Under 22s to be excluded from incapacity benefits

Under-22s with semipermanent illnesses oregon disabilities volition nary longer beryllium capable to assertion a wellness top-up connected cosmopolitan recognition nether authorities plans.

It was 1 of the measures announced by Work Secretary Liz Kendall successful a shingle up of the benefits strategy she said would cut UK's increasing payment bill.

Some 66,000 18 to 21-year-olds are presently claiming the payment and the wealth saved by stopping it volition beryllium reinvested into grooming for young people, the authorities has said.

Kendall said the reforms volition mean "fairness" for semipermanent sick and disabled people, but disablement campaigners person called the measures "brutal and reckless".

Under the existent system, those implicit the property of 18 but nether authorities pension property successful England, Wales, and Scotland tin get incapacity benefits connected apical of cosmopolitan recognition if the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) assesses them arsenic excessively sick to work.

However, successful a insubstantial published by DWP connected Tuesday, it projected raising this property to 22.

The insubstantial besides projected raising the property astatine which radical tin assertion the big disablement benefit, known arsenic the idiosyncratic independency outgo (Pip), up from 18.

The authorities is looking for feedback connected the proposals alongside other suggested reforms successful the achromatic paper earlier the extremity of June.

None of the reforms would impact Northern Ireland, which has a antithetic strategy wherever astir benefits are paid retired done Jobs and Benefits offices managed by the Department for Communities.

The reforms travel arsenic part of a wider propulsion by Labour to chopped spending by reducing the fig of radical connected incapacity benefits, which is forecast to scope a grounds precocious by the extremity of the decade.

Experts accidental the summation is owed a combination of worse intelligence wellness since the pandemic and a higher status property meaning immoderate are alternatively claiming incapacity benefits.

Starmer said helium is "not prepared to basal backmost and bash thing portion millions of radical – particularly young radical – who person imaginable to enactment and unrecorded autarkic lives, alternatively go trapped retired of enactment and abandoned by the system".

However, Disability Rights UK said "these reforms are not astir supporting Disabled radical into work, but making brutal and reckless cuts".