What Next? Welfare, benefits and Access to Work briefing
EC June 2025
About this briefing
This briefing has been put together by What Next? in collaboration with a range of d/Deaf and Disabled arts, cultural and creative leaders, including; Tom Ryalls and BAP, Graeae, DASH, Spare Tyre, Disability Arts Online, Access All Areas, Decode, Diverse City and Unlimited.
We aim for it to be a working document that clarifies the political landscape surrounding welfare reform, and which flags up key actions that colleagues can take; alongside initiatives, data, information, reporting and campaigns.
This is a full briefing, that aims to give comprehensive information, but the headline summary section should give an overview of key points. Please let us know if you would like to add to, or be referenced within it.
Headline actions: summary
1. PIP and Universal Credit: campaigning
The government plans to make approximately £4.8bn worth of cuts to the welfare budget by 2030, and to change the way its key programmes operate. The cuts are chiefly targeted at health and disability benefits. The Bill, which will enable the first tranche of these changes, was read in the House of Commons on 18th June.
Colleagues who would like to call for change to the proposals have an approximate two-week window to organise, and to advocate to MPs, asking them to speak in debates and to vote. We believe that the vote will be on 1st July.
Details and resources to support responses and action are included in the full briefing document below.
ACTIONS
2. Access to Work and wider reform: consultation
Government consultation on wider changes to Access to Work and welfare closes on 30th June. These parts of the reform will be dealt with separately to the welfare cuts described above. Colleagues wanting to act on Access to Work can use the available resources detailed in this briefing to respond to the call for evidence and can make public statements which amplify their submissions. Further details included below.
ACTION
Full briefing on welfare and benefits reform proposals and their impact on the arts, cultural and creative industries
What is happening?
The government is making changes to the welfare system, with a specific focus on its provision for Disabled people. It is looking to make changes to a range of benefits –those claimed by individuals such as Universal Credit (UC) and Personal Independence Payments (PIP), and programmes like Access to Work (AtW), which are designed to facilitate d/Deaf, Disabled and neurodiverse colleagues to take their place in the workforce.
Some of the rationale for this is described in the Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working Green Paper: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/pathways-to-work-reformingbenefits-and-support-to-get-britain-working-green-paper/pathways-to-workreforming-benefits-and-support-to-get-britain-working-green-paper
The government hopes to make savings of around £4.8bn to the welfare budget from these changes. Details and breakdown reported here.
The government is approaching different elements of these changes in different ways. Each requires different responses from colleagues aiming to make change. Some elements are under consultation (Access to Work), with the government asking for responses. Some (PIP and Universal Credit) are not under consultation: meaning any changes to proposals will need to be achieved through advocacy and lobbying to MPs and Lords as part of the legislative process. In this briefing we aim to set out the timescale for some of this work and resources you can use.
This large-scale change to legislation and welfare programmes is being delivered in an environment which our d/Deaf and Disabled colleagues are reporting to be increasingly hostile; with Disability Arts Online and Decode publishing a new report that shows a marked reduction (an average of 53%) in the amounts awarded for AtW and increasing delays to decisions. This is resulting in arts organisations or individuals needing to cash-flow the delayed funds and is creating significant disincentives and barriers to d/Deaf and disabled people’s employment. Graeae has published a public statement and Jess Thom, Artistic Director of TorettesHero has announced she is stepping down following a cut to her AtW. There appear to have been no official changes yet to the Access to Work policy or its implementation which could explain this downward trend.
What is happening this week?
On June 18th 2025, the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill was read in the House of Commons. It creates the legislative framework for changes to be made to PIP, to Work Capability Assessments and to the health element of Universal Credit. The government’s ambitions for this are described in the Green Paper:
‘First, we will scrap the Work Capability Assessment (WCA). This will end the state categorising people into binary groups and labelling them as either ‘can or can’t work’. Instead, any extra financial support for health conditions in UC will be assessed via a single assessment – the PIP assessment – and be based on the impact of disability on daily living, not on capacity to work. This will de-couple access to the health element in UC (current LCWRA rate referred to as UC health throughout) from work status, so people can be confident that the act of taking steps towards and into employment will not put their benefit entitlement at risk. We will implement this change via primary legislation. Further details will be published in the forthcoming White Paper. We are not consulting on this measure.’
MPs will vote in the coming weeks on a package of measures aiming to cut the benefits bill by approximately £4.8bn by 2030. The BBC reports that up to 1.3 million people across England and Wales could lose at least some support under the changes the government has suggested.
Key evidence and arguments
Part of the government’s argument for making these changes has been around the need to reduce fraud. However, In 2024, the DWP found that the rate for fraud in relation to PIP was so small it was assessed at 0%.
Figures from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Child Poverty Action Group, given to the Work and Pensions Select Committee in April show that these proposed cuts will force up to 400,000 people into poverty including close to 100,000 children.
The All Party Parliamentary Group for Poverty and Inequality has published a report which details the potential impact of the proposed cuts and their knock-on effects on individuals, carers and their families. It has called for the proposals to be abandoned.
The Work and Pensions Select Committee has written to the Secretary of State, asking them to delay the Bill and first tranche of changes until a full review and impact assessment have been undertaken. The Prime Minister has said that ‘these reforms must be pushed through’. You can read current reporting from the BBC here.
More about PIP
PIP is not a benefit that has historically been tied to work. It is funding that supports Disabled people to undertake daily tasks and supports mobility. However, it isessential to many colleagues as part of the raft of measures that enable them to take their place in the workforce. PIP is also a ‘passport benefit’ – other sources of benefit (such as carers allowance) are tied to a PIP award – so losing it has an even wider effect on Disabled people’s finances and support.
What is a Bill and what is the process it goes through?
Some changes to policy require an Act of Parliament. Bills and legislation set out proposals for new laws and changes. Bills are presented in the House of Commons, and, a few weeks afterwards, MPs are given the chance to debate and vote upon them. The Bill then goes through a committee stage (where experts are usually consulted and any proposals for change are made), a report stage and a third stage: both include further debate and voting. The Bill then generally goes to the House of Lords for a similar process, before being sent back to the Commons to become law. In some cases, the Speaker of the House classifies a Bill as a ‘Money Bill’. These generally relate to taxation or public money. If the Bill relating to welfare change is classified as such then the Lords will have very limited powers to delay or reject it. We do not know yet whether this will be the case.
You can read more about this here.
How can arts, cultural and creative colleagues advocate for change to the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill?
ACTIONS
You can write to your MP using Write To Them: https://www.writetothem.com
Large numbers of constituents writing to an MP on an issue can really help to give MPs understanding of the strength of public feeling and opinion on an issue. There are a large number of Disability sector charities and campaign groups who are working to lobby MPs and Lords to raise issues, amend and vote against the proposed changes. Many have produced resources. Here are a few examples:
The campaign Taking the PIP, led by high-profile cultural sector colleagues, has published a suite of resources on its website, including an open letter, a template for a letter to your MP, templates for social media engagement and links to related petitions and actions. https://takingthepip.co.uk
DRUK has a page of explainers and links to wider-sector resources https://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/take-action
Scope delivered a petition of 100,000 signatures to parliament earlier this week and has campaign information and evidence https://www.scope.org.uk/campaigns/the-cost-of-cuts
Access to Work and other changes to welfare
The Pathways to Work Green Paper sets out a raft of other changes and programmes that the government is consulting on. It is asking colleagues to submit their views and responses to this Green Paper by 30th June.
ACTION
It is important that views are registered at this consultation stage, so that colleagues can then ask the government how their feedback has been considered at any later stages of the policy process. As always, you can just respond to the elements of the consultation that relate to you and your knowledge/expertise. You can leave other areas blank.
Access to Work is one of the key programmes that is being considered. AtW is a programme that enables d/Deaf, Disabled and neurodiverse colleagues to take their place in our workforce: contributing significantly to the government’s employability and growth targets, as well as to our globally-leading arts sector.
Tom Ryalls at BAP, working with Access All Areas, has compiled a suite of resources and information on Access to Work and the arts and cultural sector designed to help you shape a submission. Disability Arts Online has an explainer on Access to Work. Jess Thom has created this video explainer of what has happened to her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxpq3YCC2a4
N.b. if you want to make a public statement about Access to Work, it is worth including a reference to the consultation: e.g. ‘we have made this case to government in response to the consultation’.
If you’d like. you can also send a copy of your submission to the What Next? Team to help us to understand the breadth of the issues at hand. Do email info@whatnextculture.co.uk with your thoughts.
What else do we need to know about Access to Work?
There are a number of areas where the arts, cultural and creative sectors need more data, information and argument in respect to Access to Work:
We don’t currently know the scale (how many colleagues in the sector use it) and we need more consensus on the changes that we want to see: n.b. whether we want to fix a broken system, or whether we want to recommend that it is re-imagined from scratch.
It would be useful to understand how much money the sector is using to cashflow the delays in Access to Work funding. Let us know the outstanding figure on your books?
We also need more information on the drivers for the recent changes to funding and reduced awards that colleagues have been experiencing.
If you can help us with the development of any of this, please do let us know.
Solidarity, support and information
There are a number of colleagues in the sector working in support of people who are directly affected by these changes.
They include:
Other ways to advocate for access and inclusion
In April 2025 What Next? ran a number of Roundtables with the DCMS team to inform Baroness Hodge’s Review of Arts Council England. This Review of ACE will report in the Autumn, and the consultation also closes on 30th June.
Our Roundtables flagged a number of key issues around the needs for Arts Council England to embed inclusion and access in all stages of its processes and workforce. Colleagues may also wish to respond to this consultation to make these points.
ACTION
What is What Next? doing? https://www.whatnextculture.co.uk/
What Next? wants arts & culture to make a vital contribution to creating an equitable society; improving quality of life for all.
This will be achieved when:
Over the next few months, What Next? will work in solidarity to support and enable our d/Deaf and Disabled colleagues in asking some of the questions raised in this briefing and in amplifying actions and resources. We will also work to support the following where our capacity can be of use:
We want to acknowledge:
We will strive to prioritise and champion care and access in these conversations. Please do get in touch if you would like us to raise something anonymously on your behalf, or if you would like to talk to us about our approach and ways we could do things differently. We know that not everyone feels or thinks the same about the issues we highlight and discuss within What Next? and we are not aiming to create consensus. If you have a perspective that we have not covered in this briefing, please do get in touch.
Contact info@whatnextculture.co.uk on any of the above.
A note on political affiliation
What Next? is not party political as a movement and it is important to remember that there will be a diversity of views and lived-experience in the space. We want everyone to feel safe and supported in our meetings. What Next? does not promote or endorse the political views or policies of any one party but is wanting to use the platform to explore how we can engage better with democratic processes in the short and long term, and support our communities and young people to make a case to the new government.
What Next? subscribes to the Social Model of Disability