Lana Hempsall is a Policy Fellow at Onward, a County Councillor and founder and director of the Welfare Information Network, looking to raise awareness of the flaws and misuse of the welfare system.
The Government’s Right to Try regulations, which came into force on 30 April 2026, have been presented as a progressive step forward for disabled people and those with long-term health conditions.
The idea, on the surface, sounds reasonable: if you’re on disability benefits and want to test whether you can manage some form of work or volunteering, doing so won’t automatically trigger a reassessment of your award. But scratch beneath the surface, and it becomes clear that this policy is largely meaningless in practice — and that those who take it up may find themselves not empowered, but left to struggle.
And it is not even an original one.
The principle of Right to Try was conceived by the former Conservative Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride. To his credit, Stride recognised the need for a mechanism that would give disabled people the confidence to test their capacity for work without fear of losing their benefits. The problem was that the previous Conservative government ran out of time — the detail of how the scheme would actually work in practice was never properly resolved before they left office.
That, however, is where any sympathy for the current government ends.
Rather than picking up where Stride left off and doing the hard work of getting the regulations right, they have simply grabbed the idea off the shelf, rushed it into policy, and called it done. It is the worst kind of copy and paste job — borrowing the concept wholesale while showing no interest whatsoever in the one thing that actually matters: making it work. These problems are emblematic of Labour’s failure to devise any kind of effective welfare reform that could help millions of people get off benefits.
Worse still, whoever did the copying wasn’t paying attention. The fundamental problem is one of security — or rather, the lack of it. Anyone who depends on disability benefits to meet their basic needs lives with a level of financial precarity that most working people simply do not experience. Their benefits are not a top-up or a bonus; they are a lifeline. The prospect of losing them, or having them reduced, is not an abstract concern — it is an existential one. For these individuals, the question of whether to try working is not merely a matter of capability. It is a calculated risk against their financial survival.
And under these regulations, that risk remains uncomfortably high.
The government’s reassurance that work alone won’t “automatically” trigger a reassessment offers cold comfort when a reassessment can still be initiated almost immediately for a range of other reasons — including any perceived improvement in functional ability. For someone attempting paid work or volunteering for the first time in years, demonstrating any degree of capability could itself be interpreted as grounds for review. The protection offered is, in effect, paper-thin. This is what happens when a policy is adopted without any serious thought about how it would actually function in the real world.
For Right to Try to be genuinely meaningful, there needs to be a real and substantial moratorium on reassessments for those who take it up. A minimum of six months — during which a claimant cannot be called for reassessment simply as a consequence of having entered work or volunteering — would provide the breathing room that disabled people actually need. Six months is enough time to realistically gauge whether work is sustainable, to experience the inevitable setbacks that come with health conditions, and to make an informed decision about the future. It is not a radical ask; it is a basic condition for the policy to function as intended.
Without such a moratorium, disabled people are not going to take a leap of faith on the basis of assurances that offer so little concrete protection. The government cannot on one hand encourage people to test their capacity for work, and on the other leave them exposed to the very reassessment process they fear most. That is not empowerment. That is a trap dressed up as an opportunity.
The title of this policy promises people the right to try. What it actually delivers is the right to struggle. If ministers are serious about supporting disabled people into work, they must go back to these regulations and introduce the kind of robust, time-limited protection that would make Right to Try a genuine right — rather than an unfinished idea with someone else’s fingerprints on it.
Lana Hempsall is a Policy Fellow at Onward, a County Councillor and founder and director of the Welfare Information Network, looking to raise awareness of the flaws and misuse of the welfare system.
The Government’s Right to Try regulations, which came into force on 30 April 2026, have been presented as a progressive step forward for disabled people and those with long-term health conditions.
The idea, on the surface, sounds reasonable: if you’re on disability benefits and want to test whether you can manage some form of work or volunteering, doing so won’t automatically trigger a reassessment of your award. But scratch beneath the surface, and it becomes clear that this policy is largely meaningless in practice — and that those who take it up may find themselves not empowered, but left to struggle.
And it is not even an original one.
The principle of Right to Try was conceived by the former Conservative Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride. To his credit, Stride recognised the need for a mechanism that would give disabled people the confidence to test their capacity for work without fear of losing their benefits. The problem was that the previous Conservative government ran out of time — the detail of how the scheme would actually work in practice was never properly resolved before they left office.
That, however, is where any sympathy for the current government ends.
Rather than picking up where Stride left off and doing the hard work of getting the regulations right, they have simply grabbed the idea off the shelf, rushed it into policy, and called it done. It is the worst kind of copy and paste job — borrowing the concept wholesale while showing no interest whatsoever in the one thing that actually matters: making it work. These problems are emblematic of Labour’s failure to devise any kind of effective welfare reform that could help millions of people get off benefits.
Worse still, whoever did the copying wasn’t paying attention. The fundamental problem is one of security — or rather, the lack of it. Anyone who depends on disability benefits to meet their basic needs lives with a level of financial precarity that most working people simply do not experience. Their benefits are not a top-up or a bonus; they are a lifeline. The prospect of losing them, or having them reduced, is not an abstract concern — it is an existential one. For these individuals, the question of whether to try working is not merely a matter of capability. It is a calculated risk against their financial survival.
And under these regulations, that risk remains uncomfortably high.
The government’s reassurance that work alone won’t “automatically” trigger a reassessment offers cold comfort when a reassessment can still be initiated almost immediately for a range of other reasons — including any perceived improvement in functional ability. For someone attempting paid work or volunteering for the first time in years, demonstrating any degree of capability could itself be interpreted as grounds for review. The protection offered is, in effect, paper-thin. This is what happens when a policy is adopted without any serious thought about how it would actually function in the real world.
For Right to Try to be genuinely meaningful, there needs to be a real and substantial moratorium on reassessments for those who take it up. A minimum of six months — during which a claimant cannot be called for reassessment simply as a consequence of having entered work or volunteering — would provide the breathing room that disabled people actually need. Six months is enough time to realistically gauge whether work is sustainable, to experience the inevitable setbacks that come with health conditions, and to make an informed decision about the future. It is not a radical ask; it is a basic condition for the policy to function as intended.
Without such a moratorium, disabled people are not going to take a leap of faith on the basis of assurances that offer so little concrete protection. The government cannot on one hand encourage people to test their capacity for work, and on the other leave them exposed to the very reassessment process they fear most. That is not empowerment. That is a trap dressed up as an opportunity.
The title of this policy promises people the right to try. What it actually delivers is the right to struggle. If ministers are serious about supporting disabled people into work, they must go back to these regulations and introduce the kind of robust, time-limited protection that would make Right to Try a genuine right — rather than an unfinished idea with someone else’s fingerprints on it.