Our Statement on the Department for Work and Pensions Green Paper – Pathways to Work

The Manchester Lived Experience Leadership Team is made up of ten deaf and disabled people. Set up in 2023 to inform change to achieve a fully accessible society in Manchester. With assistance from Breakthrough UK, Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations from Greater Manchester and further afield, this group contributes knowledge and insights gained from experiences of significant difficulties and disadvantages that otherwise would not be represented, to inform decision-making, policy change and practice in Manchester.

The following statement is addressed to all Manchester MPs about The Department for Work and Pensions Green Paper – Pathways to Work.

These proposals include cuts to social security and the welfare state that will prove to have a devastating impact on disabled people and our society. Insufficient money in the pockets of disabled people in Manchester will have significant negative impact on our local economy and public services.

We call on MPs across Manchester constituencies to vote against the proposals.

Consultations must meet legal standards called the Gunning Principles. We find that these have not been followed.

Only 11 of 22 proposals are being consulted on. The annex of the green paper makes clear that significant proposals have already been decided upon, including freezing the value of the health element of Universal Credit until 2029/30; and changes to the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) daily living assessment criteria that do not make sense when applied to real life cases.

For example, as an in-work benefit towards the additional costs of being disabled while employed, proposed changes to PIP will apply to claimants of pension age.

We believe that The Government must stop, and reconsider. We ask for these proposals to be scrapped and to be replaced by a willingness to work with disabled people to create a disability strategy that includes well-informed, fully impact-assessed proposals.

The steps to achieve this are to:

• Abandon this Green Paper – Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working.
• Resource the infrastructure for working with disabled people to build a National Disability Strategy to: inform reforms to labour market, employment rights and social security to provide an adequate standard of living as described by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Disabled People.
• Protect the income of disabled people from further shocks and added insecurity.
• Increase the employment of disabled people through improvements to the Access to Work system.
• Await the findings of the Mayfield Review which looks into the support that employers need to provide suitable accessible employment for more people currently underemployed due to disability.

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BSL video version of the Statement is coming soon.