Minister defends disability benefit cuts, saying you can’t ‘tax and borrow your way out of need to reform state’ – UK politics live
Pat McFadden, Cabinet Office minister, says changes to be announced today are about giving people ‘hope of work in the future’In his interview on the Today programme, Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, suggested Labour MPs had a duty to support the changes to sickness and disability benefits being announced.Asked what he would say to backbenchers minded to vote against the plans, he replied:Look, I’m not going to deny that in the history of the Labour party, these issues about welfare and support have sometimes been difficult.But when you get elected on a platform of change, and when you tell the public, the electorate, that you believe you have inherited a situation which needs change, then my message to any colleague in that position is, we have a duty to make those changes. It was the word on our manifesto.It is understood that those with conditions that have no prospect of improving will be guaranteed PIPs and told they need never be reassessed. Rather than a list of conditions, this will be applied case by case to disabilities that are either permanent or get worse.For those with other conditions, however, [Liz] Kendall is expected to signal more frequent reassessments. At present claimants are given awards of up to ten years, but there are no clear rules about when they will be reassessed, and ministers want to see a significant increase. It remains unclear whether more reviews will be face to face. A switch to remote assessments since Covid has been suggested as a reason for more people having payments maintained rather than reduced.I don’t want to pre-empt what the announcement will be but I think for people in circumstances where it’s clear they can never work and are not going to get better, and in fact it might be a degenerative condition that gets progressively worse, then people should look out for how that’s treated in today’s announcement, because I think those kind of conditions will feature today.And obviously you’re not going to treat somebody in those circumstances the same way as someone whose condition might be temporary and with a bit of support they could go into work. Continue reading...
Pat McFadden, Cabinet Office minister, says changes to be announced today are about giving people ‘hope of work in the future’
In his interview on the Today programme, Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, suggested Labour MPs had a duty to support the changes to sickness and disability benefits being announced.
Asked what he would say to backbenchers minded to vote against the plans, he replied:
Look, I’m not going to deny that in the history of the Labour party, these issues about welfare and support have sometimes been difficult.
But when you get elected on a platform of change, and when you tell the public, the electorate, that you believe you have inherited a situation which needs change, then my message to any colleague in that position is, we have a duty to make those changes. It was the word on our manifesto.
It is understood that those with conditions that have no prospect of improving will be guaranteed PIPs and told they need never be reassessed. Rather than a list of conditions, this will be applied case by case to disabilities that are either permanent or get worse.
For those with other conditions, however, [Liz] Kendall is expected to signal more frequent reassessments. At present claimants are given awards of up to ten years, but there are no clear rules about when they will be reassessed, and ministers want to see a significant increase. It remains unclear whether more reviews will be face to face. A switch to remote assessments since Covid has been suggested as a reason for more people having payments maintained rather than reduced.
I don’t want to pre-empt what the announcement will be but I think for people in circumstances where it’s clear they can never work and are not going to get better, and in fact it might be a degenerative condition that gets progressively worse, then people should look out for how that’s treated in today’s announcement, because I think those kind of conditions will feature today.
And obviously you’re not going to treat somebody in those circumstances the same way as someone whose condition might be temporary and with a bit of support they could go into work. Continue reading...
