Labour declares war on disabled people

Is this really what Labour supporters voted for?

There was supposed to be a consensus which existed within Labour. It went like this: “We may not agree on the same means, but we have the same ends.”

Above all else, the primary end was improving the living standards of those who struggle most.

Well, Keir Starmer’s Labour government has just declared war on some of the most vulnerable people who live in this country - that is, disabled people.

According to leaked proposals to ITV, there will be cuts of £6bn to the social security budget, and £5bn will come from an attack on Personal Independence Payments - that is, PIP. That’s the main disability benefit for adults of working age, providing support of between £1,500 and £9,610 a year.

The eligibility criteria for receiving it will change so that some people with disabilities and long-term illnesses will no longer receive these payments at all. As I’ll show, many Britons who need help are already denied it. The government also reportedly intend to freeze PIP payments next year, rather than increasing them in line with inflation. That means a real terms cut for people with disabilities.

There has been a longstanding widespread campaign of demonisation against people claiming benefits, portraying them as scroungers, as people who aren’t really eligible. Well, this government policy will cut the amount of support being given to disabled people who nobody disputes need support.

As ITV point out:

Even those with extreme disabilities in the unfit to work category are likely to lose money under new government plans.

PIP isn’t an out-of-work benefit - it goes to people who are disabled or have long-term illnesses who are in or out of work to help cover the extra costs imposed by disability or ill health so that they can live as independent and fulfilling lives as possible - for example, paying for care or mobility needs.

As it is, last year it was reported in the Observer that the government was rejected more than 40% of applications for PIP from people with multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, and arthritis, and one in four applications from amputees, along with other thousands of applicants from people with cancer, post-traumatic stress disorder and emphysema. They even reject 30% of applicants with Huntingdon’s disease and Parkinson’s.

The evidence also shows that 70% of applicants who appeal the decision not to award them PIP win on appeal - but only after going through a long and stressful process, where they are denied support for that period.

Here’s another point. As disability charity Scope point out, even after taking PIP into account:

“the average disabled household (including at least one disabled adult or child) faces extra costs of £975 per month.”

What about so-called benefit fraud? The government's own figures show that it is just 0.2% - in other words, it’s almost non existent.

And what about the existing plight of disabled people? As Shani Dhanda, a disability activist, put it on ITV’s Good Morning Britain:

Nearly half of everyone that already lives in poverty is a disabled person or a carer of a disabled person. If we're going to cut support to people that need it most its going to push more people into extreme poverty, with the backdrop of the Assisted Dying Bill.

So this will drive vulnerable people who are already in hardship and poverty deeper into misery. And it’s a Labour government which is doing that.

In response to these briefings, Labour minister, Alex Norris, resorted to a line which makes my blood boil: “The clue is in the name for me with the Labour Party, the party of work.”

This is frequently a sentence trotted out by right-wing Labour figures when they want to paint Tory rhetoric and Tory policies with a coat of red paint.

Labour is called Labour because it was established as the political wing of the labour movement - that is, the trade unions. The idea was that trade unions could only do so much in representing the interests of working people - which was using the threat of strike action to raise wages and improve terms and conditions. As well as that, Labour’s founders believed, you needed a party which would implement policies at national and local level to improve the lot of those that trade unions existed to represent. It wasn’t supposed to be a party which glorified work.

It certainly didn’t mean demonising people out of work. After he was first elected, in his maiden speech, Keir Hardie, the first leader of the Labour party, referred to “4,000,000 of the inhabitants of these islands are without visible means of subsistence, not because of any fault on their part”. Labour’s mission was supposed to mean representing working people and all those suffering hardship. That’s why the post-war Labour government of Clement Attlee introduced the welfare state, offering financial protection in the event of unemployment and ill health.

But to be clear, Personal Independence Payment is not an out of work benefit. Indeed it partly exists to support people so they can work.

As disability charity Scope put it:

Life costs a lot more when you’re disabled. Thousands of pounds for a wheelchair or home adaptations. Sky high energy bills because without enough heating you’re in constant agony.

They note that we’ve had years of inflation driving up prices - and given disabled people are so much more likely to be in hardship, that has already hurt them before this latest attack.

But despite that, Liz Kendall, who is the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions - and along with Rachel Reeves is the architect of these cuts - was asked if her department had done an impact assessment of how many people would be affected by these cuts. She refused to answer.

It would be scandalous if the government has not done an actual assessment into how desperately vulnerable people will be affected by this gruesome slashing away at their support. Incredible stuff.

Here’s an important point to be made. This wing of the Labour party for years cried and cried about being called ‘Red Tories’ by people on the internet. They acted as though this was hideous, despicable, outrageous abuse. Rachel Reeves, who was interviewed by Nick Robinson in 2021, appeared to be on the verge of crying when ‘Red Tory’ jibes were brought up.

Yet now they are about to impose an attack on disabled people which is even more cruel than the Tories themselves. It should be noted that when the David Cameron-George Osborne government was waging war on benefit claimants, it was in the context of anti-“scrounger” public hysteria which doesn’t even exist today.

Those on the left who believed in outrageous ideas like taxing the rich so we can invest in public services and the welfare state have been browbeaten and told: just because the Labour party isn’t exactly what you want, it’s not pure enough for you, you’re determined to let the most vulnerable people suffer because of your ideological purity!

As Labour plans to drive vulnerable people further into misery, what will those people say now?

This Labour government is a government which has attacked vulnerable pensioners, has kept the two child benefit cap which drives many children into poverty, including many in working households, which has refused to hike just taxes on the rich, which continues to facilitate Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and is now attacking pensioners.

This underlines why we need to build an alternative. That means the Green Party forming an alliance with independent candidates or another left-wing party - so that at the next election we can get a hung Parliament and we can get rid of Britain’s stupid electoral system in favour of proportional representation - so that people feel they can vote according to their conscience.

Otherwise Labour will just keep on making vulnerable people in this country and abroad suffer. And if you’re someone who believes in justice, there has to be an alternative to that.