Citizens Advice (CA) have condemned the government’s Pathways To Work Green Paper in a hard hitting report of their own, entitled ‘Pathways To Poverty’.
The opening paragraph gives a clear indication of the anger and frustration inside an organisation whose workload is likely to be massively increased by the effects of the planned reforms:
“By refusing to properly consult on its plan to cut billions from disability benefits, the government is choosing not to ask questions it doesn’t want the answers to. The cuts will have a devastating impact on disabled people (and their children), sending hundreds of thousands into poverty, and many more into deeper poverty. This will result from a series of arbitrary reforms that have been designed around savings targets rather than improving outcomes, inflicting hardship on people in ways that the government doesn’t yet fully understand.”
The 44 page report is carefully researched and referenced and draws together information from other reports, some of the many Freedom of Information Act requests that have been published and the experiences of its own advisers and clients.
One of the things it argues is that the impacts of the proposals are likely to be worse than the government suggests, because:
- The government used a dubious sleight of hand to reduce the number of people likely to be pushed into poverty. It counted people who would have been affected by the Tory WCA changes which never happened as having been lifted from poverty they were never actually put in. So, rather than 250,000 being pushed into relative poverty by Labour, CA thinks it could be as many as 400,000.
- The Green Paper doesn’t attempt to work out how many people will lose both PIP and the UC health element as a result of the changes, or how much they will lose.
- The government document doesn’t analyse how many people already in poverty will be more deeply entrenched in poverty as a result of the cuts, although an FoI request has suggested this will be 700,000 people.
Pathways To Poverty goes through the effects of restricting PIP eligibility, cutting the UC health element and making PIP daily living the gateway to UC health.
It argues that the cuts could push people further from work, rather than helping them into employment.
It concludes by saying:
The government must reconsider its current approach. We are calling on the government to cancel proposed cuts to disability benefits. More immediately, we’re asking the government to:
- Reverse the decision not to consult on cuts to disability benefits.
- Delay parliamentary votes on disability benefit cuts until all relevant impact assessments have been published. This should include the impact on other public services and the voluntary sector, and estimated employment outcomes from measures proposed in the green paper.
The report is a must read for anyone campaigning on this issue and should be compulsory reading for any MP voting on it – though sadly they are the least likely group to ever open its pages.
