The Conservatives will change the disability and sickness benefits system so that claims for mild mental health conditions and routine back and joint pain will no longer be accepted, investing £1 billion a year in additional health support for these conditions instead.

Through our Disability and Sickness Benefit Review, we will introduce more detailed and holistic assessments with tighter eligibility criteria. All claimants will be assessed face to face.

This will mean current claimants on the standard rates of PIP for milder mental health issues and neurodiversity conditions such as anxiety, depression and ADHD will no longer be eligible for cash support. We will also remove a minority of enhanced rate cases for these conditions, reflecting the increasing tendency to award these cases at the enhanced rate as a consequence of how mental health distress scores against the current PIP assessment criteria.

Our more robust system will alter the projected growth in caseload, so that instead of numbers spiking by 2029/30, they will not rise above our rebased 2026 rates by the end of the decade. Similarly, we will return claim numbers for back and joint conditions – like mild back pain, mild arthritis, gout and whiplash to their 2021 baseline, undoing projected growth to 2029/30.

We forecast a saving of £8.9 billion in 2029/30 figures from our changes to mental health eligibility and a further £5.2 billion from changes to routine back and joint pain, giving a total of £14.1 billion. These savings are across PIP and the Universal Credit Health component, applying assumptions from PIP data to Universal Credit numbers, given lack of detailed breakdown of the latter.

We will reinvest £1 billion of our savings in health support, so that those who are no longer eligible for cash disability benefits can access treatment and rehabilitation to support their conditions.

We will automatically transition new PIP claimants reaching retirement age onto Attendance Allowance. This will mean those who become disabled after reaching pension age are treated the same as those who previously claimed disability benefits – a fairer approach. Attendance Allowance reflects the greater generosity of other pensioner benefits such as the State Pension compared to Universal Credit. We forecast these changes will save £209 million for the first affected cohort in year one, falling to £194 million in subsequent years to reflect that some cases will not be sustained. Applied to multiple cohorts over the course of a parliament, this results in an average saving of £2.9bn over five years, or an average of £580 million a year.

Sources: DWP, PIP Cases with Entitlement from 2019, July 2026, Stat-Xplore; DWP, Benefit expenditure and caseload tables 2026.

The Conservatives will end access to the benefits system for non-EUSS foreign nationals. This will apply to all working-age benefits.

The most recent release in May 2026 shows that 6.6 per cent of Universal Credit claimants are not UK citizens, nor do they have EU Settled Status, accounting for over half a million Universal Credit claimants. The breakdowns recently published for Universal Credit are not available for other benefits. We also acknowledge that, whilst our wider immigration policies will reduce the number of asylum seekers in the UK, some will retain access to the benefits system. From an abundance of caution, we have assumed a 75 per cent reduction in claimants with refugee or humanitarian status, rather than a fall to zero. By modelling the proportion of foreign national claimants on Universal Credit once accounting for these factors against the overall benefit caseload, we estimate these changes will save £9.5 billion a year. This is separate to the cost of the Government’s recent ILR U-turn.

A large portion of foreign nationals in the UK who claim Universal Credit are from the EU and have EU settled status. As part of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, it was agreed in Part Two of the Withdrawal Agreement that EU citizens in the UK – and UK citizens in the EU – would under new settled statuses continue to receive equal treatment. We will honour that commitment, providing certainty to British citizens living in the EU and avoiding an unnecessary rehashing of the Brexit negotiations.

More broadly, we have announced plans to make it harder for foreign nationals to access the welfare system, or to claim British citizenship if they have previously relied on benefits. The Conservatives have proposed extending the waiting period before qualification for ILR from 5 to 10 years and extending the period after which you can then claim citizenship from 12 months to 5 years. We have also proposed making those who have previously claimed welfare (for example by having the NRPF condition waived) or who have a criminal record ineligible for ILR. We will end social tenancies for foreign nationals without EU settled status as part of our welfare plans to put British people first.

This will be facilitated by our commitments to leave the ECHR, repeal the Human Rights Act and the Public Sector Equality Duty. We will also review local authority-run schemes that provide benefits to immigrants, including discounts to council services.

Sources: DWP, Universal Credit quarterly statistics, 29 April 2013 to 14 May 2026; Home Office, A Fairer Pathway to Settlement, November 2026.

Conservatives will control the rise in housing benefit spending. We will permanently re-peg LHA rates to a new 10th percentile level and uprate this annually to give tenants consistency and deliver savings. We will freeze rents in the social rented sector to deliver substantial savings.

We will abandon the seesawing 30th percentile rate and permanently re-peg LHA rates to the 10th percentile, ensuring LHA rates are adjusted every year to ensure this value remains consistent, as the IFS has previously recommended. This is a fairer system for both taxpayers and tenants. Taxpayers will no longer be expected to foot the bill for more expensive private rental properties, whilst tenants will have certainty about the amount of rental support they will receive, and will be able to plan their housing costs accordingly. Whilst the new re-pegging will apply immediately to all new tenancies, existing tenants will be given transitional protection. Instead of seeing real terms cuts, their higher rates of support will be frozen until they fall in line with the 10th percentile, after which they will be re-pegged annually. This policy will save £1.8 billion a year.

We will also extend LHA rate caps to the social rented sector. Unlike in the private rented sector, there are no current limitations to keep social rents to a proportion of the local market. We will extend the 10th percentile cap to the socially rented properties, with a cap on reductions and protections for those on fixed incomes. Research by Onward suggests this policy would save over £200 million over the duration of a parliament.

Finally, we will introduce a five-year freeze to rents in the social rented sector. This will prevent councils and housing associations from increasing social rents. This freeze mirrors previous Conservative Government policy, which reduced social rents by 1 per cent a year between 2016 and 2020. Councils and housing associations will cover the costs of this policy. In 2025 the Regulator for Social Housing found housing associations had a £4.8 billion surplus. This will save £2.5bn per year by the end of the parliament.

Historically, councils and housing associations have argued surpluses enable them to invest in building new social homes. Our plans to remove non-EUSS foreign nationals from social housing will free up 230,000 homes for British citizens. This will reduce the pressure to build new social housing, and so the case for large surpluses is reduced. Our savings also account for offsetting the lost revenues to councils.

Sources: IFS, Freezes in housing support once again widen geographic disparities for low-income renters; Onward, Through the Roof: How to reduce housing benefits spending; Regulator for Social Housing, 2025 Global Accounts of private registered providers.

The Conservatives will reform Child DLA. Where the claim is for a behavioural disorder, learning difficulty or ADHD, only the families of children with higher levels of need will be eligible to receive cash payments. We will invest £1 billion in support to help children with milder cases of these conditions and their families, through mental health services and Family Hubs. Physical disabilities will be exempted from these changes.

In government, the Conservatives will redesign the assessment process and criteria for child DLA. These changes will only apply to new claims and reassessments. These changes will not impact the number of claimants for physical conditions, but we estimate, will restrict claims for learning disorders, behavioural difficulties and ADHD to the most severe 30 per cent of cases. Where new claimants or claimants undergoing reassessment do not meet the new criteria they will be removed from the benefit. This will unwind the post-pandemic increase in child DLA caseload, which is forecast to increase by more than 600,000 since 2020 by the end of the decade.

Current projections anticipate the caseload for child DLA to rise to 1,142,000 by 2029/30. Assuming these three conditions continue to represent the same proportion as in the current caseload, this will mean there will be over 950,000 total claims for these conditions. We project that 72 per cent of these cases will be reassessed over the course of a 5-year parliament, with a tighter assessment process saving £3.3 billion. When passported benefits including the disabled child element of Universal Credit are also accounted for this saving increases to £3.8 billion.

We will reinvest £1 billion of these savings in in-kind support to provide more practical help to children and their families than simple cash handouts. This will include a landmark investment in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and in Family Hubs, to ensure families dealing with mild learning disorders and behavioural difficulties can access the support and advice that they need.

Source: DWP, Benefit expenditure and caseload tables 2026.

The Conservatives will re-instate the two-child benefit cap, so households on welfare must consider the size of the family they can afford, just as those not claiming benefits do.

The Conservatives have consistently opposed Labour’s decision to lift the cap since September 2025. The Government’s own figures project that abolishing the cap will cost £3.1 billion by 2029/30. We will re-instate the cap, delivering a significant saving – and restoring the principle of fairness – for hardworking taxpayers.

Source: HM Treasury, Budget 2025.

We will reform and strengthen the household benefit cap. We will change the work requirements so that all adults in a household who can work must work. We will also tighten the rules around exempting benefits.

At present households are exempt from the cap if any adult is found not fit to work; if someone in the household is in receipt of another exempting benefit; or if the adults in the household earn £881 a month after tax. This is the equivalent of 16 hours a week at the minimum wage, potentially between two people. We will no longer exempt from the cap households where there is a non-working adult who could be working. People in receipt of Carer’s Allowance will not be expected to work. In order to incentivise work, we will require every capable adult in the household to work at least 16 hours a week. Where there is only one person who can work, they will need to work the equivalent of 16 hours a week – the same as at present.

We will also change the way that the cap works. At present if any member of a family receives certain benefits the whole household is exempted. There are 16 different exempting benefits. For instance, if your child gets DLA, or your partner gets PIP, then the whole family is fully exempt from the cap. We will change this so that instead of exempting whole families, these specific benefits are excluded from the calculation of capped income, but other, non-exempted benefits that the household claims will remain capped.

Moving from exempting whole families to exempting certain benefits from the cap calculation would bring substantially more of the 1.9 million households with benefit income above the cap level into scope. These numbers are also likely to rise due to routine benefit uprating and the abolition of the two-child benefit cap.

Official statistics from 2024/5 show that there are more than 450,000 households which both received more than the applicable Household Benefit Cap from Universal Credit alone and which earned less than the relevant threshold of National Minimum Wage (NMW) work. However, some of these will be in receipt of Carer’s Allowance, which is why we have conservatively reduced this estimate to 400,000. This figure is multiplied by the pre-April 2026 average impact of £250 per month per capped household to reach approximately £1 billion in savings.

Sources: DWP, Family Resources Survey (Stat-Xplore); DWP, Benefit Cap: Number of Households capped to May 2026.

The Conservatives will end VAT reliefs for lease payments paid by claimants for cars with no adaptations and for Motability when it resells its fleet. We will remove these additional reliefs, saving £1 billion, while exempting wheelchair-accessible cars and adapted ones. Motability confirms that 95,000 of its cars are wheelchair-accessible vehicles, or adapted vehicles. This is 11 per cent of the 850,000 Motability cars (Motability factsheet, January 2025). Removing these vehicles from new VAT charges will result in projected savings of £1 billion once a margin for error is accounted for.

Sources: Motability Operations, Key facts about the Motability Scheme; Motability Foundation, Setting the record straight on adapted vehicles.

We will increase investment in efforts to counter fraud and prevention and widen the Targeted Case Review to encompass other benefits that show an increasing rate of fraud.

Present efforts to reduce fraud have shown an excellent 3-to-1 recoupment of initial investment. To support the expansion of the Case Review, we will invest an additional £550 million a year to review other benefits, starting with those such as PIP and DLA which have shown increasing levels of overpayments. We project that this investment, based on past performance, will save £1.01 billion a year on average across a five-year parliament. This proposal is deliberately conservative, acknowledging diminishing returns from fraud and error recovery as efforts expand.

Sources: DWP, Fraud and error in the benefit system: FYE 2026 estimates; NAO, Tackling benefit overpayments due to fraud and error.

We will restore a fundamental contributory principle to Universal Credit. After 6 months of unemployment, the claimant’s Standard Allowance will be reduced by 30 per cent to a new Subsistence Allowance paid onto a ‘Back to Work’ card that will not permit spending on alcohol, cigarettes, gambling or cash withdrawals.

Claimants who have worked previously will remain at the full Standard Allowance rate for longer than 6 months, with the length of time determined by their number of years of National Insurance contributions.

Under our plans all Universal Credit claimants will be automatically entitled, without any eligibility requirements, to 6 months of the current Standard Allowance from the point of beginning a claim. After this initial 6-month period, to be eligible for the continued Standard Allowance claimants must demonstrate sufficient work history. Claimants will receive an additional year of full rate Standard Allowance for every two years of work they have previously completed in which they paid NICs. Those without sufficient prior work history will be transitioned onto a new Subsistence Allowance, set at 70 per cent of the Standard Allowance. Subsistence Allowance will be provided through a benefit card that restricts spending and prevents claimants from purchasing over-18 age-restricted products and making cash withdrawals.

This policy will only apply to Universal Credit claimants judged capable of work and placed into the ‘searching for work’ category. UC claimants who are not in this category – for example because they are already working or are classed as Limited Capability for Work and Work Related Activity (LCWRA) – will be exempt from this policy and remain on the full rate. Similarly, claimants on Subsistence Allowance who begin to work sufficiently will be restored to the full rate.

If a claimant returns to work but later experiences another period of unemployment the system resets after 2 years and a further 6 month ‘free’ grace period will be provided. If less than two years has passed, claimants will move directly to the Subsistence Allowance unless they have sufficient prior contributions. Contributory years may only be used once and do not reset, although additional periods of employment can add further years of coverage. This policy will apply to both current and future claimants, but on introduction, all claimants will receive a full six months at the existing rate, regardless of the duration of their ongoing claim.

Whilst some will continue to have no work requirements as a result of sickness, our proposed reforms to sickness and disability benefits will tighten eligibility and result in a greater proportion being in the ‘searching for work’ cohort. We have therefore adjusted the 40 per cent of relevant Universal Credit claimants in our model to 30 per cent to account for this.

On this basis we assume that 30 per cent of those claiming Universal Credit Standard Allowance for over 6 months would not meet the contributory eligibility requirements and would move onto Subsistence Allowance, impacting 350,000 claimants. The Government’s outturn tables project that Universal Credit caseload will remain broadly static until 2029/30, but the increases to the rate of the Standard Allowance in following years will increase the overall saving.

Moving this cohort onto a Subsistence Allowance rate would save £538 million a year, even in the complete absence of the dynamic pro-work effects we are hoping to create. Where people move more quickly off welfare into work and pay tax, the savings could be much larger.

Source: DWP, People on Universal Credit, Stat-Xplore.