The right to social security is protected through multiple international treaties, and is fleshed out by further detail from United Nations Committees. This says that countries’ social security systems should protect people without discrimination through unemployment, ill-health, maternity and disability, and should be available, accessible and good quality. Importantly, social security benefits should rise in line with inflation, and provision should not go backwards.

It is hard to see how many of the Government’s new proposals could fare well against this set of standards. The denial of support to all but those with the very highest level needs, at a time when access to the health service and to social care continue to be limited by the impact of the pandemic and 15 years of austerity and cuts to services, surely just passes the costs to another arm of government. Perhaps this is Liz Kendall’s overarching objective in making the policy in the first place and disabled people are just caught in the middle of a Departmental bun fight.

Many charities and organisations which support people currently on the health element of Universal Credit have rightly pointed out that reductions and/or freezes in the amounts provided risk threatening other rights. Just two weeks ago the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published figures showing that 50% of people receiving the health-related element of Universal Credit (LCWRA) are either unable to heat their home, behind on bills, or have low or very low food security, compared to 11% in households not receiving any UC or Personal Independence Payments (PIP). We can expect to see large increases in food bank use -  again passing what should be Government costs to the voluntary sector.

It will also be vital to see how a more detailed assessment of how these cuts may affect different groups and people with different intersecting identities, which also seems to have been beyond the scope of the Government’s announcements. The same data published by JRF identified almost a million children living in households where someone  is in receipt of UC Health.

For the UK and devolved governments, compliance with social security rights is a thorny area. Through country visits by various generations of the UN Special Rapporteurs on Extreme Poverty, and a first of its kind inquiry by the UN Committee on the Rights of Disabled People, the UK has consistently been found to in breach of its obligations in relation to social security.

Considering the significant resources available in the country and the sustained and widespread cuts to social support, which have resulted in significantly worse outcomes, the policies pursued since 2010 amount to retrogressive measures in clear violation of the country’s human rights obligations.

For example in 2019 Philip Alston, the former Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights noted that:

“The United Kingdom should be proud of its historically strong safety net…..Yet, it has been systematically and starkly eroded, particularly since 2010, significantly compromising its ability to help people escape poverty. The Special Rapporteur heard time and again about important public programmes being pared down, the loss of institutions that previously protected vulnerable people, social care services at a breaking point, and local government and devolved administrations stretched far too thin. Considering the significant resources available in the country and the sustained and widespread cuts to social support, which have resulted in significantly worse outcomes, the policies pursued since 2010 amount to retrogressive measures in clear violation of the country’s human rights obligations.”

Three years earlier in 2016, the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities undertook a wide-ranging all-nation inquiry on the welfare reform programme’s impact on the lives of disabled people. Their stark conclusion was that:

“The Committee considers that there is reliable evidence that the threshold of grave or systematic violations of the rights of persons with disabilities has been crossed in the State party.”

In their reasoning nine years ago, the Committee specified the following as cause for concern - all of which have echoes in the announcement made by Liz Kendall earlier this week:

“(a) The State party has implemented a policy aimed at reforming its welfare system and the reforms have been justified in the context of austerity measures to achieve consolidation of fiscal and budgetary policy;

(b) The assumptions made under the policy include the following: (i) taxpayers need to be treated with fairness, (ii) large numbers of persons with disabilities have been reliant and dependent on social benefits, (iii) persons are better off in work than on benefits, (iv) the dependency of persons with disabilities on benefits is in itself a disincentive to move into employment, (v) the number of persons with disabilities relying on social benefits needed to be reduced and (vi) tightening sanctions and conditionality on social benefits is a legitimate tool for incentivizing moving people with disabilities into employment; 

(c) The impact assessments conducted by the State party prior to the implementation of several measures of its welfare reform expressly foresaw an adverse impact on persons with disabilities;

(d) Several measures have disproportionally and adversely affected the rights of persons with disabilities;

(e) Measures resulting in a reduction in the support provided to meet the extra cost of disability and denial of reasonable accommodation in assessment procedures and in the realization of the right to employment have had a discriminatory effect on persons with disabilities”

In a recent follow up report, the Committee concluded that the UK had made almost no progress in implementing the recommendations it made in 2017:

“The Committee finds that the State party has failed to take all appropriate measures to address grave and systematic violations of the human rights of persons with disabilities…. This failure exists particularly with respect to the State party’s obligation to guarantee the right of persons with disabilities to live independently and be included in the community.”

And just last month, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recommended that the UK Government:

“Assess the impact of fiscal policy on economic, social and cultural rights, including its distributional effects on disadvantaged groups, in consultation with social partners;

Increase the budget allocated to food programmes, social security, housing, health, education, employment services and other areas related to Covenant rights.

Ensure that disability-related benefits, including the Personal Independence Payment and the Employment and Support Allowance, adequately cover additional disability-related costs, in line with the human rights model of disability…”

In just two years it will be 20 years since the CRPD was initially drafted at the UN. So much Government policy since then has punished disabled people, rather than creating a scaffold around which people could build independent lives; after all this was the entire purpose of DLA/Personal Independence Payment as originally conceived. Programmes of welfare reform, austerity and cuts to social care budgets have created a perfect storm. The pandemic impact left people at times without support and even worse, much more exposed to arbitrary decision making about whose lives are of value. Successive governments have continually abnegated their human rights obligations and in the absence of a meaningful legislative framework which would enable them to be held to account, disabled people have organised resistance. But couldn’t Labour, with its thumping majority, have started its proposed reforms with the CRPD and dreamed a little bit bigger?

If you are worried about how the proposed changes may affect you, please be assured that many of them are not due to start for some time and some are subject to further consultation before being put into place. If you’d like to get advice about your social security entitlements, please follow the links below.

• East Belfast Independent Advice Centre 028 9073 5690

• Advice North West 0300 303 3650

• Advice NI 0800 915 4604

Bear in mind that advice services may be very busy as lots of people are wondering how these changes may affect them.