News

14 October 2010

Independent think tank Demos has produced a 164 page report – Destination Unknown - detailing how much money sick and disabled claimants are likely to lose as a result of coalition changes to the benefits system.

The report looks at cuts already announced, including the change from the Retail Price Index (RPI) to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for calculating the uprating of benefits, the reassessment of all DLA claimants and the forced movement of incapacity benefit claimants onto employment and support allowance or jobseeker’s allowance.

On the basis solely of the change from RPI to CPI, Demos predicts that a disabled young person who has their parents as carers will lose £3,043 in family income between 2011 and 2015.

A single disabled woman on incapacity benefit and housing benefit who gets transferred to JSA in 2013 and fails to find a job would be £9,461 worse off over the next five years.

The report contains other case studies and paints a bleak picture of the way in which disabled claimants will be forced to bear the brunt of the coalition’s cuts.

You can download a free copy of Destination Unknown from this link.

Meanwhile, since the report was published, the figures for next year’s benefits uprating have been made available.  The RPI for September, the month used to set uprating figures, stood at 4.6%.  However, the CPI, which will now be used to set the amount of uprating, stood at just 3.1%.

So, sick and disabled claimants will indeed begin to lose out in 2011, with their income falling behind that of people in work by a greater and greater amount year after year under coalition rule.