In the first part of this post, I explained that hundreds of thousands of sick/disabled people with limited work capacity – particularly those with mental health conditions – may end up with less money. In this post I look at other risks and benefits of scrapping the WCA. For the Government – and for many…

Is it ever bad to scrap a hated policy? For over a decade, disabled people have feared the ‘brown envelope’ from DWP that might mean that they are being called in for a Work Capability Assessment, or ‘WCA’. They have been worried by the prospect of a process that makes them feel less-than-human, and the…

This week’s cut to Universal Credit is an eye-catching policy, in all the wrong ways. It’s the largest overnight cut to the basic rate of benefits since WWII, taking money away from nearly two million people who are already food insecure. To make matters worse, it’s happening at a time when basic costs for low-income…

In a new report, we estimate that in July/August 2020, about half a million people were eligible for Universal Credit (UC) but didn’t claim it. While the headlines are all about the numbers involved, I here want to deal directly with the argument that we don’t need to worry about non-take-up. Not only does it…

There’s been a surge of research seeing if we can change people’s beliefs by telling them the truth about inequality (as we’ve blogged about on the blog several times before). Understanding what’s going on here is tricky, and I was intrigued by a new paper by Jonathan Mijs that adds a further challenge here: that…