Johnson unveils reform of incapacity benefits
Work and Pensions Secretary Alan Johnson has unveiled the biggest changes to incapacity benefits “since Beveridge”.
Under plans designed to help one million people currently claiming incapacity benefit into work, he said there would be more money for those who take up the help on offer and less money for those who refused to cooperate.
There would also be more money for people with severe sickness and disabilities under the plans, and the name ‘Incapacity Benefit’ would be scrapped.
As part of the Department for Work and Pensions’ five-year-strategy, Mr Johnson also revealed plans to increase the numbers of lone parents in work, and to offer better rewards for those who work longer.
In response, Conservative Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary David Willetts attacked the Government’s “endless re-announcements” on incapacity benefit reform, stating that it was apt that the present statement took place on Groundhog Day.
Under the Government’s plans, people would initially be put on a holding benefit, paid at Job Seekers Allowance rates, pending a medical assessment within 12 weeks.
Those with more manageable conditions will then be put on a ‘Rehabilitation Support Allowance’ while those with more severe conditions would receive a ‘Disability and Sickness Allowance’.
Mr Johnson said: “We know that a million people on Incapacity Benefits want to work. So we must end the stifling of ambition caused by a system which for too long has assumed that all people with health conditions and disabilities are condemned not to work and instead live in isolation as passive recipients of benefits”.
He added that it did not make sense to have a system that treated someone with back pain in the same way as a person with terminal cancer.
Mr Johnson also revealed plans to set up a Pathways to Work programme for Lone Parents, which would pay an additional £20 on top of existing benefits in return for taking steps to find work. The Government wants to build on the record high of 55.8 per cent in the lone parent employment rate.
And he also revealed that people would chose to take their state pension late could receive a one-off payment of £30,000 after five years to help older workers make the choice about how and when they retire.
The Disability Benefits Consortium (DBC), which speaks for a coalition of organisations including Macmillan Cancer and Mind, said it was deeply concerned by the proposals.
The DBC said the reforms could give a “dangerous amount of discretion to Jobcentre Plus staff who would have to make judgments about whether or not someone is too ill to fulfill the work conditions.”
It stressed that incapacity benefit claimants already have to pass an “exacting medical test” and should not be treated like job seekers.
DBC chair, Richard Brook, said: “We believe that today’s announcement raises serious issues about coercion and penalising people depending on how they are perceived rather than their actual disability or medical condition.”
Citizens Advice said that if the reforms were to work there would need to be a “quantum leap” in the quality of decision making. It points out that currently more than half of all refusals of incapacity benefit are overturned on appeal.
Senior policy officer John Wheatley said: “It will be important that the new arrangements avoid unwitting discrimination against very vulnerable disabled people, for example by making unreasonable demands for co-operation from people with cancer or mental health problems and then penalising them for ‘completely refusing to engage’. There is a real danger that junior Job Centre Plus staff will be pressuring people to look for work when they are too ill to do so.
He added: “We are concerned that, with 30,000 jobs being lost from the Department of Work & Pensions, it will be impossible to provide the level of advice, training and support that many people with disabilities and long-term illnesses will need in order to get back into work.”
