UK welfare reforms threaten health of the most vulnerable

Abstract

Cuts to disability benefits will worsen health and the economy The chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves, will set out the UK government’s spending plans in her spring statement on 26 March.1 The consultative green paper, Pathways to Work ,2 has already outlined plans to cut several billion from the welfare budget, with the aim of saving £5bn by 2029-30.3 The plans include stricter criteria for personal independence payments (PIP) for people with disabilities; halving incapacity benefit payments under Universal Credit for new claimants; and restriction of incapacity benefit top-ups to those aged 23 years and older. Ministers have argued there is a “moral case” for these cuts, and that “people that can work [should be] able to work.”3 However, the chancellor’s approach is unlikely to achieve this goal for two key reasons. First, high rates of economic inactivity in the UK reflect its almost unique failure among industrialised countries to recover population health after the pandemic,456 which came on top of over a decade of declining health linked to austerity,7 as well as long term …