – and now in...

The Tories have threatened to cut the welfare budget by £12 billion in the first two years of the next Parliament if they win the General Election in May. The already announced plan to extend Universal Credit to all working-age claimants by the end of 2017 would save the Government around £2.5 billion, assuming that the deadline doesn't slip beyond then as it now looks likely that it will. So what other benefits have the Tories got in their sights? Ideas being discussed by ministers and senior civil servants at the Department for Work and Pensions apparently include: * Means-testing and taxing...

1 March was a National Day of Action called by Disabled People Against Cuts to protest against the Work Capability Assessment, which has led to thousands of disabled people being wrongly found capable of work and subject to job-seeking sanctions and loss of benefits. Protests at 31 locations across the country under the slogan “Same old circus, new clowns” were aimed at US firm Maximus, which has taken over the WCA after ATOS gave up the contract as a result of public pressure, a backlog of appeals and a failure to make a profit out of disabled people. The central London demo in Westminster...

Universal Credit, the benefit which is to replace six payments to working-age claimants (Income Support, income-based Jobseekers' and Employment and Support Allowance, Housing Benefit and Child and Working Tax Credit), has now been introduced nationally for all new claims. The Department for Work and Pensions has been piloting Universal Credit since 2013, albeit on a smaller scale than initially intended as a result of IT problems. The new system has been trialled in just four towns in the North West, Ashton-under-Lyne, Oldham, Warrington and Wigan, and only on non-complex claims from single...

On 20 January, The Guardian reported on academic research showing benefit sanctions push people into destitution, not jobs. The 1.9 million benefit sanctions that were imposed between June 2011 and March 2014, stopping people from receiving jobseeker’s allowance (JSA) and the 43% of those sanctioned subsequently ceasing to try to claim the benefit, did reduce the unemployment figures. No surprise there. Massaging unemployment figures is what every government since the 1980s has done. But only 20% of those who went off benefit said they had found work. In the words of one of the authors, David...

According to the government, economic data published this month show ordinary people have begun to benefit from economic growth. Really? A 1.8% annual growth in wages was real growth, but only because of low inflation, which stands at 0.5% on the government’s preferred CPI measure. That does little to counteract the fall in real wages since 2008, and the figures may over-estimate growth in wages. As the Resolution Foundation has pointed out, government figures exclude 4.5 million self employed people who, on average, have seen their wages squeezed 20-30% more than other sectors of the...

Last month Labour said they want to increase the time new EU migrants have to wait before claiming in-work benefits — to two years. Not to be outdone in a disgusting competition to be toughest on migrants, Cameron announced he wanted EU migrants to work for four years before being eligible to claim. Both parties want to restrict child trax credits and child benefit. The Tories also want to restrict access to social housing. The say they will deport all EU migrants who do not find a job within six months and introduce stronger laws to allow EU migrants sleeping rough or begging to be deported...