Up to 25,000 dying people could be over £2,000 worse off after benefit changes
THOUSANDS of terminally ill individuals could lose £2,000 per year if the government proceeds with its plans to cut incapacity benefits.
The end-of-life charity Marie Curie has warned that 25,000 Universal Credit recipients face significant financial strain as the health-related component of the benefit is set to be slashed.
1
Under reforms outlined in a recent Green Paper, incapacity payments for new claims will be halved from April 2026, dropping from £423.27 to £208.10 per month for individuals with limited capability for work and work-related activity.
The cuts, first announced in March, were presented as a measure to curb Britain's ballooning welfare budget and bring greater control to the nation's finances.
Marie Curie has criticised the proposals for failing to include specific protections for terminally ill individuals, including those eligible under the Special Rules for Terminal Illness.
These rules currently allow those with a life expectancy of less than 12 months to access benefits more quickly and receive higher payments without undergoing lengthy medical assessments.
This potential £2,000 annual loss would add to the existing financial hardships faced by terminally ill individuals.
According to a recent report by the charity, over 300 people die in poverty every day in the UK.
Jamie Thunder, senior policy manager at Marie Curie, said: "The last thing people facing a terminal condition need is even more worry about whether they can make ends meet.
"Government protections in place are already woefully insufficient.
"Rather than putting even more pressure on people already facing hardship, more needs to be done to ensure those dealing with terminal conditions can die with dignity, and spend their remaining days with their loved ones, rather than scrambling to keep the heating on.
"Ministers must urgently set out how terminally ill people will be protected, including dying people with longer prognoses or with rare conditions that are hard to predict."
10 PIP freebies worth up to £40k
WELFARE SHAKE-UP
Last month, Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced major welfare cuts to balance the nation's finances and boost employment.
Key welfare changes include:
Raising the eligibility threshold for PIP, achieving £3.4billion in annual savings.
Temporarily introducing an above-inflation rise to Universal Credit's standard allowance (until 2029), while reducing the highest incapacity payment.
Banning under-22s from claiming incapacity benefits under Universal Credit entirely.
Slashing Universal Credit incapacity benefits for new claimants
Abolishing the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) by 2028, with all health-related payments to be transitioned to PIP in the future.
Launching a "Right to Work Guarantee", allowing unemployed individuals to attempt returning to work without losing benefits if they find it unsustainable.
Merging jobseeker's allowance and employment support allowance, with a system that awards higher payments to those who have a work history compared to those who have not.
What's happening to Universal Credit payments?
Under the reforms announced by the government last month, the standard Universal Credit allowance will rise, while the health-related component will be reduced for new claimants.
The government has confirmed that the standard allowance for Universal Credit will receive a temporary increase exceeding the rate of inflation.
This uplift will be calculated based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rate, with an additional five percentage points applied.
For a single person aged 25 and over, this will result in a £7 weekly rise from April 2026 - an increase from the current £92 per week to £106 per week by 2029.
The DWP previously estimated that above-inflation increases will boost the average claimant's standard allowance by £775 in cash terms compared to inflation-only rises by 2029.
However, those receiving incapacity benefits are set to face a significant cut under the new terms.
For existing claimants, the current incapacity payment of £423.27 per month for individuals with limited capability for work and work-related activity will remain frozen at this level until 2030.
For new claims from April 2026, however, this payment will be halved to £208.10 per month, or £50 per week, and will also remain frozen at this reduced rate until 2030.
The DWP has stated that a new premium will be introduced for those with the most severe, lifelong conditions who are unable to work, though the specifics of this proposal have yet to be disclosed.
What is the Universal Credit standard allowance?
UNIVERSAL Credit is a welfare scheme which was designed to combine several of the old "legacy benefits
The standard allowance is the basic monthly payment provided to individuals or families who qualify.
The amount you receive depends on your age and whether you're single or in a couple:
Single, under 25: £316.98
Single, 25 or over: £400.14
Couple, both under 25: £497.55
Couple, one or both 25 or over: £628.10
You may also be eligible for additional amounts if you have children, have a disability or health condition, or need help with housing costs.
What else is changing?
The Work Capability Assessment, which determines whether someone is deemed fit for work or has limited capability for work (LCW) or limited capability for work-related activity (LCWRA), will be scrapped by 2028.
Instead the DWP will use the PIP assessment to assess entitlement for any Universal Credit health supplements.
Claimants under the age of 22 will no longer be eligible for the health element of Universal Credit.
The government is also introducing legislation to remove barriers to employment for benefit claimants by ensuring that attempting work will no longer automatically trigger a reassessment or review of their award.
The intention is to give people the confidence to try work without fear of immediately losing their benefits if it doesn't work out.
What are Work Capability Assessments?
The DWP uses the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) to evaluate a claimant's ability to work when applying for Universal Credit due to a health condition or disability.
The WCA focuses on assessing functional limitations rather than specific medical diagnoses.
It considers both physical and mental health, awarding points based on how an individual's condition impacts their ability to carry out daily activities.
After the assessment, claimants may be placed into one of two groups - Limited Capability for Work (LCW) or Limited Capability for Work and Work-Related Activity (LCWRA).
Claimants assigned to the LCW group are recognised as currently unfit for work but may be capable of returning to employment in the future with the right support and assistance.
Those in this group are required to engage in work-related activities, such as attending Jobcentre appointments or training courses.
Failure to comply with these requirements may result in sanctions, including a reduction or suspension of benefits.
Claimants are placed in the LCWRA group if their health condition or disability is considered so severe that they are not expected to be able to work or participate in any work-related activities in the foreseeable future.
Those in the LCWRA group receive an additional amount on top of their standard Universal Credit allowance currently worth £423.27 a month.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
The winners and losers in Labour's first spending review
When Rachel Reeves publishes the government's spending review on Wednesday, the stories the Treasury will want to tell are the energy, transport and other infrastructure projects that will get a share of the big boost in capital funding – £113bn. They will argue that cash, freed up by the change to the fiscal rules in the budget, could only have happened under Labour and was opposed by the Tories and Reform. But the capital spending cannot stop expected cuts in day-to-day spending, meaning extremely tight settlements for departments, with savings expected from policing budgets, local government, civil service cuts, foreign aid, education and culture. Treasury sources said they would still spend £190bn more over the five-year parliament than the Conservatives' spending plans – meaning more than £300bn will be distributed among departments. Real-terms spending will grow at an average of 1.2% a year over the three years that the spending review period covers, a significant drop from the first two years when it will be 2.5%. Even that figure does not tell the full story because of the disproportionate boost being given to defence and the NHS – and has led the Institute for Fiscal Studies to warn that the spending commitments will require 'chunky tax rises' in the autumn, when coupled with other expected priorities such as restoring the winter fuel allowance to more pensioners and action on child poverty such as ending the two-child benefit limit. Here are some of the key offers from the spending review – and the rows over cuts. The biggest row of the spending review has been between Reeves and the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, over policing, which one source describes as being a 'huge headache'. Cooper has brought out the big guns to make her case, first with a letter from six police chiefs who warned that without more funding the government would not meet its manifesto promises on crime. Sir Mark Rowley, the head of the Metropolitan police, and other senior police officers have also written to the prime minister to warn him that investment was need to prevent some crimes being routinely ignored. It is understand the policing budget will not face real terms cuts but the level of spending is still under discussion. The Home Office is under strain as a major spending department that is key to some of the most ambitious manifesto pledges – including halving knife crime, police recruitment, reducing violence against women and girls as well as dealing with monitoring offenders who will be released earlier due to sentencing changes. The other major spending review row is over deep dissatisfaction from Angela Rayner – the deputy prime minister and housing secretary – with the level of funding for social homes in the spending review, making her one of the last remaining holdouts in negotiations with the Treasury over departmental spending settlements. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has been battling for more funding for the affordable homes programme as well as trying to preserve cash for local councils, homelessness and regional growth initiatives. The Treasury had previously put £2bn into affordable housing, described as a 'down payment' on further funding to be announced at the spending review, which Reeves said would mark a generational shift in the building of council homes. However, the next phase of funding has caused a major rift with Rayner – and more so because capital spending on infrastructure such as housing is meant to be a priority. The environment secretary, Steve Reed, is said to have been holding out for a big capital injection to fund flood defences. The autumn budget said the government was facing significant funding pressures on flood defences and farm schemes of almost £600m in 2024-25, and that those schemes would have to be reviewed for their affordability. Sources at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) confirmed a post-Brexit farming fund would be cut in the review. Labour promised a fund of £5bn over two years – from 2024 to 2026 – at the budget, which is being honoured, but in the years after that it will be slashed for all but a few farms. The energy secretary, Ed Miliband, had a long fight to keep cash for a major programme of insulation, which was a key part of the government's net zero strategy. However, there are reports suggesting other schemes could be scaled back to protect the insulation programme. At the October budget, Reeves announced £3.4bn over three years for household energy efficiency schemes, heat decarbonisation and fuel poverty schemes. The government responded to concerns expressed at the time calling the sum the 'bare minimum' and promising a spending uplift at the review. Miliband's department is expected to get significant capital investment in energy infrastructure including nuclear – with the government poised to give the go ahead to the Sizewell C nuclear plant. The chancellor has already announced £15bn in transport spending across the north of England, funds which she said fulfil promises made by the Conservatives to the country but which the party had no way to pay for them in its own plan. Wes Streeting's department is set to be one of the big winners of the spending review and it will lay the groundwork for the NHS 10-year plan, which will be published imminently after the spending review. The department will get one of the biggest boosts to funding as others face real-terms cuts. The funding for the plan prioritises three key areas, moving care from hospitals to communities, increasing the use of technology, and prioritising prevention. No 10 and Streeting hope that the 10-year plan will contain major commitments and a positive story that the government will finally be able to tell properly on improvements to the health service – though any good news could be scuppered by the ballot for strike action by resident doctors. Still, Streeting's department was one of the last to settle formally with the Treasury due to negotiations over drug prices, though departmental sources downplayed any specific row. Any child in England whose parents receive universal credit will be able to claim free school meals from September 2026, the government has said. Parents on the credit will be eligible regardless of their income. The government says the change will make 500,000 more pupils eligible. A Department for Education (DfE) source said it was the best measure outside welfare changes to address child poverty and that the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, had consistently fought to protect school food programmes through each round of spending negotiations. But schools budgets will be squeezed. Teachers will get a 4% pay rise next year, with additional funding of £615m. But schools will still have to fund about a quarter of the rise themselves – a total of £400m from their current budgets. Phillipson has tasked the DfE with finding savings in schools budgets, such as energy bills. Savings will also come as the government is removing public funding for level 7 apprenticeships, which has drawn criticism from skills experts. The justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, was one of the first to reach her settlement to allow her to announce a £4.7bn plan to build three new prisons starting this year, part of a 'record expansion' as the government attempts to get to grips with the prison crisis. The early announcement was essential because it came alongside an announcement that the government would put a limit on how long hundreds of repeat offenders can be recalled to prison amid Whitehall predictions that jails will be full again in November.
Sky News
2 hours ago
- Sky News
The winners and losers in Rachel Reeves's spending review
"It's a big deal for this government," says Simon Case. "It's the clearest indication yet of what they plan to do between now and the general election, a translation of their manifesto. "This is where you should expect the chancellor to say, on behalf of the government: 'This is what we're about'." As the former cabinet secretary, Mr Case was the man in charge of the civil service during the last spending review, in 2021. On Wednesday, Rachel Reeves will unveil the Labour government's priorities for the next three years. But it's unclear whether it will provide all that much of an answer about what it's really about. Unlike the Autumn budget, when the chancellor announced her plans on where to tax and borrow to fund overall levels of spending, the spending review will set out exactly how that money is divided up between the different government departments. Since the start of the process in December those departments have been bidding for their share of the cash - setting out their proposed budgets in a negotiation which looks set to continue right up to the wire. This review is being conducted in an usual level of detail, with every single line of spending assessed, according to the chancellor, on whether it represents value for money and meets the government's priorities. Budget proposals have been scrutinised by so called "challenge panels" of independent experts. It's clear that health and defence will be winners in this process given pre-existing commitments to prioritise the NHS - with a boost of up to £30bn expected - and to increase defence spending. On Sunday morning, the government press release trumpeted an impressive-sounding "£86bn boost" to research and development (R&D), with the Science and Technology Secretary Peter Kyle sent out on the morning media round to celebrate as record levels of investment. 14:18 We're told this increased spending on the life sciences, advanced manufacturing and defence will lead to jobs and growth across the country, with every £1 in investment set to lead to a £7 economic return. But the headline figure is misleading. It's not £86bn in new funding. That £86bn has been calculated by adding together all R&D investment across government for the next three years, which will reach an annual figure of £22.5bn by 2029-30. The figure for this year was already set to be £20.4bn; so while it's a definite uplift, much of that money was already allocated. Peter Kyle also highlighted plans for "the most we've ever spent per pupil in our school system". I understand the schools budget is to be boosted by £4.5bn. Again, this is clearly an uplift - but over a three-year period, that equates to just £1.5bn a year (compared with an existing budget of £63.7bn). It also has to cover the cost of extending free school meals, and the promised uplift in teachers' pay. In any process of prioritisation there are losers as well as winners. We already know about planned cuts to the Department of Work and Pensions - but other unprotected departments like the Home Office and the Department of Communities and Local Government are braced for a real spending squeeze. We've heard dire warnings about austerity 2.0, and the impact that would have on the government's crime and policing priorities, its promises around housing and immigration, and on the budgets for cash-strapped local councils. The chancellor wants to make it clear to the markets she's sticking to her fiscal rules on balancing the books for day-to-day spending. But the decision to loosen the rules around borrowing to fund capital investment have given her greater room to manoeuvre in funding long-term infrastructure projects. That's why we've seen her travelling around the country this week to promote the £15.6bn she's spending on regional transport projects. The Treasury team clearly wants to focus on promoting the generosity of these kind of investments, and we'll hear more in the coming days. But there's a real risk the story of this spending review will be about the departments which have lost out - and the promises which could slip as a result.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
The Guardian view on child poverty: free school meals are a help, but not a panacea
It was Ellen Wilkinson, education minister in the Attlee government, who announced in 1946 that free school dinners would be introduced, along with free school milk, at the same time as child benefit. No doubt Rachel Reeves, who has a picture of Wilkinson on the wall of her office, is aware of this – and also that the Treasury subsequently decided the policy was unaffordable. The meals were subsidised instead. Despite these initial charges, and later price rises, poorer children did gain, and keep, an entitlement to free school meals. The announcement last week that this is being extended in England to all those whose parents or carers claim universal credit – rather than restricted to families with incomes lower than £7,400 – should be welcomed by all objectors to child poverty. Being assured of a hot lunch in the middle of the school day makes pupils' lives better. Children cannot be expected to learn when they do not have enough to eat. This might sound obvious, but is easily forgotten. Scotland and Northern Ireland already have more generous rules in place. Ministers clearly hope that this will be a popular policy, as they prepare for this week's spending review and the reaction to it. Hunger in schools is disturbingly widespread and the enthusiastic reception to Marcus Rashford's campaign on school food showed that this is a cause the public warms to. Long before last year's election, breakfast clubs were a flagship Labour policy. Now they are part of Bridget Phillipson's schools bill. But as with breakfast clubs, which some schools have said that they cannot deliver on the budget provided, good intentions must not mask inadequate finances. Already, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has challenged the government's claim that 100,000 children will be lifted out of poverty. It said this can only be expected over the long term. And some children already entitled to free meals do not receive them – prompting calls for auto-enrolment. Another challenge concerns food quality, which has been eroded by a series of below-inflation funding increases. Free lunches are already offered to all pupils up to the age of seven. But a recently announced 3p rise in the subsidy towards these (from £2.58 to £2.61 per meal), was rightly criticised for forcing school leaders to either reduce their lunch offer, or make cuts elsewhere. The average actual cost of a school lunch is £3.16. Twenty years after the Channel 4 television series Jamie's School Dinners turned kitchens' reliance on junk food into a national issue, it is depressing that resources remain so meagre. Childhood obesity and poor dental health are serious problems, particularly in poorer parts of the country where treatment is harder to access. Ms Phillipson and her colleagues should be more ambitious about quality as well as quantity. Improvements could contribute to children's overall wellbeing, as well as nutrition. Meals are social events, not just refuelling stops. But step back from the table and the bigger picture comes into view. Child poverty, of which poor diets are a symptom, cannot be tackled by schools alone. Reducing it means raising family incomes through the benefits system – as well as trying to boost wage growth. Earlier this year, some Labour MPs warned that school food risked becoming a sop. That danger has not gone away. The latest announcement on free lunches is good news so long as it does not distract from efforts to remove the two-child benefit cap, or weaken the wider campaign against child poverty.
