Labour to target job centres and PIP assessments to get disabled people into work
Labour will target job centres and benefit assessments under the party’s plans get more disabled people into work.
Disable people have “the right” to access employment and job support must be tailored around this, Labour’s acting work and pensions secretary has argued.
Responding to the Government’s consultation on reforming personal independence payments (PIP), Labour’s Alison McGovern acknowledged that fixing the welfare system would need “big changes” if Labour get into power.
If in Government Labour would overhaul job centres to give people more bespoke and localised support as well as ending the “tick box culture” in order to achieve this, she said.
Proposals currently being consulted on by the Government are looking at ways to overhaul the PIP process to reduce the cost of the disability benefit.
PIP is a payment to help people who need additional costs to help with their illness or disability but ministers want to change the assessment and eligibility to reduce the soaring benefits bill.
Writing exclusively in i, Alison McGovern said Labour had “long called for changes to PIP” and said any changes must ensure assessment decisions are more accurate as well as tackling the backlog of applications.
But Ms McGovern added that “every aspect of the support for disabled people” must “help people get into work”.
Labour has said it wants to change how job centres operate to give more powers to local councils, in order to offer more tailored help for unemployed people.
The party has also previously argued for better integrated integrate employment and healthcare services to tackle the number of people out of work due to sickness.
Ms McGovern said: “Disabled people in the UK have the right to expect to be able to work, just like anyone else in our country.
“The truth is, making that situation real is going to take big changes.
“We will only fix the social security system if – as Beveridge wrote in his report in 1942 – we have full employment and a well-functioning National Health Service.”
NHS waiting lists must be brought down to tackle rising number of people out of work on sickness benefits, she said.
“We believe in the benefits of work for everyone – we are all better off with the autonomy and self‑determination that comes from good work,” she wrote.
“That’s as true for disabled people as it is for anyone who isn’t disabled. It’s time for a change – for a Labour Government that can bring us an end to the chaos and a plan for our future.”
In a Green Paper published on Monday ministers proposed to reform PIP by changing the eligibility criteria and assessments.
The plans, which will be consulted on over the coming months, also include proposals to “move away from a fixed cash benefit system”, meaning people with some conditions will no longer receive regular payments but rather improved access to treatment.
The Government hopes the overall impact will be to move to a system where PIP is more geared towards covering the actual extra costs faced by people with disabilities and away from a “one size fits all” approach.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he wanted to make the benefits system “fairer to the taxpayer, better targeted to individual needs and harder to exploit” and argued the reforms were not just about saving money but helping people into employment.
