Welfare reforms ‘pit disabled people against the taxpayer’

The trade union Equity has criticised government proposals to reform the welfare system set out in a green paper this week, saying they would weaken an essential “safety net” that many arts workers rely on.

The Pathways to Work green paper sets out plans aimed at reducing the amount spent on benefits, including tightening the criteria for personal independence payments, and scrapping work capacity assessments from 2028.

Responding to the proposals, Equity’s general secretary Paul Fleming said the government “seems intent on pitting sick and disabled people against the taxpayer, placing responsibility for the failures of an underfunded system on those most in need of its support”.

He added that the plans in the green paper “only serve to weaken the already diminished safety net of support that sick and disabled people rely on”. 

Fleming said that the precarity of the arts and entertainment industry meant that almost two thirds of Equity’s members had depended on benefits payments at some point.

“Equity has repeatedly called on successive governments to invest to improve the support for disabled people to enter the workforce, such as Access to Work, and to remove the ineffective minimum income floor which makes creative careers less accessible for disabled people,” said Fleming.