How will changes to disability benefits affect NI?
PA MediaThe UK government set out plans aimed at cutting spending on health and disability benefits on Tuesday.
Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall announced it would become harder to qualify for Personal Independence Payment (Pip), the main disability benefit.
People will need to score a minimum of four points in one category to qualify for the daily living element of Pip.
The mobility component of Pip will not be affected.
What is Pip?
Pip is a benefit for people under state pension age who need help with daily activities or getting around, due to a long-term illness or disability.
It can be claimed by people who are in work as well as those out of work.
It is not means tested so income, savings or other assets don't affect eligibility or the amount someone can receive.
It has two components, one for daily living and one for mobility. The maximum weekly payment is £184.30.
Will any cuts have to apply in Northern Ireland?
Legal responsibility for social security is almost entirely devolved to Stormont so local ministers have the powers to make their own rules on Pip or any other part of the welfare system.
In practice NI has nearly always mirrored what happens in the rest of the UK.
That is because the UK Treasury will not directly cover the cost of a more generous system in NI. Instead the money has to found from within the Stormont budget.
This currently happens in a limited way in the wake of Conservative/ Liberal Democrat cuts imposed in 2012.
Stormont ministers eventually agreed to mitigate the impact of some those cuts.
In the next financial year those mitigations are forecast to cost just over £47m.
If Stormont ministers wanted to introduce further mitigations for changes to Pip they would have to find the money by making savings elsewhere or raising more revenue.
How many people in NI get Pip?
The most recent figures, from November 2024, suggest just under 218,000 people in NI were receiving Pip.
The figures, from Stormont's Department for Communities, show that about 104,000 of those claimants were aged 55 and older.
At the other end of the age distribution there were just over 18,000 16-24 year olds getting Pip.
Almost a quarter of claimants lived in the Belfast local government district.
The most common reason for receiving Pip was "anxiety and depressive disorders" which accounted for almost 52,000 claims. The next most common condition was arthritis, featuring in around 17,000 claims.
How many people are likely to be affected?
The Resolution Foundation think tank says that to save £5bn by making it harder to qualify for the daily living component of Pip would mean between 800,000 and 1.2m people across the UK losing Pip payments.
On a crude per-capita basis that suggests between 23,000 and 35,000 people in Northern Ireland would lose out.
The IFS think tank is sceptical about Pip savings saying "previous governments attempting similar reforms have found that they have saved much less than hoped".
It sees most of the hoped for savings coming from changes to the health element of Universal Credit.
It estimates 2.4m families will lose out, again using a crude per capita calculation that suggests about 70,000 families in Northern Ireland could be impacted.
How many people in NI don't work due to sickness and disability?
Working age people who are not in work and not looking for work are described as being economically inactive.
As well as people who are sick or disabled this group includes students, early retirees and unpaid careers.
At the end of last year there were around 318,000 economically inactive people in NI. Of that 118,000, or 37%, were long term sick.
NI had an overall economic inactivity rate of almost 27%, compared to the UK average of 21.5%.
A high rate of economic inactivity is a long-term feature of NI's economy.
Has the situation been getting worse?
Since 2019 the number of people in NI who are inactive due to sickness has increased by a third, according to an Ulster University Economic Policy centre analysis, of official data.
It found that, since 2022, long-term sickness levels in NI have reached record highs, "to the point that over one in ten (11%) of all working age individuals are economically inactive due to ill health."
A separate analysis of people classified as disabled under the 2010 Equality Act looked at the main reported health conditions.
It found that at the end of 2021 almost one in five (19%) disabled people reported specifically suffering from depression, bad nerves or anxiety, increasing from 10% a decade earlier.
This is mirrored at the UK average level where depression, bad nerves or anxiety increased from 7% of people with disabilities in 2011 to 18% in 2021.