CPAG and Changing Realities’ briefing on the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill

  • The provisions in this Bill will push more children into poverty. Government impact assessments indicate that the number of children in poverty will increase by 50,000 by 2029/30, however CPAG estimates that a further 100,000 children will be pushed into poverty in the long term (as the reforms will not be fully rolled out by 2029/30). It will also reduce the living standards of millions more families, many of whom are already living in poverty, and undermine wider government efforts to tackle child poverty.
  • The Bill represents a net reduction in social security expenditure of £5 billion a year by 2029/30. This is the biggest cut to sickness and disability benefits in a generation, and comes in the context of significant cuts to social security spending since 2010; the government now spends £50 billion a year less than it would if cuts and freezes to benefits hadn’t happened.
  • The government has said that spending on the social security system must be reduced to make it sustainable. But in the absence of these cuts, social security spending is forecast to remain flat as a share of GDP. In fact, there is scope to increase social security spending further; many countries spend far more on social security than we do.
  • The government has also framed these changes as being about getting people into work, but it is likely only tens of thousands of people will enter work as a result – a tiny fraction of the millions who will lose vital income. This is income that is desperately needed to cover the additional costs of sickness or disability. In addition, personal independence payment (PIP) exists to support individuals with the additional costs of disability and is not intended to reflect a person’s work or earnings status.
  • The mitigations introduced since the Green Paper and the Spring Statement are very small and will hardly impact on the increased numbers of families living in poverty as a result of this Bill. Unless the government scraps the two-child limit and benefit cap, child poverty will be higher at the end of this parliament than at the start. These policies must be scrapped in the government’s forthcoming child poverty strategy. But the provisions in this bill will also make it harder for government to achieve its ambition to reduce child poverty, as well as making life harder for disabled people and their families.
  • For these reasons, we are urging MPs to reject the provisions in the bill. 

Read the briefing