People convicted of specified serious violent or sexual offences and detained directly in psychiatric hospitals would lose access to four benefits under regulations laid before the UK Parliament on October 20.
The restrictions are not yet in force. The Department for Work and Pensions said they require parliamentary approval and are intended to begin in early 2027.
The proposal covers Universal Credit, Pension Credit, State Pension and Employment and Support Allowance. It extends restrictions already applying to prisoners transferred to hospital to qualifying offenders placed under hospital orders following conviction.
It does not remove benefits from ordinary civil psychiatric patients. The department also distinguishes people on remand, awaiting trial or unfit to plead, and those whose offences fall outside the specified categories. Hospital treatment would continue.
The change therefore turns on the legal basis for detention and the offence, rather than psychiatric admission alone. It would narrow an existing difference in benefit eligibility between two groups of convicted patients without placing every person receiving secure mental-health care under the same rule.
