Next week’s disability cuts will make people destitute – and you might not understand how bad they are until it’s too late | Frances Ryan
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<p>If new claimants don’t meet strict criteria, they’ll lose half of the health element of universal credit. Don’t ignore that: in life’s lottery, that could easily be you</p><p>Look at the front pages or open a news app in the coming days and you’ll supposedly see the big events facing Britain. But here’s one that is likely to slip quietly under the radar: from next week, almost three-quarters of a million of the most severely ill and disabled people in the country could end u
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Next week’s disability cuts will make people destitute – and you might not understand how bad they are until it’s too late Frances Ryan If new claimants don’t meet strict criteria, they’ll lose half of the health element of universal credit. Don’t ignore that: in life’s lottery, that could easily be you L ook at the front pages or open a news app in the coming days and you’ll supposedly see the big events facing Britain. But here’s one that is likely to slip quietly under the radar: from next week, almost three-quarters of a million of the most severely ill and disabled people in the country could end up having a lifeline benefit cut in half . Cast your mind back to last summer. As the nation sweated through a heatwave and Oasis reunited , ministers were trying to push through “welfare reform” – a nice euphemism for £5bn worth of cuts to disability benefits. A backbench rebellion meant that Keir Starmer was forced to halt his overhaul of personal independence payments , but MPs voted through a brutal universal credit cut. Ministers justified reducing support for people too disabled or ill to work by arguing it would remove the “perverse incentives” that discourage employment and trap people on long-term benefits , as if a twentysomething who is bedbound with ME just needs “incentivising” to get back to the building site. Nine months later, that change will now come into effect. On paper, it’s the epitome of bureaucratic jargon: new claimants whose disability means they can’t work or prepare for a job will see their additional universal credit support, known as “the health element”, halved to £50 per week and then frozen. That’s unless they meet strict – in many ways, flawed – criteria for being terminally ill or having a condition that is “severe” and “lifelong”. But wade through the dense small print and the human cost is unmistakable: people who are enduring daily debilitating symptoms and often already struggling to pay the bills are going to have their lives mad...
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