Money editor, Wales News
A woman with severe sight loss has said she is losing sleep over changes to the welfare system announced by the UK government.
Sam Brown, 43, from Pontypridd in Rhondda Cynon Taf, is one of more than 3.6 million people in the UK who receive a disability benefit called Personal Independence Payments (Pip).
Plans to restrict eligibility for Pip were announced last week. Claimants like Ms Brown do not yet know how the reforms will be implemented or whether they will lose money, but further details are expected to be revealed alongside Wednesday’s Spring Statement.
The UK government said the proposed changes to the welfare system would save £5bn a year by 2029-30 and get more people into work.
More than 14% of working age people in Wales – about 275,000 people – claim Pip.
The sweeping changes to the welfare system will also affect the health element of universal credit, which is claimed by about 150,000 in Wales.
“The more I’m worrying ‘is this going to happen to me?’ the more it’s having a knock-on effect at night with my sleep because my brain just won’t switch off,” said Ms Brown, who uses her Pip to get help to clean the house, go out to support groups, and to see friends at theatre groups.
“I’m a very social person and I like to go out and about.
“It scares me because that is my life, that is how I live and I’d be lost without [Pip].”
An impact assessment of the reforms will be published on Wednesday when the Chancellor Rachel Reeves delivers her Spring Statement.
Reeves is widely expected to need to find extra money to keep within her self-imposed rules of not borrowing to fund day-to-day spending, and to make sure debt is falling as a share of the economy in five years’ time.
Low economic growth and higher borrowing costs have eroded the small amount of wiggle room the chancellor left herself to meet these rules in October’s budget.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has defended the welfare changes which include £1bn to support “opportunities to get back into work”.
Slow growth is a big concern for Martin Astley, the founder of Bike Park Wales in Merthyr Tydfil, which employs 85 people.
Mr Astley said he was worried about tax and wage increases which will kick in at the beginning of April, including the National Living Wage which will rise by 77p for over-21s to £12.21 an hour.
While it may be good news for his workers, Mr Astley said it meant a 6% increase in his payroll costs.
“That’s a significant hit,” he said.
Employers will also pay an increased amount of National Insurance from April, which Mr Astley described as a “double whammy”.
“It just makes everything harder,” he said.
Mr Astley said he could not pass the extra costs on to his customers because “consumer confidence is low” and they are not spending as freely as before.
He said if growth was the UK government’s priority then “business needs to be supported and right now it feels like we’re bearing the brunt of everything”.
Shoppers in Merthyr Tydfil town centre were also worried about rising costs.
“Electricity is going up, water is going up. I think it affects everyone,” said Andrew.
The state pension is increasing by 4% in April but Pat, who is a pensioner, said she was struggling.
“The cost of living is crippling,” said Pat. “I had my fuel allowance taken away from me.”
She said she supported moves to get benefit claimants back into work.
“When you work all your life you get a pension and you’re entitled to nothing, if you never work you’re entitled to everything,” she said.
David White, 29, runs a door-to-door sales business and speaks to “two or three hundred different people a day”.
“A lot of people struggle,” he said.
“Even when it comes to window cleaning, you can imagine how cheap window cleaning is.
“I think the economy is going to get worse year-on-year unless people do something about it.”
In the Spring Statement, the chancellor is expected to tell MPs the government “is on the side of working people” and “we need to go further and faster to kickstart growth, protect national security and make people better off”.
Reeves will also say “restoring stability to our public finances” has given the Bank of England “the foundation to cut interest rates three times since the general election”.
