Welfare secretary accused of misleading people over disability allowance after saying he supported its reduction

The new welfare secretary, Stephen Crabb, has come under fire over his support for another disability cut that will leave sick and disabled claimants £30 a week worse off.

Experts accused Crabb of misleading people over the employment and support allowance (ESA) after he said he backed the cut because recipients were “able to work”.



Crabb was justifying to his Pembrokeshire constituents why he voted with the government earlier this month for a £30 a week reduction in benefit that will affect 500,000 ESA claimants in the work-related activity group (Wrag).



He wrote on Facebook – less than two days before he was appointed welfare secretary – that the Wrag cut only affected people who were “able to work”, and that the reduction, coupled with specialised employment coaching, would help them get a job.



He added: “Any disabled person who is unable to work due to ill health or disability is in the support group of ESA. They are wholly unaffected by the change, as only those who are fit to work and actively seeking work are included in the work-related activity group.”



Campaigners said the Wrag consists of ill and disabled claimants who have been found not fit to work following an official work capability assessment, but who are deemed to be capable of working at some point in the future.



Debbie Abrahams, shadow minister for disabled people, said: “It doesn’t bode well for David Cameron that the man he chooses to make the new work and pensions secretary doesn’t even know the status of people in the ESA Wrag group.

“It is especially worrying that the new secretary of state does not recognise the additional costs faced by disabled people and voted for cuts to ESA Wrag for those who have been assessed as not fit for work. I hope, since he was appointed, he has been busy reading up on his own government policies so he knows what he is actually supporting and voting on.

“He should now pause, reconsider and reverse these cuts.”



The change means claimants placed in the Wrag after April 2017 will see their weekly unemployment benefit fall from £102.15 to £73.10, bringing it into line with the standard job seeker’s allowance.



The additional benefit is to help ill claimants dealing with the extra costs of preparing to re-enter the job market after serious illness or an accident. Many claimants stay in the Wrag for several months.



Crabb responded after his constituency office in Haverfordwest was daubed with the slogan “Y [why] do you hate the sick?” on 12 March, after the ESA vote.

He said in the Facebook post that there had been “a lot of miscommunication about this vote that I want to put right”.

The government was forced to drive the controversial cut, which will leave ill and disabled people £1,500 a year worse off, through the Commons after the House of Lords twice rejected it during the passage of the welfare and work bill in February and March.



Three Tory MPs rebelled against the ESA cuts – including Heidi Allen, who warned that the cut “will damage not just the employment prospects and wellbeing of these vulnerable claimants, but also our reputation and our trust among the electorate”.



Another Tory MP, Nadine Dorries, said on Twitter last week she had been preparing to vote against the ESA cut until the former welfare secretary Iain Duncan Smith “personally and angrily begged me not to”.

The chancellor, George Osborne, who announced the ESA cut in the July budget, argued that reducing ESA for new claimants placed in the Wrag would give them an incentive to return to work.



But peers and campaigners said there was no evidence that the proposed cut would help ESA Wrag recipients get back into employment, and it would instead push claimants further into poverty.



The government estimates that the ESA cut would save the Treasury £1.4bn over four years.

Jonathan Portes, an economist at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, said: “At best Stephen Crabb’s statement displays gross ignorance. He voted to cut benefits to people who have been placed into the work-related activity group – that is, people who the government’s own tests show are not currently fit for work and cannot now be expected to work.

“He then justified this vote to his constituents by claiming the precise opposite – in other words, with an outright falsehood. It is to be hoped that he educates himself very quickly indeed about how the benefit system actually works.”