Initial response to the Green Paper
- stefbenstead
- Apr 7
- 11 min read
There are so many issues with Liz Kendall’s speech today, and the Green Paper proposals, that it is really hard to know where to begin. So rather than try to address those issues, I’m just going to point out what they are, and then over the coming weeks I and others may collectively find capacity to show the DWP its own data on these issues.
Some of the speech is just basic political spin. It could be said by any political party in any country, and people who aren’t knowledgeable in the area would just nod along. Examples of this include:
the social security system we inherited from [political content removed] is failing the very people it is supposed to help, and holding our country back.
Millions of people who could work trapped on benefits, denied the income, hope, dignity and self-respect that we know good work brings.
taxpayers paying millions more on the costs of failure
Creating a more pro-active, pro-work system for those who can work.
Today, our Pathways to Work Green Paper sets out decisive action to fix the broken benefits system.
Disabled people and people with health conditions who can work should have the same rights, choices and chances to work as everybody else. That principle of equality is vital too.
Our second objective is to restore trust and fairness in the benefits system by fixing the broken assessment process and tackling the perverse incentives that drive people into welfare dependency.
we will also tackle the perverse financial incentives [political content removed] which actively encourage people into welfare dependency.
for people on Universal Credit with the most severe disabilities, and health conditions that will never improve, we want to ensure that they are never reassessed, to give them the confidence and dignity they deserve.
our reforms will focus support on those with the greatest needs.
This is an oldie but such a goodie. It’s good because it’s so meaningless that you can be as harsh a government as you like and still pretend to the masses that you are nice, really. Because you support the ‘greatest needs’. Just not the ‘also great and really needy but we’ve decided we can’t afford them’ needs.
Some of the spin is so bad as to be simply untrue
And so we protect it for those who cannot work; now and for the long-term.
Under this Government, the social security system will always be there for people in genuine need. That is a principle we will never compromise on.
The fact is that all the evidence shows that people assessed as unfit for work – whether required to prepare for work or not – are demonstrably not fit for work. Consequently any cuts to support for these people means that Labour is not protecting those who cannot work. And they are spinning this by claiming that we are people who are of non-genuine need.
For example, I don’t receive the Daily Living component of PIP. Whilst I think this is wrong (I can only shower once a week and have to pay an assistant to cook for me, as well as doing my cleaning, tidying, washing up, and laundry which aren’t assessed by PIP), it means that I don’t qualify for the Health Element of Universal Credit under Labour’s proposed system. Yet, I’ve been unable to work since 2011. Various attempts to work have led to suicidal depression as I struggle with the demands of working not even eight hours a week. Even as I right this, this ‘work’ is predicated on years on involvement in social security and disability, and is driven by an adrenaline surge that is going to leave me much more ill (weaker; more pain; generalised inflammation; swollen lymph glands).
[The WCA] is based on a binary can/can’t work divide.
The WCA is not binary. It has three possible outcomes: fit for work; unfit for work but fit to prepare for work; unfit either to work or prepare for work.
Alongside this, we will launch a review of the PIP assessment, led by my Right Honourable Friend, the Minister for Social Security and Disability, in close consultation with disabled people, the organisations that represent them and other experts, so we make sure PIP and the assessment process is fit for purpose, now and into the future.
Anyone can launch a consultation and say that it will be ‘close’. But to launch a consultation when you’ve already stated that there is no consultation on the ‘four-point’ criterion, and you’ve already decided how much money it will save, is not an honest consultation.
Anyone can talk about something being ‘fit for purpose, now and into the future’. But fit for whose purpose? It’s certainly not fit for all the people who will lose out under the cuts.
More recent evidence - from the Work Choice programme and Additional Work Coach time - shows support can make a significant difference in the number of people getting work, keeping work, and improving their mental health and wellbeing too.
I haven’t had time to look at all of this research yet. However, the fact is that few people who are unfit for work and work-related activity recover enough to enter work in any given year. Previous employment support programmes have had low success, and can’t always even replicate any outcomes within a given programme.
And some just doesn’t make sense if you stop to think about it:
In future, extra financial support for health conditions in Universal Credit will be available solely through the PIP assessment so extra income is based on the impact of someone’s health condition or disability, not on their capacity to work… a vital step towards de-risking work.
The point of the extra UC money is that people who aren’t able to work cannot live long-term on the basic rate, because it is so low. Why on earth wouldn’t you want to assess someone’s capacity for work when deciding whether or not to give them additional money that is based on the premise that they have little capacity for work
People move into work when they are well enough to do so (or if they are driven to it by financial necessity). There have always been linking rules that allow people to return to sickness benefit if they have to leave work because of their illness.
legislating for a ‘right to try’, guaranteeing that work in and of itself will never lead to a benefit reassessment.
This simply doesn’t make sense. If someone moves into full-time work, is the government going to assume that they haven’t recovered from illness? Granted some people might try it out of financial necessity, be unable to sustain it, and need to return to benefits via linking rules, but that’s not very likely. The people I know who try work do so at mini-job levels, and still can’t sustain it. What would make more sense would be to say that working below a certain number of hours (say, 16 hours a week) won’t trigger a reassessment, whilst working above that has a grace period (say, a year) before triggering an assessment. But that would involve admitting that sick people have limited capacity for work not just in the sense of being restricted in the type of work that they can do, but in the more fundamental sense of being restricted in hours. And Labour don’t seem to be aware of that.
in 2017, [the Tories] took away extra financial help for the group of people who could prepare for work… We will legislate to rebalance the payments in Universal Credit from April next year, holding the value of the health top up fixed in cash terms for existing claimants and reducing it for new claimants
So it was bad that the Tories took money away from people who are unable to work but deemed able to prepare for work, and the response to this is to take more money away from even sicker and more disabled people. You’d think an appropriate response would be to reinstate the payment for that middle group.
Every day, there are more than 1,000 new PIP awards… that is not sustainable long-term, above all, for the people who depend on this support
Sorry, but how does that work? Is Kendall saying that I’m not sustainable? Too many people have long-term needs so the problem is that we’re unsustainable for each other? Taking PIP away from people who depend on it does not help people who depend upon it. It does not make PIP more sustainable long-term for them; rather, their lives have been made less sustainable.
we know the truth is that many people’s physical and mental health conditions fluctuate.
The fact that many sick people experience variation in their health has nothing to say to the ‘binary’ nature, or otherwise, of the WCA. Kendall implies that this variation means that such people are more capable of work than the WCA implies, but if anything we are less capable than someone with a similar average, but more stable, level of health. This is because paid work requires reliability. You need to know what you can and when you can do it. Someone who can reliably work a handful of hours is much better than someone who might be able to do more this week but can’t do anything for a month after. Someone who can reliably turn up when expected is much better than someone who may or may not come in at all. Especially in such a ‘just-in-time’ economy and one in which ‘light work’ doesn’t really exist, the workplace is simply not able to handle unpredictable people. And even if it did, such an irregular and unpredictable part-time income is not financially viable.
Some numbers were brought up, but not put in proper historical, political, economic, or geographic context. These include:
1 in 10 people of working age now claiming a sickness or disability benefit;
Almost 1 million young people not in education, employment or training;
2.8 million out of work due to long term sickness;
The number of people claiming Personal Independence Payments is set to double this decade, from 2 to 4.3 million;
with the growth in claims rising faster among young people and mental health conditions; and
with claims up to 4 times higher in parts of the Midlands, Wales and the North where economic demand is weakest
spending on working age sickness and disability benefits up £20 billion since the pandemic, set to rise by a further £18 billion by the end of this Parliament to £70 billion a year.
it is not like this in most other comparable countries where spending on these benefits since the pandemic is either stable or falling – whilst ours continues to inexorably rise.
chances of returning [to work] are 5 times higher in the first year.
the increase in disability benefits is double the rate of increasing prevalence of working age disability in the country, with claims amongst young people up 150%; for mental health conditions, up 190%; and claims for learning difficulties up over 400%, according to the IFS.
Some good things were mentioned:
We’re investing an extra £26 billion into the NHS;
We’re improving the quality of work and making work pay;
We’re creating more good jobs;
we are introducing the biggest reforms to employment support in a generation, with our £240 million Get Britain Working plan;
plans to give statutory sick pay for 1 million of the lowest paid workers;
more rights to flexible working;
The Work Well programme is trialling new approaches like GPs referring people to employment advisors;
the Keep Britain Working review, led by former John Lewis boss Sir Charlie Mayfield, will set out what government and employers can do together
a permanent, above inflation rise to the standard allowance in Universal Credit
‘Permanent’ is simply not true. Another government could choose to cut UC below its current rate, and then the rise wouldn’t have been permanent. Rather like a previous government scrapped the LCW component, and this government is cutting the LCWRA component whilst also limiting it to fewer people.
This Government will NOT bring in [political content removed] proposals for vouchers
We will not means-test PIP, because disabled people deserve extra support, whatever their incomes
This only applies to a subsection of disabled people, obviously. Disabled people who currently get PIP but will lose it under the tightened criteria clearly aren’t the right sort of disabled people to deserve support.
We will not freeze PIP either.
We will invest an additional £1 billion a year for employment support with the aim of guaranteeing high-quality, tailored and personalised support to help people on a Pathway to Work.
This works out at £250/person (assuming around 4 million people on sickness or disability benefits), or about 10% of what a typical DWP programme might spend.
And some of ambiguous good:
merging contributions-based Jobseekers Allowance and Employment Support Allowance into a new time limited Unemployment Insurance, paid at a higher rate, without having to prove you cannot work in order to get it
presumably these people will not have to look for work in order to get a time-limited support, because if there were required to look for work then those who can’t work would need to prove that they can’t work.
This creates a better system for people who have had the good fortune to earn enough national insurance contributions, which penalises people who haven’t been able to do that. This includes people who become ill shortly after leaving education, people who don’t think about claiming benefits until some time after leaving work, and people who have struggled in-and-out of work over a period of months or years.
today I can announce we will not go ahead with their proposals {for interim changes to the WCA] Instead we will scrap the WCA in 2028
Well, the Tories proposed to scrap the WCA too, so Labour needn’t make it out like they are doing us a favour by scrapping the WCA ‘instead’ of changing it, or that they are doing something different or better than the Tories wanted.
an additional premium for people with severe, lifelong conditions that mean that they will never work – to give them the financial security they deserve.
It seems like Universal Credit will have the base rate; a Health Element for people who get the Daily Living component of PIP; and this additional premium for those who are most severely and permanently disabled. Why only these people deserve financial security is unclear. The language of ‘severe’ is ambiguous; a government can draw the boundaries for this very tightly and still claim to be supporting ‘the most severe’, whilst excluding many whom the public would say should get more financial support.
We will also fix the failing system of reassessments.
Governments place a lot of weight on reassessments – until they’ve been in power long enough to realise just how long-term a long-term illness or disability really is, and just how many people really don’t need to be reassessed every year or two.
As well as the downright bad:
In future, extra financial support for health conditions in Universal Credit will be available solely through the PIP assessment.
Instead of having two different assessments and therefore a chance of getting at least some money via one benefit if a person fails the other, everything will hinge on just one assessment.
Instead of making extra money for those who can’t work bear an actual relation to the capacity for work, it will instead be based on the different question of what difficulties a person has with a narrow list of day-to-day activities.
Many people will lose out on vital income.
We will legislate for a change in PIP so people will need to score a minimum of 4 points in at least one activity to qualify for the daily living element of PIP
Fewer disabled people will get much-needed financial support for their extra costs.
This feeds into UC, as fewer people will then get the Daily Living component so won’t qualify for the Health Element of UC either.
The fact that this ‘four point’ criterion doesn’t apply to the mobility element is irrelevant: it already applies in practice, because there are only two activities in this element, so to get eight points for the standard award necessarily means that at least one activity scored four points.
For those on the UC Health top up - we will bring in an expectation to engage and a new Support Conversation to talk about people’s goals and aspirations, combined with an offer of personalised health, skills and employment support.
Presumably this means that people who don’t get the Health Element – people like me, who don’t get the Daily Living component of PIP – will be treated as normal jobseekers and have to comply with full conditionality. The consultation asks how to address this problem of dealing with people like me, whilst refusing to budge on the obvious answer - actually assess people's capacity for work and work-related activity.
People who do get the HE of UC are realistically not going to get any benefit from an ‘expectation to engage’, and may find that the pressure and stress makes them worse.
we will consult on delaying access to the health top up in Universal Credit until someone is aged 22, with the savings reinvested into work support and training opportunities.
Obviously, no-one becomes ill or disabled before 22. It’s a shame that my 21-year old self didn’t know that. I wouldn’t have had to withdraw from my PhD and career as a research scientist at Cambridge. If only I’d known that I wasn’t in burning pain across all my limbs, and my brain could think just as clearly as ever, and I wasn’t weak and wobbly. I wouldn't have had to spend the last 14 years out-of-work if only I'd known at 21 that I wasn't too ill to work.
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