The government costed the April 2026 health element cut before it took effect: 50,000 more people in poverty

Since April 2026, a new Universal Credit claimant assessed as having limited capability for work and work-related activity receives £217.26 a month. A claimant assessed a month earlier, on the same evidence and with the same outcome, receives £423.27. Existing claimants are protected at the higher rate, as are new claimants with severe or lifelong conditions.

The result is a two-tier system in which two people with the same condition and the same assessment outcome receive materially different amounts of money, determined by the date on which they became ill.

The cost was calculated in advance

This was not an unforeseen consequence that emerged after implementation. Government analysis published in March projected that around 50,000 people who develop a health condition or become disabled would be pushed into poverty by 2030 as a direct result of the reduction.

That figure was published before the policy took effect. It did not come from disability charities or opposition researchers. It came from the department’s own modelling, and the policy proceeded anyway.

The PIP four-point rule

Alongside the health element cut, the government proposed that new Personal Independence Payment claimants would need to score at least four points in a single daily living activity, rather than accumulating points across several activities. Many disabling conditions produce moderate difficulty across a wide range of tasks rather than severe difficulty in one, and for those claimants the change would remove eligibility altogether.

That measure has been delayed pending the findings of a wider review of the assessment. Delayed is not the same as withdrawn, and the review has not yet reported.

The pattern this fits into

Set this alongside the Sayce review of Carer’s Allowance overpayments and the department’s own fairness analysis of its fraud scoring model, and a consistent approach to risk becomes visible. In each case the department accepts, retrospectively and under external pressure, that its systems caused harm. It then designs the next set of systems on the same underlying assumption, which is that paying somebody who should not be paid is an unacceptable risk while failing to pay somebody who should be is a tolerable one.

The first of those errors produces an overpayment letter. The second, on the evidence of the coroners’ reports, sometimes ends at an inquest.