Wanted: Ministerial Statement on Welfare Reform

On Monday, the Welsh Government released its assessment of the impact of welfare reform on Wales. The Ministerial statement on this is interesting – and not in a good way.

Where’s the urgency?

It is almost a year to the day, 28^th February 2012 to be exact, since the Welsh Government announced it was to undertake its own analysis of the impact of welfare reform.  What has finally emerged adds more detail to the conclusions reached by Cuts Watch Cymru on the same day 12 months ago, but the overall findings – that the effect will be devastating – are the same. It’s taken 12 months to tell us what we’ve been telling them.

Where’s the action?

Even though the ‘damaging and huge’ impact is official, there’s no sign of action.  The statement says the findings “will now be used by the Ministerial Task & Finish Group to identify how best to protect the most vulnerable and mitigate, where possible, any negative impacts”.  A statement on further analysis is due in July.

July!

In other words, even though the Welsh Government ought to have known about the ‘damaging and huge’ impact of welfare reform on people in Wales – which its own analysis shows has already begun and with further changes to be implemented in a matter of weeks – it is only now going to think about what to do.  By July, thousands of people will have been hit by the bedroom tax, will be being reassessed for PIP, will have lost their claims to ESA.

This is too little, too late.

The Ministerial statement says that there has been a meeting with Lord Freud and  that the Minister is “looking for the UK Government to offer constructive proposals”.

It will be interesting to see what the UK government has to say, since the protestations of disabled people, war veterans and many others have fallen on deaf ears, but maybe Welsh Ministers have more clout.

But this of course assumes that the solutions rest solely with the UK government. They do not.

Welsh Government and others can and must do more

There is a great deal that the Welsh government can and should do to mitigate the worst effects of welfare reform. It can do some of these things now, at little if any cost, and without letting the UK government off the hook. We’ll be publishing our proposals for action on this blog next week.

There can’t be many circumstances where a “damaging and huge” impact is foreseen. Still fewer when, despite the forewarning, there’s no sign of action.  Waiting for Lord Freud, waiting until July, are simply not enough.

At the very least, there should be a full Ministerial statement on what the Welsh Government is doing to mitigate the effects by the end of this Assembly term.  

There cannot be an AM in Wales whose surgeries are not full of people hit hard by the changes to benefits. They – the people – need more than pointing the finger down the M4 to blame the UK Government.