Rishi Sunak under fire over new DWP powers which 'demonise' people on benefits

Rishi Sunak has come under for new Department for Work and Pensions ( DWP ) powers which are "demonising" disabled and sick people. The Prime Minister announced a crackdown on "sick note" culture on Friday - to much criticism.

“The government’s ongoing onslaught on disabled people is hard to watch, with the prime minister today taking aim at people who are long-term sick in a cruel speech demonising people with ‘sick notes’,” said Richard Kramer, chief executive of disability charity Sense.

“This rhetoric is unbelievably damaging and unhelpful, presenting disabled people as ‘shirkers’ who don’t want to work.” The Prime Minister has outlined a package of sweeping reforms to put work at the heart of welfare and deliver on his “moral mission” to give everyone who is able to work, the best possible chance of staying in, or returning to work.

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“Many disabled people want to work, but don’t get enough help to do so either from employers or from the government. Focusing on the sign-off process for sick notes will miss the point without more root and branch reform to widen support, said Stephen Evans, chief executive of Learning and Work Institute.

“Only one in ten out-of-work disabled people get help to find work each year, but two in ten want to work. We need to tackle the employment support gap, help employers to better support people with health conditions and disabilities and look at how they design jobs and recruit, and improve health and other support for disabled people,” added Evans.

Ben Harrison, director of the Work Foundation at Lancaster University, said: “The prime minister is right that more action to support those who want to work is badly needed. Over 700,000 more people have become economically inactive due to long-term sickness since the pandemic began, and without substantive action that number may rise further.

“But making it harder for people to access health related benefits, and pushing people who are managing physical and mental health conditions into taking ‘any job’ with threats of closing their benefit claims altogether will heighten the pressures faced by those people and may make their condition worse.”