TUC submission to Work and Pensions Committee inquiry- Getting Britain Working
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) exists to make the working world a better place for everyone. We bring together around 5.5 million working people who make up our 48 member unions. We support unions to grow and thrive, and we stand up for everyone who works for a living.
We welcome the opportunity to respond to this inquiry, and to share our initial views on the impacts of DWP’s announced changes to disability and health-related benefits for working people across the country. This response focuses on policy changes announced to date. We will engage actively with government as they consult on wider reforms over the period ahead.
Changes to eligibility and entitlement
Eligibility
- The proposals will reduce the number of people who will qualify for PIP from November 2026. The eligibility criteria for the daily living element of PIP will be narrowed (the mobility part of PIP is unaffected). Previously, claimants needed to score at least eight points from the 10 daily living headings to qualify for the standard rate of this element, claimants will now need to score at least four points in any single heading. The changes will affect any new claim or reassessment of an existing claim. And the change means along with potentially losing entitlement to the daily living element of PIP, losing passported entitlements linked to this award. These linked entitlements include Carer’s Allowance for people who care for them and exemptions from the benefit cap.
- From 2028, the government intends to scrap the WCA, and eligibility to the health element in Universal Credit will be available to those receiving a daily living award in PIP (not the mobility part). The benefit will no longer be linked to capacity to work- by scrapping the WCA, those who qualify for the health element in Universal Credit under the current system but do not qualify for the daily living element of PIP, will lose significantly.
- The government will also launch a process to review the PIP assessment. As it is a major undertaking, any changes to the PIP assessment will only be introduced following the reforms set out in the Green Paper.
Entitlement
- By losing entitlement to the daily living element of PIP, claimants will either lose the lower weekly rate of £72.65 or the higher rate of £108.55 (2024/5 rates).
- The proposals will reduce the value of the health element paid to Universal Credit claimants who are deemed unable to work or engage in work related activity. The additional amount currently received for the Universal Credit health element is £97 a week and this will be frozen in cash terms until 2029/30 for existing claimants. For new claims the rate of the Universal Credit health element will be reduced by £47pw (from £97pw in 2024/25 to £50pw in 2026/27). At the Spring Statement it was further announced this new reduced payment will be frozen until 2029-30.
- Those receiving the new reduced Universal Credit health element after April 2026, those with the most severe, life-long health conditions who have no prospect of improvement and will never be able to work will see their incomes protected through an additional premium. As yet there are no details about how this group will be defined and what the value of this premium will be, and costs for this premium have not been included in forecasts. Those within this group will not need to be reassessed in future.
- The Universal Credit standard allowance for new and existing claims will be increased, from £91pw in 2024/25 to £92pw in 25/26 then to £98pw in 26/27 then £100 in 27/28, £103 in 28/29 and £106 in 29/30. The higher standard allowance will not offset the £47 cut in the health element. Increasing the value of the Universal Credit standard allowance from April 2026 will mean by 2029/30 it will be £5 a week higher than it would have been under default indexation on current forecasts. When the government first set out its plans, it said the Standard Allowance would rise to £107 a week by 2029-30, but the Spring Statement confirmed it would go up to £106 so they reduced this by £1.
Additional elements not being consulted on include:
- Changes to how WCA and PIP assessments are conducted, including increasing the number of WCA reassessments carried out and increasing the number of face-to-face PIP and WCA assessments (though reducing assessments for those most severe conditions).
- A new ‘Pathways to Work’ support offer: this will include employment, health and skills support for out-of-work benefit claimants such as disabled claimants or claimants who have a health condition, costing £1bn a year by 2029-30. This support is backloaded – 200m in 2026/7, 300m in 2027/28, 400m in 2028-29 and reaching £1billion in 2029/30.
Impact on disabled people
The savings come principally from tightening the gateway for PIP, which is estimated to reduce PIP awards for around 800,000 claimants. In addition, three million claimants will be impacted by reducing the value of the health-related Universal Credit element. The reductions are partially offset by the small increase in the standard allowance for the over 6.5m families on Universal Credit, and the decision to reverse the 2023 reforms that tightened the work capability assessment (WCA). 1
The government’s own assessments show the significant financial impacts these changes will have for claimants 2 3 4
- The reforms to PIP affecting any new claim or reassessment of an existing claim from 2026/27, is estimated to save £4.5 billion in 2029-30.
- By 2029/30, an estimated 800,000 claimants will lose entitlement to the daily living part of PIP, they will face an average loss of £4,500. Of these, 370,000 are existing claimants.
- A recent FOI suggested that almost nine out of ten current standard daily living awards will not be renewed. 5 Including the standard and enhanced awards in total this would be 1,325,000, the OBR estimate is around 800,000 people will be affected – this is based on their behavioural responses expectation.
- A 150,000 other people will lose carer’s benefits when someone they care for no longer qualifies for PIP.
- The changes to the health element in Universal Credit are estimated to save £3 billion in 2029-30. Of these 2.3 million people will be affected by the freeze of the existing rate; losing an average of £500 per year – although they will see a very marginal rise in cash terms from the standard allowance. And there will be 730,000 new claimants receiving the lower rate of £50 a week and they will see an average loss of £3,000 per year.
- Increasing the value of the Universal Credit standard allowance between April 2026 and April 2029 will benefit an expected 6.9 million families receiving Universal Credit by 2029-30, at an estimated cost of £1.9 billion in 2029-30.
- Estimates there will be an additional 250,000 people (including 50,000 children) in relative poverty after housing costs in 2029/30 as a result of modelled changes to social security, compared to the baseline projections. Once impact assessments are updated to include the removal of the WCA, these numbers are likely to rise (numbers are currently offset by inclusion of the cancellation of the previous government’s announcement of changes to WCA descriptors that were never introduced.)
- The vast majority (96%) of families that lose financially have at least one disabled person in the household.
Based on current 2024/25 prices the TUC calculate the below (this excludes the marginal gain from the standard allowance of Universal Credit). Those who:
- lose carer’s benefits will be £4,300 a year worse off;
- no longer qualify for PIP daily living element will be around £3,800 worse if they are receiving the standard rate or £5,600 worse off if they receive the enhanced rate.
- claim Universal Credit after April 2026 and receive the new lower Universal Credit health element will lose £2,400.
- are affected by the scrapping of the WCA and make future Universal Credit claims when out of work due to ill health would be £5,000 per year worse off.
- lose both the standard daily living element of PIP and the Universal Credit health element face a double whammy - they could be £8,800 per year worse. The Green Paper will include consultation on potential transitional protection for this group, but firm commitments have not yet been made.
The Resolution Foundation has found that overall, 68 per cent of the welfare cuts announced are concentrated on households in the bottom half of the income distribution.6
Z2K has published accounts from clients who stand to be directly affected by restricting the daily living component of PIP. 7 The proposed measures will see support denied to people who have serious physical health conditions including stroke survivors and amputees, and people who have serious mental health conditions including psychosis. The cuts will also apply to people deemed to be the most severely disabled, those receiving the ‘enhanced’ rate.
Carlos is 60 years old and has recently had a stroke which has left him needing the support of a walking stick and unable to move his right arm, along with memory problems. He requires round the clock support from his family. The plans would see his income reduced by around one-third.
Anatoli has had his left foot and the toes on his right foot amputated. His wife has to help him with dressing, using the toilet and bathing. He stands to lose over £300/month under the government’s plans, which would leave him struggling to afford food and bills.
Mohammed has psychosis and experiences hallucinations and delusional thinking. He is under the care of a social worker and a psychologist. He faces a significant cut to his income under the government’s plans, which threatens to destabilise him and jeopardise his mental health treatment. 8
Conclusions
The TUC strongly supports the government’s wider plans to Make Work Pay, along with the ambitions of the Get Britain Working White Paper to boost employment rates and put new initiatives in place, including a national jobs and careers service and a meaningful Youth Guarantee.
But we are concerned that as Pathways to Work package stands it will not support the government’s ambitions to enable more disabled people to remain in work, or move from worklessness into employment. Rather, the risk is that large numbers of disabled people remain out of work and in poverty. Those set to lose their entitlements include people who need assistance to, for example, wash their hair or body below the waist or get in or out of the bath or shower. People who need supervision or prompting to be able to manage toilet needs, and who need assistance to be able to dress or undress their lower body, are also set to lose significant income.
Disabled people already face a much higher risk of poverty because of the additional costs associated with disability, and the additional barriers they face to entering employment. The latest official data shows of the 14.2 million people in poverty, 6.3 million were in a family with a disabled family member. Trussell Trust data shows more than a quarter (26%) of disabled people experience food insecurity, nearly three times higher than the rate among non-disabled people (10%). Seven in 10 (69%) people referred to Trussell's community of food banks are disabled, and three in four (75%) have at least one disabled person in their household. 9 Cuts to social security increase and deepen poverty.
If the government continues with these plans, meaningful transitional protection must be expedited. The sanctions regime must also be overhauled – removing the WCA and tightening PIP eligibility could lead to a significant number of disabled people and people who have health issues subject to work search requirements and conditionality with the UC system for the first time. There is a high risk that the current sanctions regime will simply lead to further deterioration in claimants’ health rather than promoting employment. We are also concerned that the full roll out of the £1 billion employment support package will not take place until 2029/30. This should be brought forward.
We recognise the difference that good quality employment support can make to disabled people’s lives. But it is also important that the outcome rates these schemes can realistically achieve are not overstated. Previous analysis shows that employment gains are often more limited after social security reforms than governments expect they will be. Even the most successful programmes like Work Choice (specialist employment support to disabled people) show how challenging it is to increase employment levels. Eight years after referral to Work Choice early cohort participants had a payrolled employment rate 10.9 percentage points higher than the comparison group, four years after referral to Work Choice later cohort participants had a payrolled employment rate 11.4 pp higher than the comparison group.10
New analysis of employment support outcomes by Learning and Work Institute has found that the additional funding for employment support could help 45,000-95,000 more disabled people into work. 11 While welcome, this is set against at least three million people with health and disability issues who will see very large cuts to their incomes.
More widely, we remain concerned that public debate has failed to recognise that PIP is not an out of work benefit. It is a working-age disability benefit which helps individuals deal with the extra costs of being disabled. Around one-sixth of PIP recipients are in work, and PIP can provide important support to enable people to access and remain in work. Reforming social security to increase work seeking behaviour is not best achieved by cutting these entitlements. Previous DWP figures show that 41% of new successful claims for PIP in March 2023 were from people who were in work, and this percentage has been increasing in recent years, from 29% in April 2016. 12
UK social security spend must also be put into wider context. Analysis by NIESR shows in 2010 the UK was the 14th largest spender out of 38 OECD countries prior to the reforms. By 2019 the UK had fallen in the ranking to the level of the 21st largest spender, which is below the OECD average. These figures do not support the claim that UK is a high welfare country.13 In 2019 the UK spent 1.3 of GDP on sickness and disability benefits, and even with the predicted increase to 2.2 % of GDP this remains lower than many of our European neighbours (based on 2019 data).
- 1 CP 1289 – Office for Budget Responsibility – Economic and fiscal outlook – March 2025
- 2 SS25_Published_Costing_Document.pdf
- 3 Spring Statement 2025 health and disability benefit reforms - Equality Analysis
- 4 Spring Statement 2025 health and disability benefit reforms – Impacts
- 5 Response FOI2025 24990.pdf
- 6 Unsung-Britain-bears-the-brunt.pdf
- 7 Z2K’s View on the Health & Disability Benefits Green Paper - Z2K
- 8 Z2K’s View on the Health & Disability Benefits Green Paper - Z2K
- 9 Equity, diversity and inclusion | Trussell
- 10 Work Choice impact evaluation - GOV.UK
- 11 Estimating the impacts of extra employment support for disabled people
- 12 modernising-support-for-independent-living-evidence-pack.xlsx
- 13 NIESR UK Living Standards Review 2025
These changes come alongside a wider package of reforms announced by the government, some of which will be consulted on and many of which are a step in the right direction (although the proposal to consider removing the health element of Universal Credit from young people aged 18-21 is not the best way to support this group into education, employment or training). As set out above we welcome increased investment in employment support. It is also right to consider how reform can enable more disabled people to try work without the fear of losing their social security income, to consider a new role for contributory social security and to improve the operation of Access to Work. But the scale of the spending cuts that have been announced, and which mainly apply to benefits that can be claimed by those in and out of work, are not the solution to low employment rates. Decisions that affect millions of people’s lives must be made with care - both to protect the wellbeing of those affected and to ensure that the higher labour market participation rates we need are secured.
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