Welfare Reform is much needed

The briefings ahead of the upcoming spring statement has made a lot of people nervous. People who rely on their personal independence payments (PIP) to survive, to enable them to work and to enable their severely disabled loved ones to be cared for.

The upcoming reforms to entitlements for people who are current prevented from entering the jobs market are long overdue. Replacing the Work Capacity assessment with the PIP assessment is one step to ensuring people who have health conditions are supported in work.

Combining this with improvements in the waiting lists in the NHS, better training to up-skill our workforce and improved initiatives to help business support workers who have illnesses and disabilities, the UK will start to improve the capacity of the labour market.

I have been hearing a lot of hyperbole from certain quarters that this is an attack on disabled people, with some suggesting this is akin to “genocide”. Whilst there will always be concerns for people on how these reforms will affect them, extremist language such as this has no place in moderate debate. Individual cases will need to be explored and there will be some difficult choices that some will have to make. However, the status quo cannot continue.