The cumulative impact of tax and welfare reforms
This new Equality and Human Rights Commission report seeks to answer: how much per year individuals and households are expected to lose as a result of tax and welfare reforms?
Key findings in relation to disabled people are;
- Negative impacts are particularly large for households with more disabled members, and more severely disabled individuals, as well as for lone parents on low incomes.
- For some family types, these losses represent an extremely large percentage of income. For example, for households with at least one disabled adult and a disabled child, average annual cash losses are just over £6,500 – over 13% of average net income.
These negative impacts are largely driven by changes to the benefit system, in particular the freeze in working-age benefit rates, changes to disability benefits and reductions in UC rates.
The report recommends that, as a matter of urgency, the UK Government reviews the level of welfare benefits to ensure that they provide an adequate standard of living for households who rely partially or wholly on transfer payments.
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