As Labour’s crunch Spring Statement draws near, details of the rumoured cuts to welfare have grown rife. Estimates of what the government is hoping to save have continued to grow – now sitting at around £6 billion – with health and disability related benefits understood to be at the heart of the changes.Reforms to the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) have now been widely reported, although Labour MPs are understood to be divided on the cost-cutting package. Claimed by 3.6 million people, the payment is designed to help people with extra costs incurred by their disability, whether they are working or not.The changes will include making it harder to qualify for PIP, likely by changing the descriptors assessors use to determine if an applicant is eligible for the benefit. Further savings are also to be made by freezing PIP payments next year, ITV reports, meaning they will not rise with inflation as in previous years.The plans come as spending on all health-related benefits rose to £65bn last year – up 25 per cent from the year before the Covid pandemic. They are forecast to rise to £70bn before the next election. The prime minister on Monday called the current system ‘unsustainable, indefensible and unfair’.“People feel that in their bones,” he said, “It runs contrary to those deep British values that if you can work, you should. And if you want to work, the government should support you, not stop you.”But welfare experts, alongside claimants with experience of PIP, say the benefit is already too hard to claim, and cutting it back further would be ‘catastrophic’. In an open letter, organisations including Disability Rights UK, Citizens Advice, and Sense urged Rachel Reeves to “safeguard” PIP and other health-related in her upcoming spring statement. Around 700,000 disabled people “could be pushed into poverty” without it, disability equality charity Scope adds.David Southgate, policy manager at Scope told The Independent: “Life costs a lot more when you’re disabled, and disability benefits are a lifeline.“The benefits system desperately needs improving, but cutting benefits will just push thousands more disabled people into poverty.”The PIP application process is “complex, stressful and degrading” he adds, something several claimants attest to. Generally, to apply for the benefit, applicants must call the DWP’s dedicated phone line, complete the 90-plus question paper form that is sent to them, and return it.In most cases, an application will then be followed by an assessment, which is carried out on the phone or in-person. It is this assessment where most claimants find they run into the greatest difficulty.Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer has the current benefits system is ‘unsustainable, indefensible and unfair’. More
