People with depression or anxiety could lose sickness benefits, says Cabinet minister
ITV News Correspondent Romilly Weeks reports on the government's current concerns around the welfare system
A raft of major welfare reforms are to be announced today by the government, which mean people suffering with depression or anxiety could lose access to sickness benefits.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride was due to announce plans in the Commons to overhaul the way disability benefits work, after Rishi Sunak recently set out his "moral mission" to "end sick note culture".
In a Green Paper due to be published alongside Mr Stride’s statement, ministers will set out plans to reform personal independence payments (PIP) - the main disability benefit - through changes to eligibility criteria and assessments.
Rishi Sunak told ITV News on Monday the reforms are not about cost-cutting, but his "belief on the value of hard work" and said the current system is "not fair" and "unsustainable".
The government says the proposals are aimed at providing “more tailored support in line with their needs” but opposition MPs and charities have hit out at the plans.
Scope called them a "reckless assault" on disabled people, while Mind urged the government to "stop blaming people with mental health problems" for being on benefits, insisting they don't choose to be so, rather "it's their last resort".
The plans, which will be consulted on over the coming months, also include proposals to “move away from a fixed cash benefit system”, meaning people with some conditions will no longer receive regular payments but rather improved access to treatment if their condition does not involve extra costs.
The government hopes the overall impact will be to move to a system where PIP is more geared towards covering the actual extra costs faced by people with disabilities.
In response to being asked whether those suffering from anxiety would lose benefits, the prime minister told ITV News Political Editor Robert Peston that he wants to reform the PIP assessment system which he says is "often easily exploited and subject to unverifiable claims".
“What I want is to move towards something that is more rigorous, more objective, and potentially has more medical evidence that needs to be provided when people are making those claims," he said.
When pressed further on those with anxiety, the PM said: "The broad thrust of what we're trying to do is say, hang on, you can't be making claims based on unverifiable assertions.
"There needs to be some objective evidence, perhaps medical, so that we can say you are genuinely someone who's in need of support.”
“What we shouldn't be doing is medicalising the everyday challenges and anxieties of life, and assuming that just because someone is grappling with some of these things, if they are less severe, they should be expected to engage in the world of work," he added.
What are the three key changes expected to be included?
Changing PIP eligibility criteria to better reflect how conditions affect a claimant’s daily life.
Making the PIP assessment more closely linked to someone’s condition, including completely removing assessments for some conditions that are supported by medical evidence.
Moving away from a fixed cash benefit for some conditions, replacing it with either one-off grants for specific costs such as home adaptation, or ensuring access to “alternative means of support”.
A consultation on the plans will run for 12 weeks, closing on July 23.
James Taylor, the executive director of strategy at disability equity charity Scope, called for an end to the “reckless assault on disabled people" and urged the government to "focus on how to fix the real underlying issues”.
“It’s hard to have any faith that this consultation is about anything other than cutting the benefits bill, no matter the impact,” Mr Taylor said.
“Life costs a lot more for disabled people, including people with mental health conditions. Threatening to take away the low amount of income PIP provides won’t solve the country’s problems."
Mind said "lots of the rhetoric" around mental health in politics recently "has been stigmatising, harmful and inaccurate," adding; "It’s very distressing, and for some of us triggering, to hear mental health problems used as a political football."
"The government say they want to help people with mental health problems get back into work," it wrote on X. "If so, they need to be serious about investing in chronically underfunded mental health services. And they need to meet with the experts. We await the full details of the consultation."
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The number of monthly PIP awards for mental health disorders has doubled since 2019, from 2,200 to 5,300, in line with an increase in overall PIP awards which have also doubled to 33,000 a month.
The work and pensions secretary earlier said the system should not be paying people to deal with the “ordinary difficulties of life” and suggested that many voters “deep down” agree with him.
Describing the reforms as “probably the most fundamental reforms in a generation”, he said: “There are those that have perhaps milder mental health conditions, or where perhaps there has been too great a move towards labelling certain behaviours as having certain (medical) conditions attached to them, where actually work is the answer or part of the answer.
“What we’ve got to avoid is being in a situation where we too readily say ‘Well, actually, we need you to be on benefits’.”
Mr Stride said a “whole plethora of things”, such as talking therapies, social care packages and respite care, could be used as alternatives to benefit payments.
He added that the main reason for the changes is to provide better help and not cut costs, but he acknowledged the cost “has to be one of the considerations”.
Acting shadow work and pensions secretary Alison McGovern said: “The Government’s failure to get Britain working is terrible for people and catastrophic for the public finances.
“The PIP system that the Tories created isn’t working for disabled people and isn’t working for the taxpayer. We want to see a system that allows disabled people to live independently and enable as many as possible to work.
“Merely consulting on this now, after overseeing years of failure and a soaring benefits bill, proves this Conservative Government is out of ideas and out of time.
“Our plan to get Britain working will drive down NHS waiting lists, reform social security and make work pay. Change with Labour can’t come soon enough.”
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