Labour have issued deeply misleading claims about the effects on poverty of the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill. They claim that the amended bill will result in 50,000 fewer people being in poverty by 2029/30, but the reality is that 100,000 more children and working age people will be forced into poverty.
In it’s latest assessment of the impact of the bill on poverty, now that the personal independence (PIP) 4-point rule is to be dropped, Labour calculates that 50,000 fewer individuals will be in poverty as a result of the bill.
This is hard to align with common sense, given that one of the effects of the bill is to almost halve the health element payable to future claimants from April 2026. The increase in the standard rate, on the other hand, is very small.
However, it makes more sense when account is taken of the fact that Labour is including in its assessment 150,000 people who will be lifted out of poverty as a result of “reversing the previous government’s planned changes to the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) descriptors”.
The previous Conservative government planned to make the WCA harsher, particularly by making the criteria for substantial risk much harder to meet for claimants with mental health conditions.
But its changes to the WCA were never enacted, due to the election. So nobody was placed into poverty as a result of the changes, because they never happened, and nobody can be lifted out of poverty as a result of reversing them. It is an entirely statistical and semantic sleight of hand.
So, removing that bogus 150,000 from the calculation suggests that Labour’s changes will actually mean that in 2029/30, 100,00 more children and adults will have been forced into poverty as a result of Labour’s “rebalancing” of universal credit.
Try explaining that to your MP by tomorrow afternoon.
