Are disability benefit claimants ‘ready to work’? The truth behind DWP’s claims ahead of welfare reforms

“Officials point to a new survey carried out by the government that found 200,000 people claiming health and disability benefits who said they would be ready to work if the right job or support were available,” reports said earlier this month. 

The survey that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) were excitedly talking up was contained in a report drawn up by research organisation NatCen, which asked 3,401 disability benefit claimants for their views on their health and prospects for work. 

But the report’s actual findings paint a much less supportive picture for the DWP and its imminent plans to slash disability benefits.

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Yes, they’re disabled

The report found that, unsurprisingly, people receiving disability benefits are indeed disabled. Fully 82% said their health conditions reduced their ability to carry out daily activities “a lot”, with a further 15% saying “a little” and just 3% “not at all” – and that isn’t even the only form of disability. Almost everyone received help completing daily tasks.

“Customers found it challenging to use public transport due to physical discomfort, accessibility issues, or fears of crowded or unfamiliar environments,” the report said. “For some, even leaving the house became a huge task, leading to isolation and disconnection from friends and family.”

Among those who had started receiving out-of-work disability benefits in the last year, 92% applied because their health condition stopped them from being able to work. Other common reasons included being told to do so by the DWP or the Jobcentre (35%) or by a healthcare professional (30%). None of these figures lend themselves to claims that large numbers of recent claimants are in some way fit for work. 

But what the government might point to instead is that among PIP claimants who don’t receive the universal credit disability element, just under half have an ‘equivalised income’ of more than £15,900 a year. Equivalised income is calculated by dividing a household’s income by the number of people in it, roughly speaking. If the DWP tries to means-test PIP, this is the sort of figure it will use, arguing that public money should be targeted at those on the lowest incomes. 

Of course, £15,900 is not a lot of money for one person to live on. A means test set high enough that it only affects those on genuinely comfortable incomes won’t save much money – a means test set low enough to save significant money will inevitably hit people down the income scale. 

The truth about the 200,000

The survey asked disability benefit claimants about their ability to undertake paid work, with the following results:

When the DWP published its research, it led off by excitedly declaring: “New survey suggests 200k people claiming health and disability benefits are ready for work now if the right job or support were available.”

That 200,000 figure is extrapolated from the 5% of survey respondents who gave that answer – “few customers”, to use the wording of the report itself. 

The authors of the report then state: “Many customers in this group were receiving ESA [employment support allowance] or UC [universal credit] with no work-related activity requirements (40%) … showing a potential difference between the customers’ perspectives on their ability to work and the perspectives of DWP.”

This sentence will be manna from heaven for ministers looking to tighten disability assessments. But the 40% figure looks through the wrong end of the telescope – more than half of everyone in the survey is on ESA/UC with no work-related activity requirements. As a result, a large chunk of every category, every answer, and every status in the survey is made up of these claimants. Yes, 40% of those out of work but ready to work are claiming ESA/UC with no work-related requirements – but just 3% of those claiming ESA/UC with no work-related requirements are out of work but ready to work. As a basis for tightening disability benefit assessments and increasing claimant conditions, it’s junk.

And even saying that 5% of claimants could work right away doesn’t tell the whole story. Out of these claimants, 72% said they could work within the next year – indicating that around a quarter couldn’t. “In qualitative interviews, customers were often eager to work but wanted a gradual re-entry into work,” the report said. “Customers talked about wanting to work part time while their health improved, with the aim to move into full time employment.”

Meanwhile, more than a third of claimants who are required to undertake work-related activity as part of their benefits claim feel they will never be able to work again – indeed, almost half of all surveyed claimants feel this way. 

A quarter of respondents said they might be able to work in future, but only if their health improves – which just one in five of this group actually expects to happen. “In qualitative interviews, it was common for customers to frame the possibility of a return to work as a hypothetical or ideal one, rather than a realistic one,” the report said. 

Finally, around a fifth of those on disability benefits are currently in some kind of paid work, including half of those who only claim PIP. This data factors in any amount of paid work, be it part time or full time. But of these working claimants, half expect their health to worsen in future. 

Working from home – the great white hope

The last government’s plans to cut out-of-work disability benefit were explicitly proposed on the basis that people with certain disabilities that would previously have locked them out of the labour market could now qualify for the growing number of jobs that allowed working from home (WFH). The fact that the Office for Budget Responsibility later forecast that just 3% of those affected by the cuts would find paid work did not change their thinking. 

Labour is now planning to reconsult on the same cuts, meaning we’re probably in for another round of WFH hype. The DWP will revel in the report’s findings that a quarter of those who said they could not work right now – 14% of those who said they would never be able to work again, and 45% of those who felt they might be able to work in the future – then said that they would be able to do a job that entirely involved working from home.

Those who said they could work from home tended to be slightly younger, slightly more educated and slightly less severely disabled. 

But there are clear problems with using WFH as a basis for tightening disability benefit. First, these figures are about jobs that entirely consist of home-working – many of those surveyed who said they could do these jobs would still be locked out of “hybrid” working. 

Then there is the question of how many WFH jobs are actually available. The collation site Adzuna currently lists around 27,000 job adverts across the UK that are marked as work/working from home – including hybrid jobs – out of 865,000 job ads in total. 

And the report’s authors highlighted their own caveats: “Even among those who said they could work from home, it wasn’t something that they necessarily wanted to do, and many saw it as a short-term solution at best.” Some of those who were interviewed associated WFH with computer use, which they were unfamiliar with. Others feared it would lead to loneliness.

“Working from home should not become the preferred solution to helping health and disability customers in all categories back into work,” the report said. “It may only be a long term or permanent option for those who would not be negatively impacted in other ways from the reduced social interaction it involves.”

Something in the way

Of disability benefit claimants who had previously worked, 82% said their decision to leave work was health-related – of whom around one in four left because of unsupportive employers.

The survey asked claimants who are out of work but don’t rule out working in future, what barriers there are to them returning to employment. Three-quarters were concerned that work could make their health worse, the same proportion said travelling to work may be difficult with their disability, and 70% said their health condition fluctuated too much for them to work. 

None of this is surprising. But also of note is that 50% said their ability to work is dependent on receiving health treatment – indeed, out of everyone surveyed for the report, 41% were on a waiting list for treatment. There is no way of divorcing the employment status of sick and disabled people from their sickness and disability, and little point in discussing that sickness and disability without acknowledging the crisis in the NHS, particularly mental health services.

Nor is there any getting away from the fact that the labour market itself is disabling. While some employers do make reasonable adjustments for disabled workers, others don’t, and employers are arguably more likely to make such adjustments to keep an existing member of staff than to hire a new one – 69% of claimants worried that employers would not hire them because of their health condition. A quarter felt the adaptations they’d need would be too expensive. This at a time when the DWP is toying with scaling back the Access to Work scheme.

The age gap

Another issue flagged in the report is how responses varied with age. Claimants older than 50 were likelier to say they would never be able to work again, while those saying they could work right now with the right support veered much younger. And older claimants made up the bulk of those who feared their age was a barrier to finding a job.  

“In qualitative interviews, some customers felt they had been out of the job market too long to return to work,” the report said. “Others felt that returning to their previous career wasn’t possible given their health conditions, but felt they were not qualified for other types of work and were reluctant to retrain given they were nearing retirement age.”

Not only does the labour market discriminate against disability – it also discriminates against age. Older disabled people thus face a double-barrier to paid work. Whether the DWP takes this on board in its proposals remains to be seen.

Keeping it on the downlow

Among claimants who are out of work but could potentially work in future, half said they were worried that if they tried paid work and it didn’t work out, they wouldn’t get their benefits back.

The DWP’s press release launching the report described this as “further evidence that the current system pushes people away from work”. The department is reportedly considering allowing disabled people who enter the workplace to keep some of their benefits for a while, perhaps partly to try and salve what otherwise looks set to be an assault on disability benefits.

But what the DWP made no mention of was that the survey also found that 60% feared the department would make them look for work they’re not suitable for if they ask for help. 

“Customers, across benefit lines, felt their interest in or actual return to work would be taken as evidence that they no longer required benefits, separate to any formal needs assessment,” the report said. 

“Customers’ worries that they would be made to look for work that was not suitable for them was sometimes based on prior experiences at JCPs [Jobcentre Plus] … This discouraged customers from engaging with DWP and JCPs about a return to work as they felt it would be unproductive or result in them taking up jobs that would be detrimental to their health and wellbeing.”

As one interviewee told the researchers: “They say things like, for example, can you walk a certain amount of space in one day? Well, yes, I can, but then there isn’t a box saying then I can’t walk at all or get out of bed for the next two weeks.”

This goes back to longstanding issues with disability benefit assessments – their rigid tick-box nature and inability to factor in fluctuating conditions. These are flaws that tend towards excluding people from benefits – yet the DWP, driven by the Treasury, is looking for ways to reduce financial support further, not increase it. 

Nor did the DWP press release mention the report’s findings on disabled people’s low levels of trust in the department and Jobcentres. Half of surveyed claimants said they would feel under too much pressure if they were contacted by the DWP or Jobcentre about the support they offer, with only a third saying they trusted the DWP and Jobcentres to have their health and wellbeing at heart if they engaged with them.

“Customers found the application process, particularly the PIP application, confusing, long and lacking support,” the report said. “These struggles were made even more distressing when claims were rejected, particularly after waiting months for a decision. This impacted customers’ trust in DWP and left them struggling financially.

“The frequent re-assessments also caused significant stress and took up a lot of time.”

Views of the DWP were most negative among long-term claimants and those who felt least able to work. “Customers reported negative interactions with JCP staff where they were made to feel judged, disbelieved or as though they were exaggerating their conditions. Some explained that the financial support did not outweigh the stress of claiming benefits, while others felt pressured to take on more work, even when they did not feel able.”

Again, all of which was magically missing from the DWP’s publicity bumph.

A disgrace in the making

Work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall and her team will doubtless pay attention to the report’s findings on what kind of employment support claimants want from the DWP and Jobcentres – for example, a personalised service tailored to people’s health, qualifications and interest, and dedicated teams specifically trained to work with sick and disabled people. 

The next step for the researchers will be to publish a “segmentation analysis” of the survey data that will “identify groups of customers with distinct needs and preferences, with a view to directly informing policy decisions”. It would be surprising, to put it mildly, if any “groups of customers” tell the DWP that what they really need is their benefits cut.

Ministers and advisers will have trawled the report to find stats and anecdotes to cherrypick as evidence that there are, in fact, enough sick and disabled people who are able to work now, or who just need a little push, to justify cutting benefits and increasing conditionality for hundreds of thousands of them. 

But there is no set of measures the DWP can cook up that will achieve the kind of savings the Treasury is demanding, on the timescale it is demanding them, without effectively blanket-bombing disabled people. That because some disabled people can sort of work, sort of now, whole swathes of them must be battered into doing so even if they can’t. That because there are some jobs that can be done remotely, disabled people must be treated as if they can all get a job that can be done remotely. 

Ministers may end up targeting particular sets of claimants – younger people with mental health issues, those with cognitive or neurodevelopmental conditions, or people with mobility issues who could theoretically work from home as per the Tory plans defeated in court last month.  

But any set of measures that comes close to securing the cuts demanded by chancellor Rachel Reeves will, by necessity, involve taking money away from hundreds of thousands if not millions of sick and disabled people who are already on low incomes and have no realistic route into paid work. That is the reality. Everything else is public relations.

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