‘Labour’s plan won’t actually help’
Labour’s welfare reform plan, unveiled this week, aims to alter eligibility criteria to encourage people back into work and cut costs. According to Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall, this change will help focus disability benefits on those who need them most and ensure the social security system’s long-term sustainability.
However, Dr Shani Dhanda, a leading accessibility expert and broadcaster, has warned these changes are ill-conceived. Not only could they exacerbate poverty among disabled individuals, but they may also fail to encourage them into the workforce.
Shani told Reach plc: “The government rhetoric is that we’re making these cuts to get disabled people back into work.
“The issue isn’t that disabled people don’t want to work, yes some can’t, which by the way isn’t their choice either. However there needs to be jobs available for people to get into.
“I’m on the government’s Find A Job website now. If I look at the Disability Confident employers, there’s only 139 fully remote jobs available in the whole country. When I see how many part time remote jobs there are, it goes down to 9.”
Shani, celebrated as one of the most influential disabled women in the UK, understands the struggle to enter the workforce first-hand. Beginning her job hunt at 16, she applied to over 100 jobs and only saw interview offers rolling in when she stopped mentioning her disability on applications.
She emphasised that it’s not the welfare benefits but rather the lack of accessible opportunities preventing disabled people from joining the workforce. She also drew attention to recent Trussell Trust reports revealing that 75% of foodbank users come from disabled households.
The founder of Diversability added: “Disabled people already can’t afford to be disabled in 2025 in the UK, how is cutting their support going to help? It’s going to push them further into poverty.”
Shani offered a unique perspective on the significant increase in young people with mental health conditions since the pandemic, which is believed to be a contributor of the rising welfare costs. She pointed out: “We’ve all lived through a mass disabling event; the pandemic. Younger people don’t have the life experience or resilience to bounce back.
“For example, me being a disabled person, I’m used to spending time on my own therefore when it was lockdown I felt like I was much more equipped to deal with it. It was still really hard but I had been in those situations before through no choice of my own so I had experience to draw upon whereas young people, they haven’t.”
While the accessibility expert feels that the new criteria for PIP eligibility could ultimately drive up costs in health and social care, they did find a silver lining in Tuesday’s update. From now on, individuals with severe, lifelong disabilities unlikely to improve will be exempt from further reassessments.
Shani commented: “It will benefit them. They don’t need to keep telling someone the same information to get the same outcome because they’re not ever going to not live with their condition. It helps to save money as well that would be spent on reassessing.”