Friday briefing: How do you fix Britain's broken disability benefits system?

Good morning. A new public accounts committee report has found that disability benefit claimants are receiving 'unacceptably poor service' from the government, waiting on average 10 times longer than other claimants for their calls to be answered. Meanwhile, rising DWP underpayments are leaving many at greater risk of hardship.
For the past year, the Labour party has taken a contradictory approach to social security. It wants to move away from the harshness of austerity, yet its rhetoric remains rooted in pledges to be 'ruthless' in cutting the 'spiralling' benefits bill and prioritising 'working people'. Campaigners and charities warn that much of this language echoes the punitive 'welfare crackdowns' of previous governments.
For today's newsletter, I spoke with Guardian columnist, and author of Crippled: austerity and the demonisation of disabled people, Frances Ryan and social policy editor Patrick Butler about what this report reveals about the government's stance on disability benefits. That's right after the headlines.
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'Any difficulty people are experiencing now isn't new,' says Frances. 'It comes after over a decade of incredibly tough, impoverishing years.' Fourteen years of cost-cutting benefits policies under successive Conservative governments have left disability benefit claimants facing significant hardship. But does Labour have a plan to remedy the problem?
Why is it hard to get someone on the phone?
The issues raised in the public accounts committee report have been around for years without being properly addressed. One key factor behind the long wait times is the DWP's shift to a digital-first system, which has proved challenging for those without reliable internet access.
'A lot of claimants can't easily use digital communication, so they resort to traditional methods like the telephone – which, of course, requires people to answer,' says Patrick. 'But, like all large bureaucracies, the DWP is under immense pressure to cut staff, so fixing this issue won't be quick or easy.'
AI and automation promise a system that runs without human administrators, but no matter how advanced the technology, 'you still need to make qualitative judgments about a person's entitlement to disability benefits,' Patrick adds.
The public accounts committee also highlights another problem: the complexity and length of the application process, particularly for personal independence payments (Pip), claimed by 3.6 million people nationwide. Many of these people are trying to get assistance to apply which extends wait times further. Disability campaigners note that for vulnerable claimants, the lack of support makes an already difficult process even harder.
The impact
When people are unable to access the welfare they are entitled to, it can be 'crushing', says Frances. The financial hardship that follows means disabled people are more likely to rely on food banks and be pushed into desititution. But these barriers have wider ripple effects, too, particularly on claimants' mental health. Research by the disability charity Sense found that almost half of people with complex disabilities say the benefits application process is so stressful that it worsens their condition.
'It's hard to grasp unless you've been reliant on state support just how vulnerable and powerless you can feel,' Frances says. 'All you can do is get on the phone and desperately ask for help.' In many cases, these benefits are the primary way that people are able to pay for essentials like food, energy and the extra costs of disability. 'You are completely dependent on an organisation that isn't doing its job, and you have almost no power to change that,' she adds.
The government's stance
During the election campaign, Keir Starmer pledged to 'never turn our backs on people who are struggling'. However, his approach to tackling poverty focuses on moving more people into work and reducing reliance on benefits – ultimately cutting the welfare bill rather than increasing financial support for those that need it.
'The Treasury is making it clear that fiscal discipline will take priority over anything else,' says Patrick. The controversial decision to means-test the winter fuel allowance reflects the government's willingness to stick with divisive measures to meet its financial targets.
Another looming issue is the planned £3bn cut to incapacity benefits. The Treasury has confirmed that these reductions – introduced by the previous government – will proceed, with changes set to take effect from September. A judge recently ruled that an official consultation setting out the proposals was misleading and unlawful. The quickest way to make such large-scale cuts is through 'crude reductions in eligibility', Patrick explains. 'Fewer people will qualify, and those already claiming will see their entitlements shrink.' This could mean more than 400,000 incapacity benefit claimants losing £416 a month. 'At that point,' Patrick warns, 'you're effectively driving people into poverty – or even deeper into it.'
This mix of compassionate rhetoric and harsh policy choices risks making the government seem 'wildly disingenuous,' Frances says. 'If nobody really knows what your principles or intentions are, it only fuels the deep distrust people already feel – understandably – towards politicians.'
Fraud crackdown
The DWP has often pointed to fraud as a key reason why they have not been able to properly address the issue of underpayments. And there is a kernel of truth to this. Since the pandemic there has been an increase in benefits fraud. However, disability benefit fraud has remained about 1%, and rather than lazy individuals sponging off the state, much of the rise is actually due to organised crime groups exploiting weaknesses in the digital universal credit system. The public accounts committee has criticised what it called the department's 'dangerous mindset', insisting that its priority should be to 'improve its defences and ensure benefit claimants receive the right amount of money' rather than penalising individuals in need.
Frances also highlights how the government often conflates fraud with error, making them seem interchangeable when they are fundamentally different. Errors can result from claimants unintentionally failing to report a change in circumstances or from mistakes made by the DWP itself.
'This government talks a lot about not abandoning people on disability or incapacity benefits,' says Patrick. 'But the problem is that so much of this is framed around getting people off benefits to make cuts,' which will likely only make peoples quality of life worse.
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Our critics' roundup of the best things to watch, read, play and listen to right now
Music
Sharon Van Etten and the Attachment Theory | ★★★★☆An act of 'total collaboration' from an artist previously thought of as an auteur, Van Etten's new album presents her not as a solo artist but the frontwoman of a band. There are big choruses and lovely melodies that speak to Van Etten's songwriting craftsmanship, but the overall mood is both hazy and a little tense. That feels fitting. These are songs filled with confusion and foreboding, which leave questions unanswered: 'Do you believe in compassion for enemies?' 'Who wants to live for ever?' 'Why can't you see it from the other side?' Bold and fresh, this is not a complete reinvention so much as an unexpected left turn that takes the artist at its centre somewhere new. Alexis Petridis
Film
Before Sunrise | ★★★★★
Not a romcom, not a romantic drama, but just … a romance, a brief encounter on a train without heartache, a strange and wonderful moment-by-moment miracle that never seems cloying or absurd. Richard Linklater's film from 1995 is now rereleased for its 30th anniversary. The goateed and sweetly conceited twentysomething Jesse, played by Ethan Hawke, is on a train to Vienna when the smart and beautiful Céline, insouciantly played by Julie Delpy, sits down opposite him and they start talking. You can feel Jesse's heart-thumping nerves as he suggests to Céline that she forget about her plans to go to Paris and instead get off the train with him to hang out in Vienna for 24 hours. It is the lightness of this film which is still charming; Jesse and Céline are free from everything, free from work worries or family cares, but they are also free from the gravity of cause-and-effect, the world of consequences and responsibilities. They bounce and float around the streets of Vienna like astronauts of love. Peter Bradshaw
TV
Mo season two | ★★★★★
The self-starring, semi-autobiographical vehicle of comic Mo Amer, the series was last on Netflix back in 2022. Its opening season introduced us to Mo Najjar, a refugee who – like the real-life Mo – had arrived in Houston, Texas, as a child when his Palestinian family fled the Gulf war. An immigration raid spooks Mo's boss at a phone store, leaving him jobless and forced to sell knockoff goods out of his car. By the final episode, Mo is stranded in Mexico, trying to outrun a people-smuggling coyote gang. It's in Mexico that season two begins, with Mo living it up as a lucha libre wrestler and playing with a mariachi band in scenes that have more than a touch of magical realism. Of course, he's actually living in a world of pain, marooned in Mexico with no legal route to return to the US for his crucial asylum hearing. It's here that Amer highlights the horrifying reality of illegal border crossings and the desperate people who attempt them. It's surely one of the most heart-rending things you'll watch on TV this year. Hannah J Davies
Book
The City Changes Its Face by Eimear McBride
Eimear McBride does extraordinary things with language. It is the 1990s, north London, an area dirtier and poorer than it is now. Eily, a teenage drama student, and Stephen, an established actor with a traumatic past, have been living together. Something awful has happened. In the sections headed Now they are having an agonised conversation about that event. They move from pleas and accusations to a row, followed by penitence and confessions and, at last, a reconciliation. This book-long conversation is interspersed with retrospective sections in which we are shown, in scattered episodes, how they arrived at this point. As the two narratives converge on the awful event, its nature is gradually revealed. The event is easily guessed, but there is more to it, the final twist having as much to do with McBride's narrative form as it does with her story. It's a complex structure, skilfully controlled. But McBride's originality is most striking in the way she handles words. Lucy Hughes-Hallett
How DeepSeek stunned the AI industry
Why is the US technology industry worried about Chinese company DeepSeek? Robert Booth reports.
A bit of good news to remind you that the world's not all bad
Move over, wild swimming: here's ice diving, which was launched as a leisure activity a few decades ago but has found new life in a 21st century not short of people looking for extreme ways to experience nature. Mike MacEacheran chills the bones with his account of a night dive in a frozen mountain lake in the French Alps – but he draws out the mind-stretching potential of the activity, too. The key element is accessibility: no experience is necessary, though divers must be 140cm tall or more and at least eight years old, the oldest so far being an 83-year-old woman. 'Time slows in this magical, watery world,' he writes. 'It's one of those rare moments in life … that seem to transcend the ordinary.'
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