Blackburn and District Trades Union Council has added its voice to the chorus of disapproval surrounding the Government’s plans for changes to social security for the sick and disabled, as outlined in the Green paper “Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working”.
The proposals will reduce the number of people who will qualify for Personal Independence Payments (PIP) from November 2026. The eligibility criteria for the daily living element of PIP will be narrowed (the mobility part of PIP is unaffected). Currently, people need to “score” at least eight points from the 10 daily living headings to qualify for the standard rate of this element. In future, they will need to score at least four points in any single heading.
87% of the 1,283,000 working age people currently receiving the standard daily living PIP payment would not have met this new measure had it been in place when they made their claim. The change will also lead to people losing passported entitlements. These linked entitlements can include Carer’s Allowance for people who care for PIP-receiving citizens.
The Government says it will restrict entitlement to the “health element” of Universal Credit to only those who qualify for PIP, even though it is well understood that not everyone who is too sick to work will qualify for this. PIP is a benefit not designed to identify whether or not an individual is able to work, but whether or not they have certain characteristics in limited and specific areas that are likley to add to their living costs, whether they are in work or not. There are currently 1.1m people receiving the health element of UC, or in the Support Group of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), who either do not qualify for, or who have never claimed, PIP.
There are also people who are off work because of sickness and who do not get the “health element” of Universal Credit, but who are classed as having a Limited Capability for Work and are excused some of the harsher elements of “conditionality”. The Government is perilously unclear what will happen to these people under the envisaged new regime.
The Trades Council has responded to the consultation associated with the Green Paper with a submission that you can download and read here:
We say that we do not subscribe to the point of view that there are workers on one side, and claimants on the other. We all lead lives that can take unpredicted turns and few of us have a level of resource that makes us confident we shall never need the support of the social security system – whether out of work or not. What that support should be we measure by how we would hope to be treated under the circumstances.
Our submission criticises many of the Government’s arguments, including how it characterises the social security system as it is now. That does not mean to say we would not like to see changes – but they are a million miles away from what the Government is intending to do. We also say that there are real problems manifest with the health of the nation, pointing out that contemporary working conditions are not exempt from some blame for this. As the “Work Foundation” report, “Stemming the tide: Healthier jobs to tackle economic inactivity” (December 2024) noted: “poor work quality is one of the things that is harming health in many ways. Long hours, shift work and work-related stress all take their toll”, and “in 2023-24, half of all UK work-related ill health was due to stress, anxiety or depression”.
Last year’s Report for the Commission for Healthier Working Lives, “Exploring the interactions between job quality, industries and health”, found that British workplaces rank among the worst in Europe for workplace demands, control at work and job strain. Three fifths of the workforce report having to work to tight deadlines and two fifths at high speed, both of which are among the highest rates in Europe. Just one third of workers say they have control over how theywork – the lowest rate in Europe. The Report points out that “in 2022/23, 1.7million workers in Great Britain reported work-related ill health, underlining the need to address job quality issues that affect health” and “there is clear evidence that work intensity and job strain have increased significantly over the last 25 years, to a point where around half of the UK workforce report being regularly exhausted from work”.
The bottom line, though, is that we cannot support measures whose most significant outcome will be simply a reduction in the income of people who already feature as being more likley to be poor. We call upon the Government to abandon all measures and legislation that will reduce the incomes of people with incapacities, and to maintain the “LCW Group”, or something equivalent to it – essentially, an entitlement to social security based on capacity.
Research by “More In Common” in March suggested that the Government’s plans are not popular with the public. 83%said they had heard of the planned cuts. 3 in 5 (58%) said they were a bad idea. The threat to PIP was one of the issues said to have come up “on the doorstep” in the recent local elections.
We, certainly, are not going to accept that a country with the 11th highest ratio in the world of dollar millionaires per capita, where an estimated 2.1 million households reported owning at least one second property in 2021-22, and where it was estimated in 2024 that the luxury goods market was worth £81bn a year (“Walpole” Report: “Luxury in the Making”) can no longer afford to care for its sick and disabled.