Pathways to Work Green Paper: call for member input

The ALLIANCE is seeking the views of our members on the UK Government's Green Paper on disability and work.

The UK Government are currently consulting on some of the proposals contained within their ‘Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working‘ Green Paper. According to the UK Government, their proposals are aimed at increasing the number of disabled people and people living with long term conditions who are in employment, whilst ensuring the social security system remains a safety net for those who need it.

The Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland (the ALLIANCE) is seeking our members’ input into our response. Several of their proposals are not being consulted on. These include:

• Scrapping the Work Capability Assessment.
• Using a single assessment, the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) assessment, to determine eligibility for both that payment and for the Universal Credit health element.
• Increasing the standard allowance for Universal Credit by £7 per week, whilst freezing it at the current level for existing claimants and reducing it by £47 per week for new claimants.
• Requiring PIP applicants to score at least 4 points in at least one daily living activity in order to qualify.

Some of these are described as requiring further primary legislation. The ALLIANCE would be extremely concerned if these proposals were not to be consulted on at all, particularly the changes to PIP, and hope that there will be an opportunity for input when the relevant legislation is brought forward. We have already pointed out our particular concern that the UK Government have failed to consider the devolved implications of these proposals, as PIP is devolved and has been replaced by the Adult Disability Payment in Scotland.

Topics that the UK Government is consulting on include:

• Making it so that employment is not by itself considered a relevant change of circumstances that would trigger a PIP review.
• Support for people who will lose access to PIP following these changes.
• A new contributory Unemployment Insurance payment which would replace the new style Job Seekers and Employment Support Allowances (NSJSA/NSESA).
• Reforming the Access to Work scheme.
• Increasing the age of eligibility for PIP from 16 to 18 and for the Universal Credit health element from 18 to 22.

In principle the ALLIANCE welcome proposals that would reduce the level of fear and anxiety disabled people and people living with long term conditions have about losing social security payments if they enter work. Similarly, putting stronger duties on employers and providing direct funding to support them to make reasonable adjustments that will make it easier for disabled people and people living with long term conditions to enter and remain in employment would be a positive step. However, we do not agree with increasing the age of eligibility for the Universal Credit health element, which risks discriminating against disabled young people.

Members can use the form below to provide input into the ALLIANCE response to the Green Paper. This form is intended for relatively short answers. If you have detailed input you would like us to consider, or have already produced your own response, please email this to policy@alliance-scotland.org.uk. The deadline for input is Tuesday 10 June 2025.

Except where we are given explicit permission to do so, we will not identify the source of member contributions if we include them in our response. You can find our full Privacy Policy here.

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