A hard hitting report from the Citizens Advice Bureau ( CAB ) says it all really – it calls on the government to act now to protect living standards for disabled people, by reversing the decision to cut disability benefits.
The report explains how planned cuts to disability benefits will impact the people the CAB support. At the very least, they say, the reforms should be paused so that a meaningful consultation and a more substantive impact assessment can take place.
The report focuses on the impact of 3 changes :-
- Narrowing Personal Independence Payment (PIP) eligibility criteria so that claimants must score at least 4 points in at least one activity to receive the daily living component of PIP, in addition to the current requirement to score at least 8 points in total.
- Changes to Universal Credit (UC) rates, including freezing the rate of UC health at £97 per week for current claimants and cutting it to £50 per week for new claimants.
- Scrapping the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) and making receipt of the daily living component of PIP the sole gateway to UC health.
Citizens Advice helped over 370,000 people with disability benefit issues in 2024 alone. Their network of 239 local Citizens Advice gives frontline data from across England and Wales.
View the Pathways to Poverty Report .
