In the days after the budget, the headlines were dominated by talk of Rachel Reeves’s “tax and spend” bonanza. The message was clear: austerity is officially over. When there was concern about squeezed incomes, it was solely for workers. As the Mail front page put it: “Reeves’ £40bn tax bombshell for Britain’s strivers”. Almost a week later, there has still barely been a word about the policy set to hit the group long scapegoated as Britain’s skivers: the billions of pounds’ worth of benefit cuts for disabled people.
Making up just a couple of lines in a 77-minute speech, you’d have been forgiven for dozing past Reeves’ blink-and-you’d-miss-it bombshell. With a record number of Britons off work with long-term illness, the government will need to “reduce the benefits bill”, she said, before noting ministers had “inherited” the Conservatives’ plans to reform the work capability assessment (WCA). That plan, let’s not forget, was to take up to £4,900 a year each from 450,000 people who are too sick or disabled to work – a move that the Resolution Foundation says would “degrade living standards” for families already on some of the lowest incomes in the country.
That’s on top of Tory proposals to tighten eligibility for personal independence payments (Pip) – which Labour has been consulting on since the election – that would push the cuts to a steep £3bn.
“We will deliver those savings as part of our fundamental reforms to the health and disability benefits system that the work and pensions secretary [Liz Kendall] will bring forward,” Reeves went on. It turns out austerity isn’t over for everyone.
It’s no wonder that many disabled people – and charities and journalists for that matter – thought this meant Labour would implement the outgoing Tory policies. In fact, the government has no such plan. When I spoke to the Department for Work and Pensions, it confirmed it will make the same “savings” the last government committed to – but it cannot as yet say how those savings will be made.
A spokesperson confirmed to me that the WCA needs to be “reformed or replaced as part of a proper plan to genuinely support disabled people into work – bringing down the benefits bill and ensuring we continue to deliver the savings set out by the previous government. But these sorts of changes shouldn’t be made in haste. That’s why we’re taking the time to review this in the round before setting out next steps on our approach.” When I pressed, they added that changes to the WCA – whatever they may be – will come into effect in early 2025.
There is something faintly ludicrous about the government announcing billions of pounds of cuts to disability benefits before working out how it is going to do it, akin to the Child Catcher wielding a big net and not caring who it is he traps. It is right that the WCA – long known to be a dangerously faulty assessment – is consigned to the scrapheap. But “reform” should not mean less funding, and reducing funding should not be the purpose of reform.
Much like when George Osborne aimed to cut the disability benefits bill by a fifth, “welfare reform” based on arbitrary cost-cutting says the quiet part out loud: benefits won’t be awarded based on who needs them – just on what they cost. It is social security by spreadsheet, severing the social contract that promises the state will be there in times of sickness and disability, and adding a footnote that says, “but only if we can afford it”. That last week’s budget revealed huge investment for infrastructure at the same time as disability benefit cuts exposes how even the affordability argument is largely fabricated. There is money to fix hospital buildings but not to feed a nurse bedbound with long Covid.
The financial impact of such “reform” on those relying on benefits is well established but the psychological toll should not be underestimated. Since gaining power, Labour has drip-fed the rightwing press sound bites and op-eds on potential benefit cuts, leaving news outlets to speculate wildly for clicks. The budget’s half-announcement has only added to the confusion and fear, issuing vague dog whistles of “fraud” and high “benefit bills” while forcing millions of people to wait months to find out if they will lose the money they need to live.
It is not simply that such delays create uncertainty for those affected, they also create space and legitimacy for a politics of resentment and prejudice. In the days after the budget, Reform MP Rupert Lowe took to X to list some of the health conditions people receive Pip for and pronounce to his followers which ones were least-deserving. Hours later, former Sunday Times political editor Isabel Oakeshott went on TalkTV to call disability benefit recipients “parasites”.
It would be easy to say this stuff is repulsive – it is – but it is also a very real symptom of years of stagnating wages, high bills, pressured public services and a media ecosystem that too often distorts and divides. Crudely, these conditions do two things to a population that we are already seeing fester in Britain: they make some people sick and reliant on the safety net – and they turn other people against them.
By the end of this parliament, the Office for Budget Responsibility says, half of all claims for the main benefit will be on health grounds, as the impact of NHS delays, a pandemic and increasing poverty continues to bite. As Labour mulls over what it will cost our society to provide this support, it might be worth considering what it would cost us not to. That particular price cannot be measured in bills and debt but is altogether more ruinous: a nation doomed to repeat the same mistakes, growing ever meaner and colder towards those who have less.
That Kemi Badenoch – a small-state zealot whose culture war targets include autistic children – is now leader of the opposition only reinforces the urgency of a Labour government that stokes the best, not worst, of our instincts. By its own timeline, the party now has a few months to hunt for its conscience. Disabled people can only hope it finds it.
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Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist
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In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email [email protected] or [email protected]. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 800-273-8255 or chat for support. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org