Hundreds of thousands of children would be tipped into poverty and destitution under plans unveiled by Reform UK to slash £50bn a year from the UK benefits bill, campaigners have warned.
The warnings came after Reform published plans to drastically reduce disability payments, ban non-UK citizens from claiming benefits and introduce compulsory 20 hours a week unpaid workfare for thousands of long-term unemployed people.
An overhaul of the sick pay system would require employers to cover an employee’s benefit payments for the first two years of their illness, the plans propose, while the two-child benefit limit scrapped by Labour last year would be reintroduced.
Meanwhile, a leaked government analysis seen by the Guardian showed that cuts to disability benefits would be so steep that even those with terminal illness, blindness or profound learning disabilities would stand to lose as much as £10,000 a year.
Campaigners said the wide-ranging proposals were “cruel and dangerous”, and one poverty charity official said: “This will cause horrific levels of destitution and hardship.”
Attempts to overhaul the benefits system have proved politically controversial in recent years – last year Keir Starmer’s government was forced to abandon relatively modest proposals to cut £5bn a year from disability benefits after a backbench rebellion, and was forced to abandon its plans to keep the two-child limit.
The plans began to unravel after the real-world consequences of cuts to disability benefits became apparent, with some low-income households facing cuts to incomes of up to £10,000 a year, and poverty rates projected to increase by about 250,000.
Reform’s welfare plans would have consequences for the finances of people in its own electoral heartlands. House of Commons figures show one in six (15.3%) working age adults in Reform leader Nigel Farage’s Clacton constituency claim personal independence payment (Pip), almost twice the England and Wales average.
A foreword by Farage and the party’s Treasury spokesperson, Robert Jenrick, said the plans were built on “commonsense principles”, adding: “A system intended as a safety net has become a way of life, including for foreigners who haven’t paid a penny.”
Among their proposals is replacing Pip and part of the universal credit with a single flat-rate “health security allowance” of £429.80 a month. For those with severe needs, an internal government analysis showed this would be at least £10,000 less than they currently get over the course of a year.
Jenrick said on Monday that the most vulnerable needs would be protected, while the party has said disabled people could claim for the genuine extra costs of their disabilities. He could not say however how much these payments would be or how those costs would be assessed.
A Labour source said: “This analysis exposes the true impact of Reform’s welfare proposals. Far from securing the welfare system for the future, Reform would destroy the safety net that millions of British people have depended on in tough times.”
The Disability Benefits Consortium, representing more than 100 charities, said Reform’s plans would “vastly increase poverty and worsen people’s health” by stripping disability benefits from millions of people, including those with multiple sclerosis.
Disability Rights UK said Reform’s failure to understand the importance of disability benefits to the lives of disabled people was “utterly breathtaking” while the charity Scope accused it of “pushing disabled people into poverty and calling it compassion”.
About 1.3 million non-UK citizens currently claim universal credit, of whom about 660,000 are not in employment, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. How much money would be saved by barring non-UK citizens from benefits would depend on how many responded by claiming citizenship, it said.
“Removing benefits from non-UK citizens would mean large overnight cuts to claimants’ incomes and imply significant increases in hardship – some of this group get most or all of their income from benefits at present,” said Tom Waters, an associate director at the IFS.
after newsletter promotion
Reform said that taken as a whole its plans would push an additional 241,000 British nationals into jobs by the end of the decade while cutting about a quarter the UK’s annual working age benefits bill, projected to be £200bn by 2030.
State pensions, spending on which this year is expected to reach £180bn, would be entirely insulated from cuts and similar protections would be in place for what it called, without clarification, the “severely disabled”.
Eligibility for Pip, currently claimed by just under 4 million people, would be dramatically tightened, and an estimated 2.9 million people would lose cash payments, though some would qualify instead for disability support in the form of equipment, aids and adaptations.
Claimants who had been jobless for over a year would be required to carry out 20 hours compulsory community work a week, under threat of having sanctions placed on their unemployment benefits. They would be unpaid but receive £30 a week expenses.
They would be assigned to work gangs run by local authorities or charities and set to tasks including maintaining roads, parks, carrying out council house repairs, working in libraries and carrying out non-care adult social care roles.
One local government insider said the plans were “nuts and clearly would be a massive headache for councils to administer and enforce”.
Kate Lee, chief executive of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, said such a programme could have “enormous unintended consequences” undermining trust between charities and the communities they serve.
“If the aim is to help people back into work or become more active in their communities, there are much better ways to work with the voluntary sector to achieve those aims,” she said.
