Welfare Reform or Plain Old Fashioned Cuts

Scale of the Benefit Cuts:

•£18 billion of cuts to welfare benefits

•More than £9 billion of cuts falling on households containing disabled people.

• Impact in Scotland = £2.5 billion being taken out of local economies

•Half of that (over £1 billion) is being taken from Scottish disabled people and their families)

Numbers affected• The welfare reforms will see 3.5 million disabled

people lose over £9.2 billion .

•Moving disabled people off Incapacity Benefit/ESA onto Job Seekers Allowance will account for over half (£4.87 billion) of these losses.

• The 12 month cap on entitlement to contributory ESA will, on its own, eventually push an estimated 1 million disabled people into poverty (equivalent to 100,000 in Scotland).

A disproportionate amount of the cuts are falling on benefits paid to disabled people - DLA, ESA, ILF

Disabled people are more likely to be reliant on benefits for some or all of their income.

Scotland will suffer more than its fair share of these cuts because we have more people with impairments & health conditions than other areas of the UK.

Impact on Scots Disabled People

Employment & Support Allowance

Three Scottish Local Authority areas are amongst the 20 local authorities with the highest proportion of Incapacity Benefit claimants –

 

Glasgow 12.3% of all working age adults are on ICB

Inverclyde 12.2% of all working age adults are on ICB

West Dun 10.7% of all working age adults are on ICB

Work Capability Assessments

• By Spring 2014 ALL disabled people currently receiving Incapacity Benefit or Severe Disablement Allowance will be assessed for Employment Support Allowance (ESA).

• Those assessed as fully capable of work will be sent to claim Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) and/or Income Support or moved off benefit altogether.

• Those who cannot work or have limited capability to work will move to Employment Support Allowance.

Employment & Support Allowance

A CAS report found that disabled people who had undergone WCAs were -

•being placed on the wrong benefits, usually a lower rate than previously received.

•being denied support to find work as Job Centre staff had no specialised training in addressing their needs.

So far over 330,000 appeals have been lodged against WCA assessments, nearly 40% of those heard have been successful, rising to over 65% when the disabled person is represented.

Employment & Support Allowance

Time limiting contributory ESA to 12 months and people failing WCAs and losing benefit altogether or moving onto other benefits will result in annual losses = £378 million.

During April 2012 around 15,000 Scots disabled people in the ESA Work Related Activity Group people lost their entitlement to ESA because of the introduction of the time limiting rule.

Disability Living Allowance

•The Government intends to reduce the amount of DLA paid out by 20%.

•For Scotland this means benefit losses to claimants of £268 million annually.

•As the new assessment tests are restricted to claimants of working age that means 1 in 3 disabled people aged 16 - 65 who are currently entitled (68,000) would need to lose ALL of their DLA to achieve the necessary savings.

Personal Independence Payment

• The Personal Independence Payment (PIP) replaces DLA in 2013/14.

• But there is no equivalent under PIP to the Lower Rate Care element of DLA.

• If ALL current working age recipients of Lower Rate Care, some 60,000 disabled people, lost their current entitlement that would “only” save £60 million a year.

• Many thousands more people on the higher rates of the of DLA will have to lose their benefits to make the additional +£200 million in savings

Housing Benefit

• From April 2013 housing benefit for working age people in social rented homes will be linked to the size of property that the Government believes they need.

• This change will disproportionately impact on households containing disabled people.

• DWP figures show that across the UK of a total of 670,000 households affected by this change about 450,000 (66%) will contain a disabled person.

Housing Benefit• Scottish Government estimates that 95,000 Scottish

households will be affected.

• If the two thirds estimate holds good then at least 62,000 households containing a disabled person will lose an average of £13 pw in housing benefit.

• Although tenants will be penalised for under-occupying, there is a chronic shortage of 1-bedroom properties.

• 44% of working-age Housing Association tenants “need” a one-bedroom property but only 24% occupy one.

Homelessness

The Scottish Government estimates that 95,000Scottish households will be affected by the underoccupation rule. They are predicting that –

•8,000 households will secure smaller properties.

•Half of the remainder (i.e. 43,500) will meet their rent payments and half will fall into arrears.

•A quarter of those who fall into arrears (10,000 – 11,000 households) will be evicted.

Homelessness & Health

• The National Health Audit found that 80% of homeless people have one or more physical health need, and 70% have at least one mental health problem.

• Research by Crisis indicates that the average age life expectancy of a homeless person is 43-47 years of age.

•  A report by the Department of Health, “Healthcare for Homeless People”, estimated that homeless people use hospital services at a rate 4 to 8 times greater than the general population.

• Homelessness is also associated with increased drug and alcohol dependency.