It's full steam ahead for the government's plans to cut disability benefits, two announcements have made clear.
Cuts of 20% in the state's spending on disability living allowance for working-age adults are on course, despite widespread opposition in consultation, the Department for Work and Pensions said today.
And incapacity benefit claimants have started receiving letters informing them that their eligibility will be reviewed under the much-hated work capability assessment (WCA) over the next three years. A third of this group is expected to be found fit for work and thereby switched to jobseeker's allowance, losing them about £25 a week and leaving them at the mercy of the government's tough sanctions regime for people deemed not to be doing enough to find work.
These letters must be causing a lot of worry to social care clients who receive them. But it's also worth stating that the government is rolling out this system without having published a full evaluation of a pilot reassessment process that it has carried out in Burnley and Aberdeen.
Given the widespread misgivings about the WCA, confidence in the reassessment process surely requires that the system has been shown to work at the pilot stage. (Actually, to be fair, the DWP has published this on the pilot process - a single page that tells you the proportions found fit to work, somewhat fit to work and not fit to work.)
(Image on Flickr from Between a Rock)
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