6,000 Oldhamers hit by benefit changes

The Government’s plan to impose a 12-month time limit for one million people on sickness benefits and introduce means-testing will remove all cash help from some of the least disabled.

Anyone whose partner earns more than £150 a week, or who has £16,000 in savings, will lose all benefit, unless they actively look for work.

Even those moving from employment and support allowance (ESA) — the replacement for incapacity benefit (IB) — on to job seekers’ allowance (JSA) will lose up to £40 a week.

The shake-up is expected to hit around 6,320 people across Oldham — around half the number currently claiming IB.

Before then, a further 3,160 IB claimants across the borough will have been shifted on to JSA. They are expected to fail a tougher work test to be introduced next year — cutting their weekly benefit from £91.40 to as little as £51.85.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) accepted that some disabled people judged not currently fit to work would lose all benefit.

A spokesman said: “They are people who will have been judged to have the potential to work, but not yet. They will be given intensive support to help them go back to work.”

He stressed that around 500,000 of the most disabled people — those on a higher, “support group” rate of ESA — would not be affected by the changes, to be introduced next year.

Chief executive of the disability charity, Scope, Richard Hawkes accused ministers of targeting those on sickness benefits, saying: “They will have one year to get a job and that will be it.”

In total, measures in the spending review are designed to slash £4.5 billion from the bills for the disabled, the sick, those on housing benefit, council tax benefit and tax credits. They come on top of £11 billion of benefit cuts announced in June.