Britain15 August, 20262 min read
Reform UK Plans £50bn Welfare Cuts, Scraps PIP and Replaces It With Health Security Allowance
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Reform UK proposes about £50bn in welfare cuts. Plans would scrap Personal Independence Payments and the health element of Universal Credit.
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Reform’s £50bn welfare cut
Reform UK is preparing a welfare shake-up that it says would cut about £50bn from the benefits bill and scrap the disability payments system, Pip, if it comes in to government. BBC reports that Reform treasury spokesperson Robert Jenrick said the plans, to be set out in full on Monday, would be the most comprehensive overhaul to the welfare system in a generation and affect nearly three million people.
Reform’s blueprint would abolish Personal Independent Payments (Pip) for working age people and remove extra health-related payments on Universal Credit, replacing them with a new system called a Health Security Allowance for only the most "severe, enduring and high-risk cases". Reform also says it would spend an extra £1.85bn a year on interventions such as cognitive behavioural therapy, physiotherapy, and employment support, while making companies pay for employees off sick for the first two years and requiring businesses with more than five employees to take out insurance to cover the cost.
Claims, counterclaims, and Farage
Labour and the Conservatives attacked Reform’s welfare figures, with a Labour spokesperson calling the plan "fantasy economics, built on stripping support from disabled people" and Conservatives describing it as a "half-baked policy". The BBC also links the welfare debate to Nigel Farage, saying a parliamentary standards investigation is taking place into a £5m gift Farage received before he became an MP, and that the investigation was paused after Farage resigned as Clacton MP in response to scrutiny.
In a separate account, JournalArta says Reform UK is due to publish a 50-page blueprint on Monday and that Jenrick described the current system as a “moral and economic catastrophe”. JournalArta adds that Jenrick said the reforms could save £22bn from the disability programme alone, with nearly three million claimants seeing payments withdrawn or altered, and that the party would replace the current system with a new, regularly reviewed “health security allowance” for only the “gravely ill and severely challenged”.
How the new system works
Reform’s plan would shift low-level conditions away from cash support toward disability support accounts run by local councils and mayors, with those accounts paying for needs such as talking therapies, physiotherapy and employment support, according to JournalArta’s description of Jenrick’s account of the proposal. The BBC says Reform would make the change by cutting National Insurance contributions (NICs) paid by employers to offset the cost of the measure, insisting the change would be cost neutral for businesses.
The Telegraph reports that Robert Jenrick said a Reform government would introduce the biggest welfare shake-up “in a generation” by scrapping key benefits to save £50bn a year, and that he wrote that the current system was akin to “suicidal empathy”. The Telegraph also says Reform would abolish personal independence payments (Pip) and the health element of Universal Credit for working-age adults, replace them with a health security allowance for severe and enduring disability cases, and require employers to pay for a new type of insurance, “Return to Work Cover”, to cover the cost of the first two years after an employee signed off sick.