Disabled people pay the price of universal credit’s failure
The Government is committing “grave and systematic” violations of disabled people’s rights. That was the verdict of the UN’s Special Rapporteur in 2016. The UK was the first country found to have breached the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Disabled People.
The report was damning. It said “British compassion for those who are suffering has been replaced by a punitive, mean-spirited, and… callous approach”.
Earlier this year, in a follow-up report, the UN found that the Government is still “demonising” disabled people through its “traumatising” benefits system.
That trauma is about to get worse. According to a report from the Resolution Foundation thinktank, some disabled people will be £2,800 per year worse off when they are transferred to universal credit, replacing legacy benefits being phased out between now and 2028.
These are people with the highest support needs, who are eligible for personal independence payments and the severe disability premium.
Being disabled in Britain means you are disproportionately likely to be living in poverty. Earlier this year, it was revealed that the proportion of families with disabled children living in poverty rose by nearly a third in two years. And, as the Trussell Trust has highlighted, disabled people were three times more likely to have turned to a food bank last year, compared with non-disabled people.
The truth across the board is that UK benefit levels do not match living costs and are no longer fit for purpose. Citizens Advice reports that five million people have “negative budgets”, i.e. their living costs exceed their income. A further 2.35 million are going without, cutting their spending to unsafe levels. There is a debt crisis among a growing number of people.
At the end of last year, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation reported that 3.8 million people in the UK, including one million children, were destitute. That means they did not have the means to keep themselves clean, dry, warm and fed – the basics of civilisation. Citizens Advice estimates that one in four claimants of universal credit is in a negative budget.
This is not the welfare safety net Britain’s modern social security system was founded on. Its architect, Sir William Beveridge, talked about slaying the five giants of want (caused by poverty): ignorance (caused by a lack of education); squalor (caused by poor housing); idleness (caused by a lack of jobs, or the ability to gain employment); and disease (caused by inadequate healthcare provision).
The benefits system for disabled people has become increasingly punitive and impoverishing. Basic benefits have been cut relative to average living standards for more than 40 years. In 1967, UK unemployment benefit was worth 28 per cent of average earnings. Today it’s worth less than half that.
According to the Resolution Foundation report, “multiple years of freezes and below-inflation uprating of benefit levels mean the base rate of out-of-work support is 6.7 per cent lower in real terms in April 2024 than it was in April 2013”.
If you were wondering why there is more homelessness, more food banks and longer queues outside them, that is your answer.
There needs to be a fundamental rethink of what has become a punitive and impoverishing benefits system, but alongside that we need government to take a more holistic approach to improving health, care and, where appropriate, experience in the workplace, too.
Benefit levels do not match living costs and are no longer fit for purpose