FEARS mounted yesterday that cruel Con-Dem ministers are poised to slash social security for the sick and disabled in a bid to bring down benefits costs.

The BBC reported on leaked government documents detailing plans to hack back the employment and support allowance (ESA) from £28.75 a week to just 50p for those deemed “ready for work.”

A Whitehall spokesman would only say that it was not yet “policy.”

But policy-makers have previously expressed anger that too many people had passed its tick-box work capability assessments and qualified for the payments of £101.15 a week — compared to £72.40 for over-25 jobseekers.

Disabled People Against the Cuts co-founder Linda Burnip said fresh cuts plans “wouldn’t surprise me at all.”

Hundreds of thousands of disabled people had already been shunted from the now defunct incapacity benefit onto lower jobseekers’ allowance in a Tory bid to save cash, she said.

Even those on the higher ESA were “having to choose between heating and eating,” added Ms Burnip.

“It’s still a very small amount of money for anybody to live on, but particularly people who have extra costs.

“To cut it down further is going to push more people into really abject poverty.”

She accused the government of being more interested in destroying the welfare state than helping people in need.

“You can’t decide in advance how many people are going to be disabled or are going to be ill — it doesn’t work like that,” she said.

“Do they expect someone who has got a long-term health condition to wait for somebody else to die before they can be recognised?”

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