Reposted from John Pring@ Disability News Service
Work and pensions ministers are facing acute embarrassment after losing their main excuse for refusing to assess the overall impact of their welfare cuts and reforms on disabled people.
Ministers have repeatedly insisted that such a cumulative impact assessment (CIA) would be too difficult and the results would be meaningless.
To defend their position, they repeatedly claimed that this view was shared by the “authoritative” Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).
But this week – in a humiliating reversal for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) – IFS published research which included just such an analysis, which looked at the impact of 35 benefit and tax changes on disabled people.
It was included in an updated IFS report on the “distributional effects“ of the UK government’s tax and welfare reforms in Wales since the coalition came to power in 2010.
Once…
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