After weeks of speculation, Liz Kendall, work and pensions secretary, has unveiled her plans to reform welfare and cut the country’s ballooning benefits bill. The proposals include:
- stricter eligibility requirements for Personal Independence Payments (Pip), the main disability benefit
- scrapping the work capability assessment for universal credit
- freezing or cutting the incapacity benefit “top-up” to universal credit for new claimants
- reducing incapacity benefits for under-22s
- increasing the standard rate of universal credit for claimants seeking work
- introducing a “right to try”, so that people can try work without automatically losing benefits or being reassessed.
