Discrimination in Welfare Benefits May 2024

The seminar looked at using the law and research to expose and challenge discrimination in the welfare benefits system, including:

• An overview of discrimination in welfare benefits with examples of direct and indirect discrimination.
• Work Rights Centre’s work with PLP on benefit suspensions and automated decision making
• Recent cases involving discrimination in welfare benefits including for Withdrawal Agreement beneficiaries and bereaved widows of disabled people.
• Disability denial and how that plays a central role within the design of the benefit system and welfare “reform” agenda. From that naturally flows a system with entrenched disability discrimination.

You can find the links to slides and STTR transcript here: Delegate pack – Discrimination in Welfare Benefits Seminar

Links to resources:

• Government response to the consultation on changes to the Work Capability Assessment
• Green paper consulting on changes to Personal Independence Payment
• Information about Adult Disability Payment (what Scotland is replacing PIP with): [NB the application process is not as different from PIP as Disabled campaigners in Scotland hoped for but it will be interesting to see for example what difference in-house as opposed to out-sourced assessments make]
• White Paper Transforming Support: health and disability white paper
• RF v Secretary of State for Work And Pensions [2017] EWHC 3375 (Admin) (21 December 2017) (bailii.org)
• MM & DM, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (14 December 2013 )(bailii.org)