The Labour Party will “double down” on plans to cut BILLIONS from the Department for Work and Pensions ( DWP ) disability benefits bill, it has been claimed. The Labour Party government has indicated that it will stick with Tory plans to cut disability benefits.
It comes after it emerged the plan to push through £3bn of cuts to incapacity benefits, first mooted by the Conservative Party, has received a setback after a judge ruled an official consultation setting out the proposals was misleading and unlawful.
The high court said the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) had presented UK-wide incapacity benefit assessment reforms as a way to support disabled people into work without making clear the “primary rationale” of the proposals was cost savings.
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Responding to today’s verdict, a government spokesperson said: “The judge has found the previous government failed to adequately explain their proposals. As part of wider reforms that help people into work and ensure fiscal sustainability, the government will re-consult on the WCA descriptor changes, addressing the shortcomings in the previous consultation, in light of the judgment.
“The government intends to deliver the full level of savings in the public finances forecasts.” Ellen Clifford, a disability activist who launched the legal challenge, said the proposed cuts had been “prioritised over lives”. She urged the government to rethink its proposals “and make the safety and wellbeing of disabled benefits their priority”.
Mr Justice Calver’s ruling found the consultation was “misleading” because it failed to highlight the “substantial loss of benefit” faced by claimants. Clifford said: “We now know that civil servants and ministers were making desperate attempts to ‘find’ a rationale for the cuts, which they thought would be less controversial … to make it appear as though saving money was not their primary motive. It is heartening that Mr Justice Calver agreed with us that this is ‘back-to-front policymaking’.”
She added: “The crucial question is what lessons the government should learn from this case. Measures to help the economy should not require the impoverishment and suffering of hundreds of thousands of disabled people.”