Reform UK unveils massive £50bn welfare overhaul to scrap PIP

Reform UK has set out plans to revolutionise the welfare state that would see almost three million people’s disability and sickness payments withdrawn or modified.

Under the plans, Reform would abolish personal independence payments (Pip) and the health element of Universal credit for working-age adults, The Telegraph reports. Reform’s Treasury spokesperson Robert Jenrick claimed that the proposals would cut £50 billion from the welfare bill.

He said that Reform would introduce a new, regularly-reviewed, health security allowance that would provide support only for the “gravely ill and severely challenged”.

Labour said the £50 billion claim was “fantasy economics” and said stripping people of benefit payments would shift costs onto employers.

Mr Jenrick said 6.9 million people were receiving disability benefits but “this is not an epidemic of broken backs and lost limbs” as since 2002 the share of working-age people claiming for mental health and behavioural conditions had tripled.

Under the planned reforms, due to be unveiled in detail on Monday, cash payments for low-level conditions would end and be replaced with disability support accounts, run by local councils and mayors, to cover costs such as equipment, adaptations, transport and personal assistance.

And employers could be obliged to pay a “return to work cover” insurance to fund the cost of the first two years after an employee is signed off sick.

Mr Jenrick said firms would then have a “strong economic incentive” to return the employee to work. People who had not returned to work within two years would go through a single, rigorous assessment conducted in person to “screen out vexatious and fraudulent claims”.

Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Jenrick said: “We will not pretend this is painless.

“Existing claimants will be reassessed over three to four years: we estimate that 2.16 million will keep their present cash entitlement in full, while 2.89 million will see theirs modified or withdrawn, concentrated where recent growth has been most explosive.”

He said the state must be there to support people who need it but “dumping our young people onto welfare isn’t compassion; it’s neglect”.

“We are not lifting people out of misfortune. We are abandoning them to it, and calling it kindness.”

Mr Jenrick said the Reform proposals would save “more than double” the £23 billion promised by Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives, with £22 billion of the savings coming from changes to disability benefits alone.

Abdi Mohamed, head of policy at disability equality charity Scope, said the party’s proposals “should be about creating opportunities, not pushing disabled people into poverty and calling it compassion.

“Life costs a huge amount more when you’re disabled, and PIP goes towards covering those costs, whether or not you're in work. It's not an unemployment benefit.”

He added: “Young disabled people are facing a multitude of barriers getting into work, but slashing billions in financial support for disabled people won’t fix that. We need to be far more ambitious about tackling inaccessible workplaces, improving employment support, and ensuring employers provide the adjustments disabled people need to work.”

Jackie O'Sullivan, from learning disability charity Mencap, said: “We don’t have the detail of these proposals yet, but any government that chooses to make drastic cuts to PIP risks plunging hundreds of thousands of disabled people into poverty and isolation. Cuts of this scale would be devastating and make efforts to try and help disabled people into work unlikely to succeed.”

Shadow work and pensions secretary Helen Whately said the plans were an attempt to distract attention from the investigation into a £5 million donation to Nigel Farage and his “pointless by-election” in Clacton.

She said: “Reform have been nowhere on the debate on welfare reform. They have flip-flopped on restoring the two child benefit cap and claimed they’ll only take benefits away from foreigners, which won’t do enough to bring down the overall bill.

“The Conservatives are on the side of working people and we’re clear about our plans. Restore the two-child benefit cap, end benefits for low level mental health conditions, remove benefits from foreign nationals and restore face-to-face assessments.”

A Labour spokeswoman said: “Reform’s £50 billion claim is fantasy economics, built on stripping support from disabled people and shifting costs onto employers.”

She added that the Labour Government’s reforms to welfare “deliver credible, independently-costed savings, not arbitrary numbers with no credible plan behind them”.