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Disability Alliance’s broad policy response to current welfare reform proposals.Disability Alliance supports initiatives and policies that bring about real sustainable improvements to the employment rates of disabled people.
However, given the fact that the employment rate for disabled people remains some 30% below that of the national average and thus reliant on welfare benefits for prolonged periods of time, we have grave reservations about implications from Government that incapacity benefit claimants need to be subject to a more rigorous test of entitlement than currently exists.
Disabled working-age adults have moved more deeply into relative poverty over the last 10 years and a quarter of disabled parents who are in work remain in relative poverty. Disabled people of working age have incomes that are, on average, less than 50% of that earned by non-disabled people.
Many disabled people may never be able to enter the labour market and will depend on benefits their whole lives. Yet, levels of benefit are inadequate and there are serious problems with take-up of some benefits such as Disability Living Allowance.
We would like to see the government commission independent research into the adequacy of welfare benefits and tax credits to examine whether these currently meet the extra costs associated with disability, as recommended by David Freud in his recent report.
We would like to see a Welfare Commission established, as recommended by the Work and Pensions Select Committee, to take a holistic look at what the welfare system should look like in the 21st Century, to identify areas where attention is required in terms of simplification and standardisation of definitions, as well as examining the interactions between welfare benefits and work incentives.
We feel that, within the current structure of the welfare system, there are intrinsic barriers to disabled people being able to try out work and we are disappointed that the government appears more intent on castigating individual claimants for their situation, rather than looking for progressive ways to deal with the issues of long term benefit receipt.
