The UK Labour Government has announced the ‘biggest shake up to the welfare system in a generation.’ This shake up will cut billions of pounds worth of payments to people receiving financial support due to health and disability issues.

Disability Rights UK (DR UK) say that the £5billions being slashed from the welfare budget “will be the biggest cuts to disability benefits on record penalising Disabled people and increasing the number in poverty.“

In Scotland PIP is being gradually replaced by Adult Disability Payment which is administered by Social Security Scotland, however, when cuts are made at a UK level it has a knock on effect to funding available in Scotland for powers which have been devolved.

The savage cuts by the Labour Government are contained in Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working Green Paper .

Commenting on the announcement in the House of Commons on 18 March by the UK Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall , Mikey Erhardt, Policy Officer at DR UK said:

“The minister stood up today and made clear that, after months of rumours, media speculation and spin, these reforms are not about supporting Disabled people into work, but making brutal and reckless cuts of £5 billion. That is up from £3 billion just a few weeks ago.

“The rise in claims is driven by the increase in the retirement age, record NHS waiting lists, inadequate education and mental health support for young Disabled people and a complete failure to tackle the disability employment and pay gaps. Yet  the government has decided to create a rhetorical smokescreen around the depth of cuts it’s going to make.

“The government intends to bar young Disabled people from receiving the Universal Credit health component until they are 22. That is alongside their promise to significantly increase assessments at scale without making the assessment process safer for those going through the system right now. These measures mark dangerous cuts for all Disabled people. Furthermore, altering the PIP award criteria will make it harder for those who need support to qualify.

“The minister’s assertion that 1000s more face-to-face assessments will be more accurate is laughable; we know that in-person assessment causes more stress and worry and often leads to inaccurate findings from assessors.

“Let’s be clear: there is nothing ambitious about cutting support from those who need it and that’s what today’s announcements were really about. Rising claims for personal independence payment reflect not a problem with Disabled people but rather reflect successive government’s failure to do even the bare minimum to create a more equitable society.”

SPICe has produced information about how the billions of pounds in cuts may affect people in Scotland.

433,050 people in Scotland receiving Adult Disability Payment (ADP) and 35,420 people are still receiving the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) – as at January 2025.

The main changes proposed for PIP in the green paper are:

• To make it more difficult for people with lower levels of daily care needs to qualify. Only those who score a minimum of 4 points in at least one of those ten activities will be eligible for the daily living component of PIP.  It will still be necessary to score 8 points in total. This is due to apply from 2026/27.
• Modernising the PIP assessment, including re-introducing more face to face assessments. Timing TBC.
• Using receipt of PIP as the gateway to qualifying for the health related addition in Universal Credit, replacing the Work Capability Assessment (WCA). Due to apply from 2028/29.
• Raising the age for qualifying for PIP to 18. Timing TBC.

There are rising numbers of people who are applying for disability payments. The Covid-19 pandemic has left many thousands of people with the after effects of the virus – long covid.

In March 2023, an estimated 1.9 million people in the UK reported that they were experiencing long covid, representing 2.9% of the population. Of these, 1.3 million had symptoms that had lasted for more than a year and 762,000 had symptoms lasting for more than two years. Fatigue was the most common symptom (reported by 72% of those with long covid), followed by difficulty concentrating (51%), muscle ache (49%) and shortness of breath (48%). House of Commons Library

 Between March 2022 and January 2025 the number of people in Scotland claiming either PIP or ADP increased by 51% (from 310,545 to 468,470).  About a half of those receiving the payments are aged 55 and over.

Around two-thirds of people getting ADP/PIP are getting it for either mental health reasons or musculoskeletal conditions and that hasn’t changed much over the last three years. – SPICe

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said:

“When I talk about opportunity for all, I mean it. That’s why we are bringing forward the biggest changes to the welfare system in a generation and improving support for those who need it. Ensuring those who can work do work is not only right, but it will also improve living standards and drive growth, the number one priority in our Plan for Change.”

Both Keir Starmer and Liz Kendall blamed the previous Tory Governments for the situation. Liz Kendall told MPs:

“The Conservatives left a broken benefits system that is failing the people who depend on it and our country as a whole. The status quo is unacceptable, but it is not inevitable. We were elected on a mandate for change to end the sticking-plaster approach and tackle the root causes of problems in this country, which have been ignored for too long. 

“We will unleash potential in every corner of the land, because we are as ambitious for the British people as they are for themselves. Today we take decisive action, and I commend this statement to the House.”

Epilepsy Action warned that cutting the benefit that helps disabled people manage daily life is “damaging” and counterproductive for getting people into work.

Alison Fuller, director of Health Improvement and Influencing at Epilepsy Action, said:

“The rhetoric that cutting disability benefits is going to help more people into work is just damaging. Plus, lots of people with epilepsy need PIP precisely to manage all aspects of life, which includes getting to work.

“For people with epilepsy, it’s hard enough to get PIP as it is. We’ve heard too many stories over the years of people feeling really alienated by the process, and having to ‘prove’ they actually have a disability. Being made to feel ‘they’re not disabled enough’.

“PIP is paid to help people with a disability offset the extra costs of living with the condition. Claimants don’t have to be out of work to receive it. The rhetoric that cutting disability benefits is going to help more people into work is just damaging. Plus, lots of people with epilepsy need PIP precisely to manage all aspects of life, which includes getting to work.”

 At its core, the decision is to tilt the welfare system away from those who are disabled and towards those who are unemployed without an assessed disability. The package as a whole is expected to save over £5 billion by 2029–30, which would make it a bigger cut to welfare than seen in any fiscal event since 2015. – Institute of Fiscal Studies

The Institute of Fiscal Studies calculates:

• From 2028–29, getting PIP will be the factor that determines whether you get the health element of UC – meaning there will be no support specifically for disabilities that prevent work.Those who would otherwise qualify for the health element of UC – but not PIP (currently 600,000 people) – will therefore not get the element and be worse off by £2,400 per year.
• Families who receive the health element of UC – currently 2.4 million – will get £280 less a year in 2029–30, while the 4.5 million other families on UC will get £150 more a year in 2029–30. New claimants to the health element of UC will receive £2,500 less a year than they would have without these announcements.

After the announcement was made in the House of Commons, Clive Lewis, Labour MP for Norwich South said:

“When the Government made the decision to go down this route, did they understand the pain and difficulty that it will cause millions of our constituents who are using food banks and social supermarkets? These people are on the brink. This £5 billion cut is going to impact them more than her Department gives credence to. I would like to be able to look my constituents in the eye and tell them that this is going to work for them. As things stand, my constituents, my friends and my family are very angry about this, and they do not think this is the kind of action that a Labour Government take?”

Click on this link for the UK Labour Government’s Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working Green Paper

Fiona Grahame