Tom Pollard

@pollardtom.bsky.social

5251 Followers 1056 Following

Head of Policy, Campaigns & Public Affairs at Mind | NHS Mental Health Social Worker | Previously at NEF & DWP | Views expressed here my own

Cover of the Times from today, with the top headline saying "Anxiety 'to cause a lost generation on benefits '", based on an interview with Alan Milburn
Quote from BBC News article: Mental health charity Mind's head of policy Tom Pollard said Reform's plan seemed muddled and did not appear to "bear any relation to how this benefit actually works", not least because PIP is not an out of work benefit. "People have to prove they face significant health and disability-related barriers in their day-to-day lives to qualify for Pip, and it is not based on diagnosis," he said. "Anxiety can have a debilitating impact, and many people will also have multiple and complex health issues when anxiety is recorded as their 'primary condition'."
Chart showing the prevalence of conditions and impairments for people referred to Trussel food banks compared to the general population. 18% referred to food banks had a physical disability compared to 7% in the general population. 25% had a long-term physical disability compared to 20% in the general population. 58% had a mental health condition compared to 15% in the general population. And 9% had a learning disability or difficulty compared to 2% in the general population
Chart showing that, from 757 residents successfully contacted, 110 (15%) volunteered to take part in a support chat, 79 support chats were successfully completed, each leading to 2.6 referrals into other services on average, with 42% of people agreeing to a referral to employment support
Image of report cover with the title 'Increasing voluntary engagement with employment support: Findings from a test and learn pilot led by Camden Council' with logos for the New Economics Foundation and Camden Council
Video of an interview on TalkTV
Headline from the Telegraph: "Benefits pay more than being in work", with a graph showing that someone on incapacity benefits with PIP would receive £2,500 over a full time living wage job and someone also receiving child DLA and carer benefits would receive £14,000 more that a full time living wage job
Table from government impact assessment suggesting 150,000 people will be pushed into poverty by the amended proposed cuts & changes to disability and health benefits
Chart showing that 10% of current claims were due to lose out on PIP Daily Living due to the assessment change but that this rises to 31% of expected new claims. Based on NEF analysis of DWP figures
The No. 10 source added … that the “broken welfare system is failing the most vulnerable,” there is “broad consensus” across Labour, and the reforms are “underpinned by the same Labour values” as minimum wage rises, free school meals for low-income families and renationalizing the railways. Now for the simple task of convincing rebels of that.
Chart showing that the impact of the cuts in combination is likely to be around 340,000 people pushed into poverty
Chart showing that UC health and PIP cuts, even after offsetting a slight increase to the basic rate of UC, will mean £6.7bn of cuts to benefits for ill and disabled people
Quote from David Blunkett piece in the Sun: "Women did not stop having more than two children even when they were strapped for cash. It is still unclear why. After all, many people have to make a calculation as to how many children they can afford. But one thing must be certain: namely, that if you give parents a relatively substantial additional amount of money for every child they have whilst entitled to benefits, they are likely to have more children."
Chart from the Resolution Foundation showing that different compromise options on the two-child limit would mean 190,000 to 350,000 more children in poverty compared to fully scrapping the policy
Quote from Times article: "Designing rules that markets view as credible is more art than science, but there are general rules of thumb. The larger the stock of existing debt, the higher the price that new debtors demand. And it is more credible to borrow to invest in assets that yield ongoing returns — railways, reactors or research — than propping up day-to-day standards of living."
Andy Burnham addressing a full Friends' Meeting House in Manchester city centre
Findings: -Most people cited multiple health conditions, often a combination of mental and physical conditions. -People were recently made aware of PIP through contact with formal services (including Jobcentre Plus) friends and family. Few participants mentioned media or social media. -Health deterioration, financial hardship and employment concerns were the main triggers for PIP application. Few participants mentioned the loss of the £20 UC uplift or the ending of the furlough scheme. -People cited travel, daily living, utilities and household costs as their intended uses for PIP.
Chart showing increasing rates of disability and also rising rates of food insecurity, particularly for households with a disabled member
Screenshot of Times article with the headline "disability benefits for anxiety and depression double since the pandemic"
Video of an oral evidence session for the Work and Pensions Select Committee
Chart showing the poverty impact of the UC health cuts (around 50,000 people pushed into poverty), PIP cuts (around 300,000 people) and the cumulative impact (around 340,000 people)
Chart showing the small benefit of an increase to the basic rate of UC being dwarfed by the impact of the cuts to UC health and PIP, leading to a total loss for ill and disabled people of £6.7bn
Screenshot of a quote from the Resolution Foundation: “In strict scorecard terms, this is the correct approach, but as it represents the cancellation of a never-implemented cut, it will never be felt as a positive impact by households and we do not consider it further [in our analysis].”
Image of newspaper frontpages from last week reporting on the scale and impact of benefit cuts for ill and disabled people
Picture of a table from the OBR costings for the Spring Statement with a line about "Reversal of 2023 WCA reforms" that is reported as entailing a 'spend' of £1.6bn highlighted
Text from OBR document: Labour supply impact of Spring Statement welfare and employment support measures: We have not made a comprehensive assessment of the labour supply impacts of those elements of the Green Paper that we have incorporated into the fiscal forecast. The individual measures’ labour market impacts are complex to assess and would have interacting effects. The Government did not provide us with a comprehensive and robust analysis of these potential effects, and we were not, in the very limited time available, able to develop our own analysis of their net impact on labour supply. In addition, some of the wider Green Paper reforms set out above, which are not included in the fiscal forecast, could also have labour market implications. We will make a full assessment of the Green Paper policies’ effects ahead of our next forecast
Chart showing the impact of a freeze on the UC health top up for existing recipients from 2026 (over £600m) and a cut for new recipients from 2026 (over £800m) and the total cut this equates to (£1.48bn)
Chart showing the impact of a freeze on the UC health top up for existing recipients from 2026 (over £600m) and a cut for new recipients from 2026 (over £800m) and the total cut this equates to (£1.48bn)
Graph showing scenarios leading to different levels of losses, up to £9,600 for someone missing out on PIP Daily Living standard rate and the UC health top up
Message from David Wilcock, Deputy Political Editor at the Mail Online: "Morning Tom, thanks for this thread and apologies in not coming back to you sooner - I was away on a long weekend. You are correct, there are some significant errors in my story, so it has been taken down. We will also be running a correction." My reply: "Thanks for coming back to me David and for taking these steps. It's a shame that the damage has already been done in terms of bolstering a wider misleading narrative about how 'easy' it is to get disability/incapacity benefits. But I do appreciate you acknowledging the error."
Screenshot of DWP statistics showing the number of people on Universal Credit who have been declared as having 'limited capability for work' (365,623), 'limited capability for work-related activity' (1,752,123), and 'Live fit note (Pre-WCA) (336,382)
Chart showing the combination of people judged to have 'limited capability for work', 'limited capability for work/work-related activity' and those having 'Acceptable medical evidence'
Daily Mail online headline: The great benefit con? Just 14% of people claiming disability cash can actually PROVE they are too ill to work - as total getting handouts nears 2.5m
Text from a DWP press release: In the current dysfunctional system, a person is placed in binary categories of either “fit for work” or “not fit for work” through the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) – an assessment the government has said it will either reform or replace, so it no longer drives people who want to work to a life on benefits. Through this process, those not fit for work are told they have Limited Capability for Work Related Activity (LCWRA) – meaning they won’t receive employment support or further engagement from the system at any point following their assessment – effectively abandoning and locking them out of work indefinitely.
Photo of Andy Burnham speaking at an event in the Friends Meeting House in Manchester
Charts based on the Labour Force Survey, NHS health records, the Health Survey for England, and Understanding society, all showing growing rates of poor mental health between 2008-2023, with a particularly steep rise among younger people
Quote from Big Issue piece: "But an internal graph released by the DWP as part of the judicial review proceedings showed that the proportion of decisions that were due to substantial risk had peaked in 2015 and was now as low as it had ever been back to when the WCA was introduced. This data was available to the DWP but not to the public, and the downward trend of cases was not mentioned in the consultation document."
Screenshot of a Telegraph headline reading "Mental health culture has gone too far, says Mel Stride"
Diagram of a cycle labelled 'Test the thing that matters most - learn from the results' and 'Do whatever it takes - to speed up this loop'
A chart showing a series of circles that represent stages of a planning process in a linear line labelled: "predict everything; plan everything; implement everything; in a series of linear stages of work; test everything; inflict on public"
Image advertising the Poverty Alliance annual conference on 29th November at the EICC in Edinburgh
Quote from the Times: Tom Pollard, of the New Economics Foundation think tank, urged ministers to focus on offering help on a voluntary basis rather than imposing conditions. “It would be perfectly possible to have a more flexible approach where the initial focus is on fostering genuine engagement with support and more prescriptive requirements are only invoked later if it’s demonstrated that they are required,” he said.
Quote from the Telegraph: "Labour will on Tuesday unveil a flagship back-to-work plan that does not include a crackdown on sickness benefits in the latest blow to business."
Chart showing the number of people in different conditionality regimes on Universal Credit, with the biggest increase in people with 'no work requirements' but most other conditionality groups also up on their pre-pandemic levels
Chart showing the number of people on Universal Credit from October 2019 to 2014 - rises steeply from around 3 million people, up to 6 million during the pandemic, dipping slightly at the end of the pandemic but then rising to over 7 million by October 2024
Table showing the parliamentary constituencies most affected by the two-child limit and the additional income they would gain if the policy was scrapped
Headlines from the Independent and Mirror about NEF's new analysis on the two-child limit
Today’s duty solicitor, Ruth Camp from housing charity Shelter, is casting around for any way to persuade the judge to grant a stay of execution. “As it stands at the moment, the defendant doesn’t have anywhere to go,“ Camp tells the judge. “How is that relevant?”
Quote from the Times: Under the changes, to be revealed on Wednesday, hundreds of thousands of people with mobility and mental-health problems will be told to look for work that they can do from home. They face having their benefits reduced by £4,680 a year as ministers insist they can no longer be “written off” as incapable of working. The changes in the rules for claiming benefits will apply to all new claimants from 2025. As part of a “carrot and stick” approach, existing claimants will be given a guarantee that they will not have their right to benefits assessed if they look for work.
Graph showing that different household hold types will be worse off if October's inflation rate is used instead of September's to uprate benefits, and the impact of the end of additional cost of living payments