UK: Disability benefits (UC, ESA and PIP) - news and updates 2024 (including PIP consultation)

I'm probably wrong, I haven't looked at the documents. Too overwhelmed.

The announcements seem to be about replacing the all the income from PIP with vouchers or/and very minor adaptations or aids.

 

MS society response, which is saying what I have been saying about the government's rhetoric for a while: looking at the wrong things


https://www.mssociety.org.uk/resear...pJobID=2470129890&spReportId=MjQ3MDEyOTg5MAS2

 

I read the proposal - they actually do an easy read guide, these save me a bit of energy where the subject isn’t that important to me.
https://assets.publishing.service.g...lth-and-disability-green-paper-accessible.pdf

There’s a lot of “proposals” of how they “might” do things, hence why it’s all a bit unclear. Rishi mixing up “sick note culture” with PIP didn’t help, either.

So the PIP proposals is just a big list of
“What if we gave vouchers for some costs (“instead of PIP I guess)
“What if certain lifelong conditions didn’t need re-assessment?”
“What if councils provided services instead of people paying for them” - I paraphrase, but that’s the biggest red flag tome. Social care doesn’t exist and the Council isn’t going to provide a cleaner for me, so you need to keep paying PIP so I can pay my cleaner, thanks!

 

Work and health support scheme to help chronic sick back to work to be piloted

Work and health support scheme to help chronic sick back to work to be piloted (msn.com)

 

If they hadn't scrapped the disability employment scheme in the first place, they wouldn't need to reinvent it.

I know several former miners and steelworkers who benefitted from the old scheme following injuries or redundancies. Slightly implausibly, given their broad accents and rough diamond approach, one became an accountant, one an actor, and another an Anglican priest. But it takes time, skill and resources to support people like them, who struggle even to imagine how they could rebuild their self-respect, let alone succeed in taking on a totally different identity. The advisors sometimes pulled it off because they knew how the local economy worked, they built relationships with employers and training agencies, and—above all—their clients and their managers trusted their judgement.

None of that will be the case now. It'll be call centres staffed by people who've had four weeks of training, who know nothing about how the local economy and community works. And it'll be as much use as a chocolate fireguard to people who aren't actually capable of work in the first place.

 

This is the same level of brain-dead thinking that has led to the whole nonsense about GPs "prescribing" walks in the park and other stuff that has nothing to do with the role of health care. We keep seeing again and again how enjoying life is the best way for people to have quality of life and good mental health people need the time and financial freedom to do so, which is purely socioeconomic, not a slip of paper from some expert whose time is being wasted doing things that have nothing to do with their expertise.

If you want workplace accommodations for people who have disabilities you need to mandate it, by law. Having someone, some "adviser" from some cockamamie scheme like this, call a workplace is not a serious way of doing this. It will always be in the interest of an employer to simply find someone else who can do the same job, or actually more of it if they're healthy, for the same salary without having to spend anything on accommodations.

This is a deeply unserious thing, and it fits right in with the whole biopsychosocial ideological project and its foolish therapeutic recreation and activity coaching nonsense. It's spending resources for a problem on mindless nonsense that ignores the problem, which leaves them having spent resources on ignoring a problem, which they could have done without having spent resources. But of course what this means is that the purpose of that system is not to get disabled people back to work, but rather as a cover-up for systemic failure that leaves them neglected.

 

Revealed: people with cancer, arthritis and amputees among 40% denied UK disability benefits

"The government is rejecting more than 40% of applications for disability benefit from people with multiple sclerosis (MS), cerebral palsy and arthritis – and one in four applications from amputees, the Observer can reveal.

Analysis of personal independence payment (Pip) disability benefit data for England and Wales shows that thousands of applicants with illnesses such as cancer, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and emphysema were turned down by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) between August 2023 and January 2024."

https://www.theguardian.com/society...disability-benefits-cancer-arthritis-amputees

 

PIP whistleblowers expose ‘horrific’ target system used to decide benefit claims

PIP whistleblowers expose ‘horrific’ target system used to decide benefit claims (msn.com)

 

Tales from the pan: damn the fire looks good

 

This whole thing is based on a lie anyway. All other disabled based benefits have been disappearing year by year as they rolled them into Universal Credit etc. PIPs/DLA was always supposed to be about an extra amount to meet the extra costs of being disabled but eventually became part of many peoples basic income to meet their monthly basic expenses for rent and bills etc as housing benefit got cut and cut down way below average rents and they stopped paying mortgage payments for someone who became disabled and Severe Disablity payments etc.

Also PIPs is what qualifies many people to have their spouse etc claim carers allowance for having to give up a job to look after them or a disabled child. With this voucher nonsense for a ramp or a walking stick crap they are literally doing a slight of hand and removing upto to half of the household income from disabled people, families and children and removing the non employment status from carers so now they will find themselves still having to care fulltime for people with complex needs and yet will be told they must get a fulltime job and will not be eligible for benefits like Carers Allowance themselves.

This whole thing sets of a chain of disappearing money from disabled people who are already using PIPs to meet their basic household bills and buy the basics for their children etc due to the whole family becoming impoverished due to loss of earning capacity often affecting not just the disabled person but their spouses due to extra caring responsibilities. It's also cruel that they are just basically saying that if you are disabled for life you will now live on basic dole money UNTIL YOU DIE and for many young people that is 60 years or more. So, one, you have to live not only with the knowledge that your life is going to be spent with great difficulty, pain discomfort and great limitations but you will also be in an impossible financial situation FOREVER and no landlord will want to rent to you because of your much reduced income, (which already happens now for people on disability benefits) no one will ever lend you money for a mortgage which you are never going to get anyway.

Take PIPs away from most disabled people and you wont even meet your rent payments at the end of the month. You would be left with a Universal Credit payment of around £700 a month IF you get the top up for disability, yet only, £350 if you don't and then maybe an extra £500 a month to help with you £700-£800 rent MINIMUM for a one bedroom accommodation. So a total income of £1200 or as little as £900 a month if you are lucky to meet rent and utilities of at least £900-£1000 before food and other basics, and this is the lifelong future of every disabled child and adult with complex needs in the country if this new PIPs scheme goes ahead.

The Government is not telling the truth on what this actually is and how this sleight of hand has been a drip drip, stealth effect, over the last few decades. PIPs hasn't been used solely to add to the extra costs associated with illness and disability for most people for years now. These changes are a theft of ESSENTIAL household income NOTHING ELSE.

 

Inquiry to begin into DWP’s treatment of ill and disabled people on benefits

"The treatment of chronically ill and disabled people by welfare officials, including benefits decisions subsequently linked to the deaths of vulnerable claimants, is to be formally investigated by Britain’s human rights watchdog.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said it would examine whether ministers at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) had acted unlawfully by failing to protect claimants with learning disabilities or severe mental illness."

https://www.theguardian.com/society...atment-of-ill-and-disabled-people-on-benefits

 

Summary from benefits and work newsletter re
2024 PIP changes Green Paper
https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/n...nd Work&utm_content=V2 22 May 2024 Newsletter

Includes a link to a blank form of the online questions and B and W response.

 

I'm still inclined to ignore the green paper as a desperate attempt to look good to a certain constituency of voters, but pwME who still receive income-related ESA probably do need to be prepared for the migration process to UC starting four years earlier than planned.

It's been put in train already and might continue even if an election is called for the autumn. DWP expects the majority of claimants to receive a migration notice by December; we've seen before that their timelines usually come apart at the seams, but I think I'll assume that I might be caught up in it for the last few months before I reach state pension age.

Once the migration notice has been sent, there's a fixed deadline to make a UC claim. This is currently three months from the date of the notice, and is the point at which ESA payments end. For claimants who receive additional premiums such as Enhanced or Severe Disability, missing the deadline would mean the transitional protection (the guarantee that people migrated from ESA will be no worse off under UC, at least at the outset) would be lost. The Enhanced and Severe premiums add up to a little over £100 a week, so it's not a trivial loss.

 

Ahhh...election just been called for July. That might affect the migration.

 

Work Capability Assessments to December 2024



https://www.gov.uk/government/stati...datory-reconsiderations-and-appeals-june-2024

 

I'm so angry about journalists' failure to interrogate the Tory plan to take £12bn out of disability benefits to cut National Insurance payments.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8005jp0g71o

All the debate is about whether it is feasible to raise that amount of money in this way, not the ethics of doing so, or the effects on claimants. There's no calling out of the erroneous assumptions the Tory's position is based on.

https://www.disabilitynewsservice.c...-potentially-misleading-says-stats-regulator/

I've put in a complaint to the BBC and will try to do the same for the other broadcasters.

 

DWP halts benefits of 184,000 people in 'unacceptable' move

DWP halts benefits of 184,000 people in 'unacceptable' move (msn.com)

 

PIP consultation closes at the end of today.

It's a stupidly long form that you can't save - but there's no requirement to answer all the questions. I just picked one box and wrote a couple of sentences.

https://forms.office.com/Pages/Resp...UN00yS0lJSTgzOVNaUzI1TVpYRkZGN1RUQSQlQCN0PWcu