Cutting or freezing benefits will lead to a lack of dignity and desperation for hundreds of thousands of people. It will drive more workers into poverty and reduce employment prospects. With the government’s own statistics showing that fraud levels for PIP stand at zero it is hard to understand why a benefit that keeps so many people in work has been targeted.
With a teacher recruitment and retention crisis we need to ensure that we are not either losing experienced teachers from the classroom unnecessarily or putting off young disabled workers from entering a career in education.
Personal Independence Payments (PIP) enable many school staff to remain in work, whether part or full time, by providing, for example, physical support in getting up and ready for work, essential therapies, taxis to get to the workplace and heating costs, which are generally higher for disabled people, all of which help to keep them employed.
The link between being a disabled person and poverty is well established. Having a disabled parent has a huge effect on the life outcomes of their children: 50 per cent of children with a disabled parent currently live in poverty. Removing support from disabled adults simply pushes their children deeper into poverty. It is commonly understood that, more than any other factor, poverty impairs the life chances of children.
There has been a significant rise in child poverty since 2010 with CPAG finding that 4.3 million children (30 per cent of all UK children) were in poverty in 2022/23, up from 3.6 million in 2010/11.
NEU members see these problems every day and are regularly plugging the gaps themselves. Over 80 per cent of teachers told us they see children fatigued due to poverty, and that they often have to feed children from their own pockets.
Seven in 10 children in poverty live in a working household. Many families face barriers to work such as being disabled or having young children. Pulling support from under them now will only worsen the situation.
For a government committed to social justice, targeting cuts to PIP and other benefits just does not make sense.