MP’s vote to postpone ESA WRAG cuts

MP unanimously voted to postpone the £30 a week cut to Employment Support Allowance (ESA) for Deaf and Disabled people in the Work Related Activity Group (WRAG) on 17 November.

 

The motion was put forward by Neil Gray, MP for Airdrie and Shotts, (Scottish Nationalist Party) who highlighted that cuts would take place before the Work and Health Green Paper could be considered or implemented.  The motion called for the Government to use the autumn statement to postpone the cuts to ESAC WRAG component until alternative measures aimed at halving disability employment gap had been considered.

 

While Inclusion London welcomes the vote by MPs to postpone the cuts the vote is not binding, which is probably why no MPs voted against it.

 

On the previous day a motion to reverse the ESA WRAG component cuts was put forward by Shadow Work and Pensions Minister, John McDonnell MP, disappointingly the motion was defeated, by 284 to 265 votes.   Inclusion London calls on the government to permanently reverse the cut in ESA for Deaf and Disabled people in the WRAG.

 

When defending the cut to ESA during the debate on 16 November the Minister for Disabled People, Penny Mordaunt MP pointed to the support being delivered through the Work and Health programme.   Yet  funding for the Work and Health Programme is being reduced; it will only have ‘..a budget of £554m over its lifetime: substantially less than the estimated £1.5bn that was spent on disability employment through the Work Programme and Work Choice it replaces’, as the report by the Commons Work and Pensions Committee Select highlighted.  The Committee’s Chair Frank Field, MP said it is ” …..in reality, the same old system financed by a much reduced budget.”    In addition ‘More than Words: Rethinking employment support for disabled jobseekers’, an independent report, by the Employment Related Service Association (ERSA) showed that ‘the reduction in funding for the Work and Health programme, ‘from £750 million in 2013/14 to less than £130 million next year – means that while 300,000 disabled people accessed contracted support between 2012-2015, this will fall to just 160,000 disabled people from 2017 to 2020’.  As a result in each remaining year of this Parliament, 45,000 fewer disabled people will be allowed onto specialist employment provision. This means that only one in eight unemployed disabled people who want to work will receive the necessary help.’

 

The government needs much more than just words to deliver on its promise to halve the disability employment gap – we call on government to increase funding for into work support for Deaf and Disabled people not reduce it.