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Tighter assessments of disability benefits would not necessarily ease the soaring burden on taxpayers, a report has found.
The analysis warns that cracking down on Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and disability payment assessments would undermine living standards without helping people get into work.
A report published on Thursday by the Resolution Foundation warned against the idea that it is “too easy to access support” through disability pensions and inability to work benefits, saying there is “no evidence to support this claim”.
And the fact that payments have remained stable since PIP was introduced in 2013 is testament to that, the report said.
“Hashish attempts to simply restrict benefit eligibility are therefore likely to result in cuts to support and living standards without improving the underlying health and employment prospects of people in serious need,” the Resolution Foundation said.
The Conservative government has announced a number of reforms to disability and unemployment benefits in a bid to bring down rising benefit costs.
Total annual spending on working-age health benefits will increase from £28 billion to £43 billion between 2013 and 2024.
And this increase is set to rise by a further 48% (£20bn) to £63bn between 2022-23 and 2028-29, the think tank warned.
Ministers proposed abolishing the Unemployed Medical Benefits Assessment Scheme and merging it with PIP, which provides support to people in hardship regardless of their employment status.
The Conservative manifesto also promised to cut welfare spending by £12 billion a year by the end of the next parliament.
The party said this would be achieved by reforming “disability benefits to be better targeted to reflect people’s real needs, as well as making big changes to mental health services”.
The report said the policy “would involve significant cuts to working-age disability benefits that would be extremely difficult to implement.”
“The £12 billion cut equates to almost two-fifths (38%) of working-age PIP claims and history shows that savings from disability benefit reform take time to materialise,” the report said.
Questioner I Earlier this month Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak said: “The welfare system must always focus on supporting those who genuinely cannot work, with compassion and generosity, but at the same time make sure that we support everyone who can work to do so. This is the reform I have set out and I am fully committed to it.”
Before the election was announced, the government said it also wanted to help people get back to work by matching individuals with vacant jobs and funding training and support.
Labour also says it wants to reform the disability benefit assessment process and enact a plan to get more disabled people into work, but few details have been given.
Spending has increased on both means-tested incapacity benefits for people who are unable to work, and disability benefits, which are based on medical need and are not linked to income.
The Resolution Foundation said it expects both tax burdens to grow even faster in the next legislative session than they have in recent years.
Lindsay Judge, director of research at the Resolution Foundation, said: “There are no easy solutions to this problem – it’s not because people are gaming the system or because it’s somehow easier to claim assistance.”
“Nor will the so-called ‘crackdown on welfare benefits’ deliver easy and painless savings.
“Rather, the rise in health benefit costs reflects the fact that Britons are getting older, getting sicker and more people experiencing disability, and that previous reforms have often been poorly designed.”
“Therefore we need much more focus on enabling people to live longer, healthier working lives. This goal requires an integrated strategy that involves not just the Treasury and DWP but the NHS and employers as well.”
This increase in spending is driven by an ageing population, poorer health and rising disability, with the greatest pressure coming from rising claimant numbers rather than increasing generosity of welfare support.
The number of working-age people reporting having a disability increased from 5.9 million in 2012-13 to 8.9 million in 2022-23.
Real spending on working-age disability benefits has increased by a third over the past decade. Spending on disability benefits has soared by 89 percent over the same period.
The report said politicians “should focus on the underlying causes of rising claims rather than just restricting eligibility and leniency”.