Stef Benstead

"Everyone ultimately believes in some moral absolutes. Once we realise this, the new question becomes: Which set of beliefs and moral absolutes leads us to embrace most fully those from whom we deeply differ?"
Tim Keller, The Prodigal Prophet, pg173

Anyone with LCWRA status before 2028, when the WCA is scrapped, gets to keep that status in perpetuity. So I'd guess that technically there's no legal challenge, because people assessed under the current regime don't lose their status. It's new people who are screwed.

If one of the better employment support programmes, targeting a healthier group of sick and disabled people, still can't get 82.5% of participants into sustained paid work - then what does Labour really think will happen to 2.5-3mn people who aren't fit for work?

Despite the Solent Jobs Programme offering a lot more than most employment support programmes, and including JSA recipients, it didn't get substantially larger results.
72% did not move into work.
82.5% did not move into sustained work (26 weeks).
That's with a *good* programme.

SJP seems to me to have been a relatively good programme. There were real job brokers. Participants had regular support. They could go on work tasters and subsidised work, both of which increased work outcomes. They could access OH, and courses for mental health and wellbeing.

This blogpost looks at the Solent Job Programme.
Regression analysis suggests it increased employment outcomes by 7-8.7% points, to 28%.
However, over half of participants were JSA/UC fit for work. And getting work is not the same as sustaining work.
www.stefbenstead.co.uk/post/evidenc...

Latest blog!
I don't think it's as well constructed and written as normal; I'm just too exhausted. But I'm keen to get this work out there, because other reports are over-estimating the likely efficacy of employment support for sick and disabled people who aren't fit for work.

"After economists on the left bought into the Chicago School’s deference to markets—“we are all Friedmanites now”—social justice became subservient to markets, and a concern with distribution was overruled by attention to the average, often nonsensically described as the “national interest.”"

Rethinking Economics or Rethinking My Economics by Angus Deaton Questioning one’s views as circumstances evolve can be a good thing

"Keynes wrote that the problem of economics is to reconcile economic efficiency, social justice, and individual liberty. We are good at the first, and the libertarian streak in economics constantly pushes the last, but social justice can be an afterthought."
Angus Deaton www.imf.org/en/Publicati...

"But the others regularly fail to materialize, so that when efficiency comes with upward redistribution—frequently though not inevitably—our recommendations become little more than a license for plunder."

Rethinking Economics or Rethinking My Economics by Angus Deaton Questioning one’s views as circumstances evolve can be a good thing

"Many subscribe to Lionel Robbins’ definition of economics as the allocation of scarce resources among competing ends or to the stronger version that says that economists should focus on efficiency & leave equity to others, to politicians or administrators."
Angus Deaton www.imf.org/en/Publicati...

Welfare shake-up is not to save cash, it’s a ‘moral mission’, insists Kendall | The Observer Independent journalism | News, culture & style | Investigations, analysis, features, ideas, recipes, newsletters & podcasts that make sense of the world

Conversely, if you give people timely & adequate healthcare, and create an economy where there are enough jobs for everyone, then you don't *need* to cut social security. More people are in work and fewer people are sick, so Social Security receipt falls naturally.
observer.co.uk/news/politic...

Welfare shake-up is not to save cash, it’s a ‘moral mission’, insists Kendall | The Observer Independent journalism | News, culture & style | Investigations, analysis, features, ideas, recipes, newsletters & podcasts that make sense of the world

“Some people say wait until you’ve got all the waiting lists down, wait until you’ve created all the new jobs.”
Yes.
Does she know why people say that?
It's because if you cut social security whilst people are sick & there aren't enough jobs, all you're doing is harm.
observer.co.uk/news/politic...

What’s behind the rise in disability benefit claims? Rising rates of disability colliding with greater financial hardship are pushing more people to seek support

This matters.
"On its own, the number of disabled people explains 71% of the PIP caseload in a particular region. But when we add each region’s relative deprivation using the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) we can explain 94% of the regional PIP caseload."
neweconomics.org/2025/05/what...

No 10 rethinking winter fuel payment cut after Labour slump in local elections Exclusive: government fears further electoral losses from unpopular policy as well as from planned £5bn of benefits cuts

Faced with major opposition and clear evidence against benefit cuts, Labour responds:
"We didn’t go big enough the first time round."
DWP thinks there may need to be a total of £15bn cut from social security.
This would be an unmitigated disaster.
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Minister suggests cuts are coming to Access to Work scheme Ministers appear to be set to announce cuts to a flagship disability employment scheme, just as the government is trying to push more disabled people towards the workplace. Sir Stephen Timms (pictu…

I guess sick and disabled people are just 'unsustainable'.
It's unsustainable to support us outside of paid work.
It's unsustainable to support us in the extra costs we face.
And it's unsustainable to support us to engage in paid work.
www.disabilitynewsservice.com/minister-sug...

What the Venezuelans Deported to El Salvador Experienced Exclusive photos of the arrival of Venezuelan detainees deported from the U.S.

This is appalling
time.com/7269604/el-s...

Labour are also very keen not to increase the burden on doctors by needing more sick notes. So they want to somehow determine people's fitness for work and work prep, but not by actually assessing our fitness for work or work prep, nor by asking our doctors.
#DisabilityBenefits

Labour belatedly - very belatedly - realising that scrapping the test used for assessing people's capacity for work and work-related activity might make it difficult to assess people's capacity for work and work-related activity would be funny if it weren't so serious.

Ironic qu in the Labour #DisabilityBenefits consult:
"We are consulting therefore on how we should determine who is subject to a requirement only to participate in conversations, or work preparation activity rather than the stronger requirements placed on people in the Intensive Work Search regime."

"We will also legislate to establish in law the principle that work in and of itself will never lead to a reassessment."
Well, obviously. That is going to happen anyway. Because you're scrapping the WCA, and PIP assessments aren't related to capacity for work.
#DisabilityBenefits

Benefits and Work have done a really good piece here, looking at what the DWP is and isn't consulting on.
It isn't consulting on the major issues: scrapping WCA; PIP Daily Living & UC Health Element; freezing UC HE until 2029/30; 4-point criterion for PIP
www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/dwp-lau...

West Midlands Combined Authority and Sheffield City Region

My latest blog, covering Health-Led Employment Trials.
At WMCA, 25% T vs 27% C entered work; at SCR it was 22% vs 18%. Financial returns were negligible; economic returns uncertain.
Strengthening the labour market and improving health may have more impact.
www.stefbenstead.co.uk/post/evidenc...

What mental illnesses are being ‘over diagnosed’ and who by? And what effect is that supposedly having on claims for PIP which uses a functional not diagnostic test? It’s so important that public & political debates about mental health, illness and social security are informed by robust evidence

If anything, the UK’s mental health crisis is one of UNDERdiagnosis not OVERdiagnosis.

📉APMS study found:

Less than half of those with severe distress get treatment.
Only a third needing primary care support have a diagnosis.

The real issue is not overdiagnosis but undercare.

An MP says, “We all get the case for reform, but we can also see that some of these cuts don’t actually seem to be targeted at the areas most in need of reform.”
There is no case for cuts-based reform. It worries me that Labour genuinely thinks there is.

What I love here is that it's only a 'gruelling' process when it's a reassessment.
Before that, according to those who support cuts, it's far too easy to get sickness benefit.

Starmer to drive through welfare cuts that could affect UK’s most severely disabled PM faces backlash over plans to tighten eligibility, potentially leaving over 600,000 claimants £675 a month worse off

"The work and pensions secretary will promise a “right to try” guarantee for those currently on benefits to take on work but return to previous benefits if the job does not work out, without having to go through a gruelling reassessment process."
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

If the justification for cuts to sickness and disability benefits is increased employment, I'd like to see a cost per job figure: £6bn from generally low income households pays for how many million jobs?