Overhaul ‘unsustainable’ incapacity benefits system, Lords committee urges
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Peers call on Labour to carry out ‘fundamental review’ amid rising concerns over retention of Tory plans for £3bn in cuts. Labour must carry out a root-and-branch overhaul of the UK’s incapacity benefits system if it is to rein in rising heath-related welfare spending, an influential cross-party Westminster committee has warned.
The House of Lords economic affairs committee – whose members include two former Treasury permanent secretaries and a former chancellor – said major reform was needed to address the rising social and fiscal costs of disability benefits. The chair of the committee, the Tory peer George Bridges, told the Guardian the government must “step back and hold a fundamental review of the benefits system” that went beyond simply looking for “so-called savings”.
The committee’s remarks came amid rising concern among disability campaigners and Labour backbenchers over the chancellor’s insistence on sticking to inherited Tory plans to cut £3bn from incapacity benefits by 2028. Fears that severe cuts to benefits would push hundreds of thousands of claimants into deep financial hardship were crystallised by a high court ruling last week that found the last government’s consultation on changing incapacity benefits was unlawful.
The ruling said the consultation, which was defended by the current government in court in December, was misleading because it presented the changes as a way of supporting disabled people into work but failed to make clear that 424,000 vulnerable claimants would see their benefits cut by £416 a month.
