A one-off payment to ease the cost of living crisis will not be enough to ease the dire situation that many Disabled people are facing, according to the UK’s leading national Disabled People’s Organisation, Disability Rights UK.
CEO Kamran Mallick said: “We welcome moves by the government to ease the extreme hardship many people are facing, but the measures chosen are a sticking plaster. Benefits have not kept pace with inflation for years. The Government fears that a £20 uplift applied to benefits, like the one introduced during the pandemic, would become permanent. It needs to become permanent. Bare bones benefits, which many Disabled people live on, are less than £80 per week.
“Household budgets for the poorest Disabled people, who often live with an extra cost premium of over £600 per month, do not match up.
“Disabled people need not just a universal uplift to benefits, but a one off payment which is bespoke to our needs, to take account of our extra costs of living.”