The Altering Disability Climate:
It can feel mighty chilly, as a disabled person in the UK lately. There does seem to be a growing and worrying trend towards targeting disabled income and resources. It’s not difficult to see why more and more disabled people are feeling they are a problem; a drain on resources, rather than vulnerable individuals, worthy of support and empathy. This ongoing trend towards ‘reducing disability’ appears to have, as its central premise, the belief that disability is a choice people are making, when, for the overwhelming majority, it isn’t.
There is an uneasy contradiction in living under the auspices of legislation meant to protect, from differential treatment, those with protected characteristics (ie: disability) while simultaneously being exposed to a growing number of initiatives, seeking to minimise the very existence of disability, in order to target what is perceived to be ‘undeserved’ income.
It seems to me that, governments, MPs, councils, and organisations always target the wrong end of the disability-expenditure stick. They invariably point the finger of blame at the disabled end, rather than the other, service provision end i.e. the private-equity services, and those turning disability and care-provision into highly-profitable businesses. Why not scrutinise these contracts against best-value-for-money markers and identify savings there? Whatever happened to due-diligence?
Anyone having to wade through Disability Related Expenditure claims, for Adult Social Care charging, will be acutely aware of the requirement, from councils, to seek the most reasonable, affordable options. So why is there little, if any, evidence of councils doing the same, when commissioning ‘care’ options? It is extremely concerning that the most vulnerable, disabled (terminal even) are being targeted, as the easier option. Is it because they have less agency?
It’s not just the financial implications of this either; for a section of society (it’s worth remembering) least able to supplement their income, via other means, it’s the inherent insinuation of being idle slackers that adds insult to injury. Disability is not something that can be switched on and off, at will, or made to fit neatly into ever more narrow boxes. Why then has the government chosen to single-out disability-income for prominent review: a by-word for cuts, as we all know.
There are, of course, inherent in any scheme or benefit, people who are dishonestly claiming and cheating the system; some on an industrial scale. But these checks and restrictions won’t catch them out; they’ll effortlessly adapt their way around any number of changes.
Genuine fraudsters won’t be caught out by shifting points matrices. No, it will be the honest claimants who are filtered out and those without autonomy, or representation; the vulnerable, confused and enfeebled. Surely, we shouldn’t be punishing the overwhelmingly honest many, for the nefarious actions of the few?
This starting-point of PIP claimants being the principal cause of lost DWP revenue doesn’t stand-up to scrutiny
Numbers:
Official (DWP) statistics indicate the fraud rate for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) is extremely low, with recent figures indicating it has fallen to 0.0% or 0.2%, with approximately £330 million apparently lost to fraud and error, so even that low estimate is not solely fraud; an unspecified amount is down to DWP error!
Compare this to the latest official statistics for the financial year ending (FYE) 2025, for Universal Credit, estimating 8.0% (£5.2 billion) of total Universal Credit (UC) expenditure was overpaid due to fraud and you quickly realise PIP is NOT the biggest hitter, as regards fraudulent claims.
Impact Analysis:
The DWP’s own analysis estimated that the combined changes to PIP and UC could result in 370,000 current recipients losing entitlement to PIP, and that the total package of changes could push an additional 250,000 people into poverty. Is this an acceptable/legitimate risk, in our supposedly enlightened society?
The downgrading of need, necessary to reduce disability Income, will, it should be noted, have other far-reaching consequences. This will not only affect income, but may result in the loss of other sources of revenue/ support (gateway add-ons, dependent on PIP entitlement) i.e: blue-badges, concessionary schemes and Motability-access, and could even affect funding for care packages too. These are the dark passageways, arising from the minimisation of people’s disability/care needs.
Disability is no easy ride, it’s certainly not an enviable position to be in. Rarely is it recoverable from, usually it gets progressively worse. But, somewhere, along the way, the default position seems to have shifted to abject suspicion, where disability is concerned. Disability restricts people’s lives, in a downward trajectory, rendering simple, everyday things, most people take for granted, increasingly hard. It precludes people, still, from (inaccessible) social activities and limits ‘normal’ opportunities. These are the situations disability income and resources are intended to ease, not pressurise. Yet the disabled are still repeatedly required to prove, no miraculous improvement in their condition has sneakily occurred, that could render them ‘undeserving.’
Who’d have thought, in today’s equal-rights-for-all landscape, that disability would become such a difficult status to try and hang on to?