A letter sent on behalf of the DBC to the Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on 12 July 2024.

Dear Prime Minister,

Congratulations on your recent election and formation of a new government. We are writing on behalf of the Disability Benefits Consortium (DBC), a national coalition of around 130 charities and other organisations working towards a fairer social security system for disabled people.

Around 16 million people in the UK are disabled, just under a quarter of the entire population. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 1 in 3 (31%) of this community live in poverty, over 5 million people.[1]

This alarmingly high rate of poverty is being driven by a social security system that is failing to support disabled people and is having a hugely negative impact on their health and wellbeing. This is a shameful situation for the country.

Millions of disabled people rely on support from disability benefits because they’re unable to work, or can only work limited hours, and/ or face significant disability-related extra costs. Yet many people don’t get the support they need as the benefits system is difficult to navigate and assessments are often carried out badly.

Often, when disabled people do manage to access support, they can find the amount they receive is too low to enable them to either meet the extra costs of disability or, in too many cases, even to afford the basics. Unfair policies such as benefit sanctions, the benefit cap and deductions to pay off debt often reduce people’s incomes even further, driving them into serious hardship.

Despite the clear evidence that the social security system is failing to support millions of disabled people, successive governments have failed to make changes to the system to ensure they can get the support they need. In fact, on many occasions, government policy choices have greatly worsened the situation for disabled people.

Your government has the opportunity to make changes to the social security system to ensure it properly supports all disabled people to live independently, in dignity and free from poverty. Below we set out five priority areas for change in this area. We are looking forward to working closely with your government in partnership to help achieve these aims.

Personal Independence Payment (PIP)

We urge the government to abandon the proposals set out in the PIP green paper consultation, ‘Modernising support for independent living’, which was published by the previous government in April this year.

This consultation was driven by a cost-cutting agenda, and the proposals – ranging from restriction to abolition of PIP – would have a devastating impact on the incomes and health of many disabled people, reducing their ability to live independently. The framing of this exercise has also included some damaging media rhetoric about disabled people. Additionally, we’re concerned that disabled people have been prevented from being able to properly engage with the consultation given it largely took place during the pre-election period of sensitivity when it was not allowed to be publicised.

PIP does need to be improved but the proposals set out in this consultation are not the way to do it. We would like to see the PIP process reviewed, and this should be informed by the experiences and with the full involvement of disabled people. This should look at the positive changes that can be made to the PIP process to make it fairer and easier to access the right support.

Work Capability Assessment (WCA)

We welcome your commitment to reform or replace the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) in your party’s manifesto. We have long called for a more holistic assessment and welcome the opportunity to work with your government to shape a system that better supports disabled people both in and out of work. We also welcome the pledge to reform the benefit system to give disabled people who want to work, the confidence to do so without the fear of an immediate benefit reassessment if it doesn’t work out.

However, it’s vital that these reforms should not include taking forward the proposed measures announced by the previous government to tighten the WCA criteria. The plans to tighten the WCA should be scrapped.

These changes would lead to far more disabled people who experience significant barriers to employment being subject to inappropriate work-related requirements, or risk losing their benefits. They will also receive significantly less financial support than those on the higher rates, which will lead to far more disabled people falling into poverty.

The proposed changes were justified on the basis that remote and flexible working is more available to people now, however a majority of jobs are still done either wholly or partly in person. Support to help people to move into employment can be improved without making these changes, such as improving the support Job Centres offer, reducing the backlog in Access to Work.

Work-related conditionality and sanctions

The Government should remove all work-related conditionality and sanctions for disabled people.

Work-related conditionality greatly increases the stress and anxiety disabled people experience while accessing the benefits system and has a hugely negative financial impact on people who are subject to it. There’s no evidence that sanctions help disabled people take up sustainable and suitable employment. Instead, they’re more likely to lead to material hardship, delay people starting work, and lead to them getting insecure and poorly paid jobs. The Department for Work and Pensions’ own evidence even shows this[2]. High-quality employment support should be offered to disabled people on a voluntary basis – it should attract participation on its merits and a good record, not rely on threats and financial penalties.

Benefit adequacy

We welcome the commitment in your party’s manifesto to review Universal Credit so that it tackles poverty. We believe this should take place within a much broader independent review of the overall adequacy of all disability benefit rates. Following this, rates for all benefits should be set at a level which allows all disabled people to cover their essentials, and extra costs of disability, and live free from poverty. Benefit rates aren’t set using any measure of whether they’re meeting people’s needs, and no official assessment of benefit adequacy has been carried out since the 1960s.

Current benefit rates are inadequate, which is shown by the high numbers of disabled people claiming means-tested disability benefits who are struggling to afford essentials. Other policies such as the benefit cap, two-child limit and debt deductions reduce some disabled people’s incomes even further. Not all disabled people on benefits are affected by the benefit cap, but many are – for example, those in the UC Limited Capability for Work or the Employment and Support Allowance Work-Related Activity Groups. The benefit cap and two-child limit should be scrapped and the debt deductions policies must be changed to be fairer.

Mandatory migration to Universal Credit

The government must ensure that all disabled people claiming legacy benefits will be fully supported in the move to Universal Credit, and no legacy benefit claims should be terminated until an award of Universal Credit has been determined.

Disabled people will be disproportionately worse off on Universal Credit than legacy benefits[3]. While many of those moving across from legacy benefits will receive transitional protection, that protection will be eroded over time due to inflation and will be lost if their circumstances change. Every opportunity should be taken to protect transitional protection and ensure that disabled people are not plunged further into hardship because of mandatory migration.

We are ready to meet with you and your ministers at your earliest convenience and look forward to working with you on our shared objectives throughout the next parliament.

Yours sincerely,

Hannah Nicholls-Harrison

Policy Co-Chair of the Disability Benefits Consortium

[1] Joseph Rowntree Foundation, ‘UK Poverty 2024′, 2024.

[2] Department for Work and Pensions, ‘The Impact of Benefit Sanctions on Employment Outcomes’, 2023.

[3] Resolution Foundation, ‘In credit? Assessing where Universal Credit’s long roll-out has left the benefit system and the country’, 2024.