How can you vote Labour after this?
Keir Starmer to unveil drastic disability benefit cuts despite opposition
Changes could deny benefits to people who need help to wash or to remember to go to the toilet
Keir Starmer will unveil drastic cuts to disability benefits on Tuesday, despite deep opposition from Labour MPs and poverty campaigners, and warnings from economists against making kneejerk savings to hit fiscal targets.
In the government’s most controversial move yet, it will announce a package of changes expected to affect some of the UK’s most severely disabled people.
The measures could deny benefits for people who need some help washing themselves, preparing food or remembering to go to the toilet, as ministers attempt to overhaul the welfare system and balance the books.
However, Downing Street has denied the plans to cut between £5bn and £6bn from the welfare bill were purely the result of the UK’s difficult fiscal situation, arguing there is a “moral and economic case” for reforming benefits.
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Article continues at https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/mar/17/keir-starmer-to-unveil-drastic-disability-benefit-cuts-despite-opposition
Disabled people on PIP ‘will not cope’ if support is cut, charity warns
ALMOST two-thirds of disabled people on Personal Independence Payments (PIP) “will not cope” without it, a charity has warned, amid reports that the government will reduce the benefit.
Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall is expected to unveil reforms aimed at reducing welfare costs that ministers have described as “unsustainable.”
Reports suggest that PIP, the main benefit for working-age adults both in and out of work, could be frozen rather than increased in line with inflation, delivering a real-terms cut for 3.6 million claimants.
A new analysis from Sense has found that 38 per cent of PIP recipients with complex needs are already behind on energy bills.
Almost half — 46 per cent — are struggling to afford essential costs such as council tax and water, while 41 per cent are living in debt due to benefits failing to cover the cost of essentials like food.
Fifty-eight per cent of those polled reported significant ongoing extra costs due to disability and 53 per cent said their PIP payments were insufficient to cover those expenses.
Sense chief executive James Watson-O’Neill said PIP “exists because living with a disability means facing higher costs, from increased energy bills to specialised equipment and specific diets.”
“These additional expenses won’t disappear if eligibility is tightened. It will only plunge more disabled people into poverty.
“Making it harder to access benefits won’t help disabled people find jobs either. It will only deepen the struggle.”
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Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/disabled-people-on-pip-will-not-cope-if-support-cut-charity-warns
Momentum launches campaign to get Labour MPs to vote down government welfare cuts
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/momentum-launches-campaign-get-labour-mps-vote-down
LEFT-WING campaign group Momentum has begun lobbying Labour MPs to block cuts to welfare spending.
A Commons vote is expected after the government’s proposals to reduce spending on benefits sparked an angry backlash among Labour’s grassroots.
Sir Keir Starmer, who has described the benefits system as the “worst of all worlds,” was jeered at this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions as he insisted that Labour had a duty to reduce social security costs.
Labour MPs urged him to “provide compassion” to those who cannot work, stressing that disabled people have become “frightened” after hearing their party use the “language of tough choices.”
Ministers have already pledged to cut £3 billion from the welfare budget over three years and next week are expected to announce in a green paper that billions more will be axed from the main disability benefit, the personal independence payment (PIP) and funding to help those with long-term illness to return to work.
Cutting PIP could push 700,000 disabled people into poverty, disability charities have warned.
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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/momentum-launches-campaign-get-labour-mps-vote-down
The cuts agenda: disabled people in Labour’s sights
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/cuts-agenda-disabled-people-labour’s-sights
Far from addressing the causes of ill-health and disability, Starmer, Reeves and Kendall are committed to unleashing more misery for disabled people, argues Dr DYLAN MURPHY
In 2016 the UN Committee for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities conducted an investigation into the treatment of disabled people in Britain.
It produced a damning report, which concluded that disabled people in this country faced systematic discrimination on multiple levels.
In 2024, following the submission of evidence by Disabled People Against Cuts and other disability rights groups, the UN investigated Britain for a second time.
In late April the UN committee for disabled people issued a 14-page report which concluded that Britain “has failed to take all appropriate measures to address grave and systematic violations of the human rights of persons with disabilities and has failed to eliminate the root causes of inequality and discrimination.”
It also called on Britain to take measures to prevent disabled people on benefits from killing themselves. At the UN committee hearing in March 2024 it noted how hundreds of disabled people had killed themselves due to sanctions and other repressive measures of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), which really should be called the Department for War on the Poor.
Since this UN report Labour has been elected with a landslide majority. Yet in the many Bills announced for the new parliament not one addresses the serious issues raised by the United Nations.
Sadly, both Liz Kendall, new boss of the DWP, and Rachel Reeves the Chancellor, between them have made it clear that people on sickness benefits are a burden on our society and that the money spent on sick people claiming universal credit, employment support allowance (ESA) and personal independence payments (PIP) could be better spent on more “important things” in our society. They have repeated reactionary Tory propaganda which the UN cites as a reason for a spike in disability hate crime which is massively under reported and rarely investigated by the police.
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Original article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/cuts-agenda-disabled-people-labour’s-sights