Disabled households are already suffering from cuts to their incomes but there's much more to come
Disabled people’s income will fall by at least £50 a week by 2020 because of Tory welfare cuts.
Some 900,000 disabled people will see their benefits affected by that amount, according to research by the consultancy Policy in Practice.
It found more than two fifths of the UK’s 7.2 million working-age, low-income households containing a working-age disabled person would lose out.
The impact of welfare cuts introduced after November 2016 will see these families lose an average £51.47 a week by 2020, compared with an average loss of £35.82 for households not containing a disabled person.
This comes on top of an average weekly loss of more than £20 for low-income households containing a working-age disabled person as a result of welfare reforms introduced pre-November 2016.
The research takes account of mitigating measures introduced by the government, such as the introduction of the national living wage and increases to the personal tax allowance.
Jim Anderson of the Scottish Anti-Cuts Alliance, which has mounted several protests outside DWP disability assessment centres, said: “These cuts are playing with people’s lives,” he said. “We have a Tory government that doesn’t care and, in fact, is deliberately targeting disabled people because they believe they can’t fight back.
“As the UN stated last week – these cuts are inhumane and probably illegal yet the UK government cares not.
“But pressure is mounting and disabled campaigners will respond proportionately.
“We aren’t sitting back and allowing this ethnic cleansing through cuts to happen.
“More civil disobedience will take place.”
Policy in Practice has called for more support to help disabled households.
However a spokeswoman for the Department for Work and Pensions said: “This report assumes that people won’t make any attempt to change and improve their lives.
“But our welfare reforms incentivise work and, for the first time, universal credit helps working people progress and earn more, so they can eventually stop claiming benefits altogether.
"Under universal credit, people are finding a job faster and staying in it longer than under the old system, and since the benefit cap was introduced, 34,000 households have moved off the cap and into work.”
