Yahoo News DWP's 'biggest crackdown on benefits in a decade' in doubt after announcement
Just over a month after revealing plans for the harshest benefits clampdown in ten years, which included proposals to convert disability support into vouchers and tighten eligibility for those with mental health conditions, it seems the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) may have hit a snag.
The unexpected call for a general election on July 4 has thrown the DWP's ambitions to move nearly three million long-term sick or disabled individuals into employment into disarray. Election rules prevent civil servants from undertaking controversial tasks during the campaigning period.
This means that any progress on the 'modernising support for independent living' Green Paper will be on hold until after the election results are in. Campaign group Benefits and Work suggests that "if Labour win then that's probably the last we will hear of the Green Paper". However, they added: "If the Conservatives win a working majority, then it's likely that the Green Paper will be followed by a White Paper which will set out which of the proposals the government plans to take forward. This will be followed by legislation."
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The contentious green paper had proposed significant changes to the Personal Independence Payments (PIP) system affecting over a million people, potentially replacing it with, reports the Manchester Evening News.
Speaking in the House of Commons on behalf of Liz Kendall, Shadow Work and Pensions Minister, MP Alison McGovern made it clear that the proposals in the DWP's policy Green Paper wouldn't be steamrolled into action under a Labour administration.
McGovern remarked: "Labour will carefully review the detail of the Green Paper because the country that we want is one where disabled people have the same right to a good job and help to get it as anyone else."
"We will judge any measure that the government bring forward on its merits and against that principle because the costs of failure in this area are unsustainable. The autonomy and routine of work is good for us all, for our mental and physical health and more than that, for women, work is freedom, too."
However, she highlighted a persistent problem with disability benefits, which have seen costs soar post-COVID-19 as more individuals are deemed unfit for work. Since the onset of the pandemic, the expenditure from taxpayers on these benefits has escalated by two-thirds, rocketing from £42.3 billion to an eye-watering £69 billion.
Yet, this doesn't signal the end for some of the concepts presented in the document. Benefits and Work suggested: "It's entirely possible that Labour will also be looking to reduce the current rapidly increasing cost of PIP."
