Figures show that the DWP overspend comes despite debilitating cuts to working people and families.
Figures show that the DWP overspend comes despite debilitating cuts to working people and families
New analysis shows that social security spending by the Department for Work & Pensions has been £25 billion higher than George Osborne planned in this parliament.
The figures, commissioned by shadow chancellor Ed Balls and shadow work and pensions secretary Rachel Reeves, cast grave doubt over George Osborne’s ability to deliver the savings he has promised for the next parliament.
The £25 billion comes despite changes that have left families on average £974 a year worse off and despite recent falls in unemployment.
Osborne has been talking about making £12 billion more cuts to social security after the election, but he has overspent by more than twice this amount in parliament, according to the figures.
This means that if parliament had had a welfare cap the Tories would have breached it.
Analysis of the figures shows that the Tories have overspent by £1.4 billion on housing benefit for people in work; this is over four times the amount they have saved in housing benefit from people moving into work.
Furthermore, the number of people in work who need to claim housing benefits to make ends meet has increased by over 50 per cent since 2010, with this figure set to double by 2018/19.
The government has also spent over £8 billion more than they planned to on incapacity benefits, due to their chaotic delivery of reforms and failure to help disabled people into work.
Delays to the delivery of the Personal Independence Payment have meant uncertainty for thousands of disabled people, and have been a mounting cost to taxpayers, with £1.7 billion more spent than planned over the parliament.
And £130 million has been wasted on failed IT for Universal Credit, which is still reaching less than one per cent of its intended caseload.
In an article for Politics Home, Ed Balls and Rachel Reeves write that it is now clear that Osborne will ‘totally fail’ to balance the books in this parliament. They blame stagnant wages and low paid jobs for a shortfall in tax receipts and more borrowing.
According to Labour, vital support for families has been cut, with the introduction of the bedroom tax, cuts to tax credits for working families and cuts to maternity pay. But any savings from these decisions have been outweighed by the Tories’ total failure to tackle the root causes of rising social security spending.
They say that a key cause of the Tories’ overspending is their fundamental failure to make the economy work for working people, as well as mismanaged reforms at the DWP which have created a ‘culture of waste.’
In the article, Labour outline their plans to regain control of the situation:
”Labour has been clear that we need to control social security spending, and have committed to an overall cap on social security spending. But you can’t get the social security bill under control unless you’re tough on the causes of rising social security spending.
“That’s why Labour’s economic plan will tackle low pay and earn our way to higher living standards for the many, not just a few.
“Our approach is rooted in tackling the root causes of spending, boosting pay and tackling high housing costs.
“So our plan will make work pay by increasing the minimum wage to £8 an hour, introducing tax incentives for firms that start paying the living wage and expanding free childcare for working parents to 25 hours a week
“We’ll scrap the bedroom tax and shift funding from benefits to bricks by getting at least 200,000 new homes built each year and introducing stable rental contracts in the private rented sector.
“We’ll back the next generation by boosting apprenticeships and ensuring there is a paid starter job for every young person out of work for over a year – which they’ll have to take or lose benefits, paid for by a tax on bank bonuses.
“And we will get a grip on the shambolic management at the DWP, to ensure that we can deliver a fair safety net for all those who need it.
“Only a Labour government will be tough on social security spending by being tough on the causes of rising social security spending. That’s the way to back working people and get the deficit down in a fairer way.”
Labour’s plans include calling in the National Audit Office to review universal credit to ensure it delivers value for money and a better system for claimants. They also plan to better regulate disability assessments by introducing tougher penalties when contractors get decisions wrong, and ensuring a clear oversight of the process by disabled people themselves.
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39 Responses to “The Tories have overspent by £25 billion on social security”
Leon Wolfeson
You take plenty of things which don’t belong to you.
Your austerity isn’t cheap. It’s massively expensive. That’s the problem.
sarntcrip
wellit hasn’t gone to disabled people
sarntcrip
better them than the bullingdon bulies
sarntcrip
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has carried out 60 secret reviews into benefit-related deaths in less than three years, Disability News Service (DNS) can reveal.
DWP released the figures in response to a series of Freedom of Information Act (FoI) requests by DNS.
It said in one response that DWP had carried out “60 peer reviews following the death of a customer” since February 2012.
There have been numerous reports of disabled people whose deaths have been linked to the employment and support allowance (ESA) claim process, or the refusal or removal of ESA and other benefits, including the writer Paul Reekie, who killed himself in 2010, and the deaths of Nick Barker, Jacqueline Harris, Ms DE, and Brian McArdle.
The Scottish-based, user-led campaign group Black Triangle has collected more than 40 examples of people – most of them disabled – who appear to have died as a result of being found “fit for work” through a work capability assessment (WCA), or having their entitlement to benefits otherwise refused or removed.
Many of the cases became widely-known through media reports of inquests, but in the case of Ms DE, the Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland concluded that the WCA process and the subsequent denial of ESA was at least a “major factor in her decision to take her own life”.
But DWP has consistently denied any connection between the coalition’s welfare reforms and cuts and the deaths of benefit claimants.
This week, DWP also released guidance used by its staff to decide whether a peer review was necessary, and guidance for authors of a peer review.
This reveals that the role of a review is to “determine whether local and national standards have been followed or need to be revised/improved”, while a review must be carried out in every case where “suicide is associated with DWP activity”.
It also says that peer reviews might also be considered in cases involving “customers with additional needs/vulnerable customers”.
As with previous FoI requests by DNS and many other disabled campaigners, DWP refused to answer some of the questions because it claimed that it planned to publish information itself “in due course”.
It also said it had only begun to keep national records of internal reviews since February 2012, and that it was too expensive to find figures from local and district records showing how many such reviews there had been before that date.
Another of the FoI responses stated that it was too expensive to produce information showing how many letters DWP has received from coroners expressing concern that a death may have been linked to the non-payment or withdrawal of a benefit.
Bob Ellard, speaking on behalf of the steering group of Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), said the disclosure that DWP had investigated 60 claimant deaths since 2012 was a “damming revelation”.
He called for an urgent independent inquiry into the suicides and other deaths of benefit claimants.
Ellard said: “We still don’t know enough about this as the DWP continue to use the small print in the FoI laws to prevent disclosure of information that is in the public interest.
“We are calling for the deaths and suicides of benefit claimants to be urgently investigated by an independent authority.
“We believe that these tragic deaths are as a direct result of [Conservative work and pensions secretary] Iain Duncan Smith’s policies and we want him to be called to account.”
John McArdle, co-founder of Black Triangle, said that if 60 people had died in a major accident there would have been “hell to pay” and a “massive inquiry”.
He said NHS figures showed a general rise in self-harm and suicide, which Black Triangle (BT) believes is connected with the effects of “cuts and austerity”.
McArdle said he would like to know how many coroners had made recommendations to DWP in the wake of inquests into benefit-related suicides and other deaths.
He said: “I think the public has a right to know whether coroners have made these recommendations to prevent similar tragedies happening again.”
DNS reported last month how DWP had repeatedly contradicted its own position on benefit-related deaths.
It originally stated, in an FoI response, that it did not hold any records on deaths linked to, or partially caused by, the withdrawal or non-payment of disability benefits.
Mark Harper, the Conservative minister for disabled people, later told DNS that he did not “accept the premise” that DWP should collect and analyse reports of such deaths.
But the Liberal Democrat DWP minister Steve Webb appeared to contradict Harper when he said the following week that when the department becomes aware of worrying cases “they do get looked at”.
A DWP spokesman finally told DNS last month that it carries out reviews into individual cases, where it is “appropriate”.
sarntcrip
most of it went to atos