The Conservative party manifesto contains no real benefits surprises, instead it is laden with already well-publicised threats to claimants, rather than promises. In all, the Tories plan to cut a massive £12 billion from the cost of benefits, almost all of this coming from a crackdown on personal independence payment (PIP).
The manifesto includes a pledge to tighten up the work capability assessment from 2025, which the Office for Budget Responsibility said in January will mean 600,000 claimants will be placed in the LCW group rather than the LCWRA group by 2028-29.
The fit note process will be overhauled, with GPs no longer playing a part in the process, something Sunak highlighted in a speech in April.
Sanctions will also be toughened up, something else Sunak spoke about in his April speech.
The forced migration of legacy benefits claimants to universal credit is to be brought forward, a process which the DWP has already announced will begin in September of this year.
A crackdown on fraud, which will see the DWP given police powers to search and seize, as well as post office type powers to carry out prosecutions. This is something else Sunak already threatened in April of this year.
It is the proposed changes to PIP, set out in the Green Paper currently being consulted on, which will be relied on to provide over £10 billion of the £12 billion in savings, however.
But the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has cast doubt on the Conservative claim that they can cut spending on benefits by this much by the end of the next parliament.
They argue that changes to the WCA would only save £1.4 billion. Other measures, such as harsher sanctions and changes to fit notes would save very little.
So the vast bulk of the savings would have to come from changes to PIP. The IFS point out that spending on PIP is forecast to be £30 billion in 2028-29, so a cut of anything like £12 billion “would be a huge proportion of the existing bill, meaning a lot of people losing significant sums”.
Previous attempts to cut spending on disability benefits have failed and unless any changes apply to existing claimants, rather than to new or reassessed claimants, then any savings will take many years to realise.
But, as it now seems extremely unlikely that the Conservatives will form the next government, it is Labour’s attitude to reform of the disability benefits system that is of most importance for claimants outside Scotland.
Thursday’s Labour manifesto publication may tell us more. But based on Labour’s tight-lipped approach to any changes it may have planned, we probably won’t know much until after the election.
You can download the Conservative party 2024 manifesto from this link.
