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Disability benefits slashed in Welfare Reform Bill

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Thu, 17/02/2011 - 11:21am
kevin
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Disabled people will be the big losers in the government's overhaul of the benefits system unveiled today in the Welfare Reform Bill.

Of £3.9bn of cuts earmarked through the bill for 2014-15, £2.5bn will come in cuts to disability living allowance and employment and support allowance, the replacement payment for incapacity benefit.

DLA will be replaced by a new benefit, personal independence payment, which will be more targeted on those with the most severe conditions, while ESA will be limited to a year for claimants who are neither so disabled that they have no prospect of work nor poor enough to pass a means-test for the benefit.

However, ministers have dropped a plan to cut housing benefit by 10% for claimants who have been out of work for over a year, after it faced widespread criticism for being too punitive.

At the heart of the bill is the universal credit, a proposed unified benefit for people of working-age, which would replace a host of existing payments, including income support, council tax benefit, housing benefit, income-related ESA, income-related jobseeker's allowance, working tax credit and child tax credit.

It is designed to improve work incentives by enabling people to keep more of their benefits when they move into work than is currently the case.

http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2011/02/17/116295/disability-ben...

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Thu, 17/02/2011 - 2:14pm
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kevin
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Welfare Reform Bill: restoring the welfare system to make work p

Welfare Reform Bill: restoring the welfare system to make work pay

Launching the Welfare Reform Bill with the Prime Minister today, Iain Duncan Smith hailed what promises to be the biggest shake up of the system for 60 years.

Central to the Bill will be the introduction of Universal Credit, which will simplify a benefits system that has become unmanageable, make work pay and help release millions of people from the misery of welfare dependency and break intergenerational cycles of worklessness.

These changes will mean:

  • 2.7 million households are better off.
  • Over 1 million households seeing an increase in their weekly income of £25 with 85 per cent of this increase going to the poorest families in the country.
  • Nearly 1 million people out of poverty including 350,000 children.

The Bill will radically reshape Britain’s welfare system for the next sixty years by:

  • sweeping away the patchwork of benefits and credits and replacing them with a Universal Credit to make work pay;
  • introducing a proper system of conditionality and make sure that unscrupulous individuals are not able to abuse or defraud the system;
  • a Personal Independence Payment for disabled people targeting support at those who really need it;
  • a new system of child support which puts the interest of the child first;
  • introducing new powers to tackle the problem of fraud and error.

From this summer Ministers will also bring in the biggest back to work programme since the war helping millions of people get into jobs.  Delivered by private and voluntary sector organisations, the Work Programme will end the culture of a one size fits all approach.

Announcing the Bill Iain Duncan Smith said:

"The welfare system was created to meet the demand for a fairer society. Today, this Bill will seek to restore the welfare system to those founding principles."

"Our reforms will end the absurdity of a system where people too often get rewarded for doing the wrong thing, and those who strive to do the best by their families get penalised.

"The publication of the Welfare Reform Bill will put work, rather than hand-outs, at the heart of the welfare system. It will ensure that we continue to provide appropriate support for those genuinely unable to work, as we must and as we should. And it will provide a fair deal for the taxpayer."

Alongside the publication of the Bill, the Prime Minister and Secretary of State announced a review into the sickness absence system. With 300,000 people off work every year claiming sickness-related benefits, the Government has asked David Frost and Dame Carol Black to consider whether with the right help and support more people could stay in work in some form.

Notes to Editors:

The Welfare Reform Bill will include:

  • Universal Credit, which will make more than two and a half million of the poorest people in Britain better off. At its heart, the Universal Credit has a simple ambition – to make work pay, especially for the poorest. This will finally make it easier for people to see they will be consistently and transparently better off for each hour they work and every pound they earn.
  • The Personal Independence Payment which will replace Disability Living Allowance with a new, more transparent and sustainable benefit fit for the 21st century.  It will be supported by a new assessment which makes greater use of evidence, enabling us to more accurately and consistently assess individuals to determine who will benefit most from additional support.
  • By 2012 we will also have new powers to tackle the problem of fraud and error, which under the current system is highly susceptible – costing the taxpayer around £5.2bn a year.  The new measures include, tougher one-strike, two-strike and three-strike rules, with a benefit ban of 3 years for people who offend repeatedly.  A single investigation service and a new mobile regional taskforce will be set up to investigate each and every claim in high fraud areas, along with Civil Penalties - £50 for more minor offences.
  • With Housing Benefit expenditure spiralling out of control for over a decade, it’s absolutely vital that we take urgent steps to return fairness to the system to make sure that people on benefits make the same choices about the homes they rent as hard working families have to make.
  • It is not reasonable that households on out of work benefits should receive a greater income from the state than the average working household receives in wages. We will therefore introduce a cap, linked to average weekly earnings, which will limit the amount of benefits a household can receive.
  • The Welfare Reform Bill will time-limit contributory Employment Support Allowance to 12 months for those who are able to prepare for work. Those with low or no other sources of income would qualify for income-related Employment Support Allowance once their contributory ESA had ended. This underlines the principle that ESA claimants are expected to move towards the workplace and will reduce long-term inactivity or benefit dependency.

The bill is published at:

http://www.dwp.gov.uk/newsroom/press-releases/2011/feb-2011/dwp021-11.shtml

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Thu, 17/02/2011 - 2:18pm
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kevin
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''No-one worse off under welfare reform''

Government plans to make radical changes in an attempt to eliminate the "benefits culture" were revealed by the Prime Minister as he outlined the key elements of the Welfare Reform Bill. However, one think tank has said that the reforms will be meaningless unless the minimum wage is scrapped.

Although the government has shelved proposals to cut housing benefit by 10 per cent if someone is unemployed for more than 12 months, it is going ahead with its ideas for a universal credit to replace several benefits by 2013 and for penalising people who refuse job offers by removing benefits for up to three years.

There will also be changes to the tax system to help some people retain more of their income, a cap on benefits of around £26,000 per family, a review of sickness absence levels and changes to the disability living allowance.

Insisting that nobody would be worse off under the changes – and claiming that the Bill would "bring about the most fundamental and radical changes to the welfare system since it began" – David Cameron said: "Never again will work be the wrong financial choice. We are finally going to make work pay for some of the poorest people in our society. And we're going to provide much greater support for unemployed people to find work - and stay in work.

''We're not just recasting the reach, scope and effectiveness of the old system - making it fairer and a genuine ladder of opportunity for everyone. We're also doing something no government has done before - and that is get to grips with the cost of welfare.''

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith added: "Our reforms will end the absurdity of a system where people too often get rewarded for doing the wrong thing, and those who strive to do the best by their families get penalised. The publication of the Welfare Reform Bill will put work, rather than hand-outs, at the heart of the welfare system."

http://www.publicservice.co.uk/news_story.asp?id=15535

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