MPs query disability benefit ‘savings’

20 Feb 12
MPs have cast doubt on the government’s projected savings from replacing Disability Living Allowance with a new benefit.

By Richard Johnstone | 20 February 2012

MPs have cast doubt on the government’s projected savings from replacing Disability Living Allowance with a new benefit.

The Welfare Reform Bill will introduce an eligibility assessment for the Personal Independence Payment. This will replace the DLA, the benefit paid to meet additional living costs for working-age disabled people. DLA expenditure has risen from £3.2bn in 1992/93 to £12.3bn in 2009/10, while the number of claimants has increased threefold.

The government believes that a face-to-face assessment for claimants could reduce by 20% the amount paid out through the DLA by 2015/16.

But the Commons work and pensions select committee yesterday warned that this figure might be inaccurate. The MPs said demographic change had been a major factor in increasing DLA expenditure and will not be affected by the policy.

They accept that there are a number of arguments for reforming DLA, citing increasing complexity and that it is frequently misunderstood to be an out-of-work benefit.

However, there is concern that the assessment is being introduced before the DWP understands what its full impact will be.

Committee chair Dame Anne Begg said: ‘Announcing the change against a background of budget cuts has created high levels of anxiety amongst DLA recipients.’

She called for more information to be made available on how the introduction of PIP was likely to affect the different groups of disabled people who currently receive the DLA. ‘The government has been slow to produce figures for the number of people likely to be affected by this change,’ she said. ‘It is still not possible to tell which current recipients of DLA are likely to have their benefit withdrawn altogether or who will be eligible for PIP but at a lower rate.’

The MPs also urged the DWP not to repeat the mistakes of previous welfare reforms.

Specifically, it must learn from the introduction of the Work Capability Assessment for the Employment and Support Allowance. When this was put in place in 2008, there were difficulties in assessing variable and fluctuating conditions as the test was not flexible enough to take a longer-term view.

The committee has welcomed the government’s decision not to adopt a ‘big bang’ approach to implementation, with a staged introduction from 2013/14. The DWP should not introduce PIP assessments nationally until it is satisfied that the assessment is ‘empathetic and accurate’.

Themistakes made with Work Capability Assessments ‘should not be repeated’, Begg said.

‘The assessment for PIP needs to be empathetic and avoid the mechanistic, box-ticking approach initially used in the Work Capability Assessment.’

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