Will Hunt’s Budget social reforms backfire?

How big a deal are the social reforms announced in yesterday’s Budget? They are designed to remove the reasons people have for leaving the workplace and not returning. The two biggest policies are the extension of childcare subsidies and the disability benefit reforms. Both are potent, though not necessarily in the way ministers suggest.

Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride has been making a fanfare this lunchtime about the ‘back to work’ measures, which include a white paper on disability benefit reform and £2 billion for supporting disabled people and those with long-term health problems. That white paper has been very long in gestation. It was originally written in 2021 by Chloe Smith and Therese Coffey when they were in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), but the document then had its own spell languishing out of work while the Tories dealt with their political dramas.

Smith explains that she was inspired to change the approach away from the work capability assessment because it focussed on the wrong thing, telling Coffee House:

There is a huge economic need to help get more people into the workforce, and an increasing understanding that there’s untapped talent out there particularly among disabled people.