The Welfare Reform Bill will wreak havoc for some of the most vulnerable people

By Zoe Gannon

Our welfare system is about to take a battering. The Welfare Reform Bill is in the final days of the committee stage in the House of Lords and the reforms that it will push through will change how we do welfare for the foreseeable future. It will remove our right to support, and put in its place conditionality and workfare. If you fall off the work ladder you will have to earn any support you receive. Whether or not you believe this is the right thing to do for the majority of people – and personally I believe it will do more harm than good – for a number of vulnerable groups it will wreak havoc.

The truth is that everyone, including the government, knows that sanctions are not appropriate for people suffering severe mental health problems. The law must allow people suffering fluctuating conditions such as schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder and serious depression to move in and out of work without fear of punishment, loss of income or deprivation.

This is why Compass is supporting a small group of Independent and Liberal Democrat Peers who are putting up a fight to safeguard people with severe mental illness from the threat of sanctions which are currently in the Welfare Reform Bill.

The bill is all but passed yet even at this late hour we need the government to know that its intransigence is morally unacceptable. This does not mean we believe that the system is OK as it is – far from it. It needs reform – but this is the wrong route. With thousands of people joining the dole queue every day – these new reforms will ensure that people already struggling will have to fight for the support they desperately need.

Increasingly we are told that in everything that we do – we must sink or swim alone. The Welfare Reform Bill takes this to a new level – this is bad for society and terrifying for those individuals who cannot fit neatly into the system.