The Green Paper on ill health and disability welfare reform published on the 18th March follows weeks of media speculation on UK Government changes to incapacity and disability benefits. While full details won’t be available until the Spring Statement next week, this marks the first official position from the UK Government—moving beyond unhelpful leaks and conjecture.
The key headlines are:
· The UK Government is abolishing the Work Capability Assessment, which currently determines eligibility for the health element of Universal Credit (UC).
· A stricter Personal Independence Payment (PIP) assessment will be used to determine eligibility for both PIP and additional health-related support in UC.
· Access to the health element of UC will be delayed until the age of 22.
· Financial support within the health element of UC will be reduced, with a freeze for existing claimants and a 50% cut for new claimants.
· A new “right to try” will be established in law, ensuring that individuals who move into work will not be automatically reassessed for disability benefits.
Devolution means that some of these changes won’t apply in Scotland – for example, PIP is being replaced by Adult Disability Payment (ADP) in Scotland. The changes made by the UK Government to PIP eligibility will affect the funding available to the Scottish Government for ADP but no figures have been released yet to allow us to estimate the impact.
Furthermore, there is no detail on how UC claimants in Scotland will be assessed for the UC health element given that PIP is being phased out. The UK Government will need to work with the Scottish Government to work this through, and it is regrettable this was not done in advance of the announcement.
The UK Government is trying to curb a rise in claims for disability and health related benefits that have been growing since the pandemic and are forecast to continue to rise in future years. The first question to try and answer is why have more people been claiming health and disability related benefits?
