28 June 2010
The chancellor’s reform of benefits for disabled people would exacerbate an already unfair testing system, charities have warned.
George Osborne today announced plans to cut the £12.5bn bill for payments to people out of work due to disability. The government has said it will phase out the old Incapacity Benefit and move everyone on to either its successor, the Employment & Support Allowance, or to Jobseeker’s Allowance. There have been suggestions from early pilots that half the people on Incapacity Benefit will move to the lower paid JSA on the basis that they are fit to work.
Osborne, who is at the G20 economic summit of world leaders in Toronto, Canada, said: ‘Incapacity Benefit and Employment & Support Allowance is a very large budget. We have got to look at all these things, make sure we do it in a way that protects those with genuine needs, those with disabilities, protects those who can't work but also encourages those who can work into work.’
But campaigners have said that the testing used to judge a person’s capacity to work is unsuitable.
A report released in March by the Citizens Advice Bureau said that several ‘seriously ill and disabled people’ were found to be fit for work under the testing system for the Employment & Support Allowance – the Work Capability Assessment – including people in the advanced stages of Parkinson’s Disease and multiple sclerosis.
A spokeswoman for the Mind mental health charity told Public Finance that the process was ‘traumatic’ and the testing ‘unsophisticated’. She added that, during times of recession, the prevalence of mental illness increases and cutting incapacity benefits could increase it further.
Richard Hawkes, chief executive of disability charity Scope, said: ‘We know that changes need to be made to the benefits system. However, the current medical tests used to reassess people and move them into work are inherently flawed. We fear that simply speeding this process up will mean that corners will be cut, disabled people’s needs will not be met and the government will fail to achieve its aims.’
He added that this was the ‘second attack’ on support for disabled people after the changes to the Disability Living Allowance in last week’s Budget.
