APPG Health in All Policies Inquiry 2019 – 3 Years On: Assessing the Impact of the Welfare
Reform & Work Act 2016 on Children and Disabled Adults.
In 2015, the APPG for Health in All Policies undertook an assessment of the prospective
impacts of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill on child poverty and health.
The approach taken was to establish perceptions of the relationship between poverty,
inequality and health, and then to drill down into the potential impacts that the different
measures of the Bill could have specifically on child poverty and subsequently child health
and health inequalities.
You can read the Inquiry’s report here.
Three years on, the APPG for Health in All Policies is conducting a follow-up review of the
actual impacts of the Welfare Reform and Work Act (WR&WA) 2016.
We invited submissions of evidence of the impacts of the different measures
in the Act on children and on disabled people across the UK as set out below.
In the 3 years since the implementation of the Welfare Reform & Work Act (2016), what
impact has it had on levels of the poverty, inequality and health experienced by children
and disabled people in the UK?
We asked for submissions to supply evidence in response to the question, and in relation
to:
1. The specific measures in the Act, including (but not exclusively):
• The reduction of the benefit cap (to £23,000 in London, £20,000 the rest of the UK),
• The ‘freeze’ in the value of certain benefits for 4 years
• Limiting support (from child tax credit or the child element of Universal Credit) to 2
children
• Removing the work-related activity support component in Employment and Support
Allowance
• Changes in conditionality for responsible carers under Universal Credit
• Replacing current mortgage interest support to loans for mortgage interest
payments
• Reducing social rents by 1% pa over next 4 years
2. The impact of the Act directly and indirectly on other legislation, services or access to
these services, and vice versa, e.g., earlier welfare reforms (Universal Credit, sanctions,
Personal Independence Payments, Work Capability and other assessments), taxation,
housing, education, courts and probation services, NHS
3. Regional variations in impacts
4. Short and longer term impacts
5. Measurement and reporting methods, e.g social mobility, unemployment
The invitation was published on the Chair’s website at debbieabrahams.org.uk and on this website. It was circulated on social media. Direct invitations were sent to various government departments, public institutions, charitable groups and individuals who work in fields related to the inquiry’s scope and was sent for information to members of the Group.
We also asked for other qualitative and quantitative evidence, from the grey literature as well as peer-reviewed publications.
We have received four personal submissions and eighteen submissions from nine organisations. You can read the submissions here.
We also received recommendations in response to our request for background literature and publications which we have included in our literature review. You can see the full list here.
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been approved by either House or its committees. All-Party Parliamentary Groups are
informal groups of Members of both Houses with a common interest in particular issues. The
views expressed in webpages on this site relating to the APPG for Health in All Policies are
those of the group. The register of APPGs can be found here.
Suggest the inquiry identifies why this has all happened, and the influence of corporate America with UK welfare reforms since 1992.
My website will tell you much more. See: https://www.mostewartresearch.co.uk
Thank you. Your website is very interesting and, of course, features many of the academics who have informed the APPG’s work on this subject. Corporate America has also, of course, been involved with NHS ‘reforms’ since the 1980s and has heavily influenced education policy.