The suicide of Tamara Jade Logon after her disability benefits were wrongly withdrawn is the latest in a series of deaths in which coroners have cited DWP failings, exposing a pattern of preventable harm, says DYLAN MURPHY
A DAMNING coroner’s report has concluded that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) played a significant role in the suicide of a vulnerable young woman, Tamara Jade Logon.
This case is the latest in a deeply disturbing pattern of deaths where the DWP’s actions have been officially cited as a contributing factor, intensifying calls for a full independent inquiry into the department’s systemic safeguarding failures.
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It is time to end the culture of secrecy and unaccountability that has allowed these tragedies to occur under both Tory and Labour governments.
The Labour government must live up to its obligations under international human rights law and take action to stop the continuing abuses committed by the DWP against disabled people.
The labour movement must help build a social security system based on dignity, trust and compassion, and ensure that the DWP is held responsible for its duty of care to every single claimant. The lives of the most vulnerable members of our society depend on it.
Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership is intensely relaxed about assaulting those least able to defend themselves – the very poorest and most vulnerable.
Many Labour MPs still believe these are the wrong reforms and will vote against the bill next week. Photograph: Alishia Abodunde/Getty Images
Sir Keir Starmer’s plans risk creating lasting inequality – and alienating the very voters who once believed his party stood for their protection
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The upshot is that existing claimants would be protected, but future ones face tougher rules. Two people with identical conditions could receive support, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, that differs by up to £6,560 a year – purely due to timing. This, we’re told, is compassion. The savings – halved to £2.5bn a year – come by offloading the cost on to future claimants. MPs rightly fear this locks in a two-tier system that is deliberately harsher on disabled people.
Older Labour MPs will remember denouncing this very playbook. A decade ago, Iain Duncan Smith pioneered a slow, procedural tightening of welfare – hitting new claimants first, then reassessing the rest – precisely to defuse resistance. Labour opposed it then. Today, it is governing by the same method. It feels out of step with a post-pandemic Britain grappling with a cost of living crisis.
Many Labour MPs believe these are still the wrong reforms and will vote against the bill when it comes back to the House of Commons next week. Clearly, tightened eligibility and a two-tier system may exclude many who need support. If the government wants to raise money, it might ask a little more of those with the broadest shoulders – not those with mobility aids, care plans and the audacity to ask for a fair deal. If ministers truly believe they are acting decently, they should publish the impact assessment and be honest about the consequences.
A devastating new 44-page report reveals Labour’s cuts will push 400,000 into poverty and cost disabled people up to £10,000 annually, while the government refuses to make savings by cutting spending on war instead, writes Dr DYLAN MURPHY
THE Citizens’ Advice Bureau (CAB) has just issued a hard-hitting report entitled Pathways To Poverty, which condemns the government’s Pathways To Work green paper. This well-researched 44-page report totally undermines the many flimsy arguments put forward by the “red Tories” to justify their killer cuts.
The report goes through the effects of restricting Personal Independence Payment (PIP) eligibility, cutting the universal credit (UC) health element and making PIP daily living the gateway to UC health. As the CAB points out, over 1.6 million people, which is nearly half of those currently receiving the daily living element of PIP, stand to lose out with an average loss of £4,500 a year.
Its opening paragraph blasts Keir Starmer and company for their sham consultation over the £7 billion worth of proposed cuts: “By refusing to properly consult on its plan to cut billions from disability benefits, the government is choosing not to ask questions it doesn’t want the answers to.
“The cuts will have a devastating impact on disabled people (and their children), sending hundreds of thousands into poverty, and many more into deeper poverty. This will result from a series of arbitrary reforms that have been designed around savings targets rather than improving outcomes, inflicting hardship on people in ways that the government doesn’t yet fully understand.”
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As the CAB report notes: “A DWP survey of disability and incapacity benefit claimants found that 41 per cent of respondents were on a waiting list for treatment for their health problems, and 50 per cent who were currently out of work felt their ability to work was dependent on receiving treatment.”
Finally, the CAB report makes the point that cutting billions from disability benefits is a false economy as it will merely make many disabled people even more ill, dramatically increasing the demands on the NHS, social services, education and voluntary sector. Besides this, there will be a growing number of disabled people made homeless by these cuts, never mind the increase in the suicide rate which will inevitably follow.
The CAB report concludes with a call on Labour to abandon its cuts, which are a devastating attack on some of the most vulnerable people in our society: “The government must reconsider its current approach. We are calling on the government to cancel proposed cuts to disability benefits.
Keir Starmer confirms that he’s proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.Keir Starmer explains that he feels no shame or guilt benefitting personally from gifts from the rich and powerful while insisting on policies of severe austerity causing suffering and death.
(left to right) Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner clap their hands during the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool, September 22, 2024
NATIONAL Education Union (NEU) president Sarah Kilpatrick slammed Labour’s renewed austerity today, telling the NEU annual conference that Tory welfare cuts had killed her disabled father.
She accused ministers of “perpetuating and repeating the shameful pattern of punching-down and finger-pointing” by “balancing the books on the backs of the poor.”
On the first day of the conference in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, she described how her father had died at the age of 56 after being stripped of his disability benefits under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government.
She said that she had experienced poverty as a working-class child in Newcastle upon Tyne and was his carer for a number of years.
“As Iain Duncan Smith gleefully applauded the welfare cuts, I represented my father in a tribunal against the DWP [Department for Work and Pensions] decision to remove his disability benefits,” she told delegates.
“He’d had his gas cut off. Couldn’t afford groceries. His elderly mother was adding tins of food to her shopping to bulk up what I was buying for him, but he isolated himself further still.
“He lost a lot of weight during that time and never really recovered.”
In 2013, her father became one of an estimated 120,000 people who died as a result of the Tories’ austerity programme, she said.
“When Wes Streeting brags to the Tories across the benches that Labour have done what they never could and slashed the welfare bill, this is what they mean,” said Ms Kilpatrick.
“Let’s be clear. Nearly two decades of economic permacrisis has not been caused by disabled people.”
Nor has it been caused by the elderly, refugees, the trans community or children in poverty, she said.
Government cuts to disability benefits will disproportionately inflict suffering on women | Hollie Adams/WPA Pool/Getty Images
Cuts will push hundreds of thousands of women into poverty or force them out of workforce
While the staggering £5bn of planned cuts to disability benefits announced by chancellor Rachel Reeves at last week’s Spring Statement have rightly been the subject of much scrutiny, the disproportionate suffering they will inflict on women has been under-discussed both by politicians and the media.
The government’s own risk assessment found the cuts will push 250,000 adults and 50,000 children in the UK below the poverty line. Women, who are both more likely to be Disabled and more likely to be a carer for a loved one, will be worst affected.
Indeed, single Disabled women make up 44% of those due to lose out from the cuts, and face an average loss of £1,610 per year, the government’s Equality Impact Assessment found.
This demographic has already been significantly affected by austerity cuts to social security and public services since 2010. Such measures, taken together with tax changes, will cost Disabled women an average of £4,000 a year by 2028, according to an analysis that we at The Women’s Budget Group (WGB) published in September last year.
That means, for many Disabled women in the UK, Reeves’ latest cuts follow what has already been an 11% drop in their living standards over the past 15 years. Cutting their living standards further is unthinkable.
Women also make up the majority of the UK’s unpaid carers, who provide care and support to family members, friends, or neighbours. They, too, will be hit hard by the changes.
When a person receives the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) – a benefit to help with the extra costs incurred by long-term ill health or disability – their unpaid carer may be entitled to the Carer’s Allowance benefit. The government plans to reduce the number of people eligible for PIP, which in turn will reduce the number of people eligible for Carer’s Allowance.
A couple where one person loses PIP and the other therefore loses Carer’s Allowance could be over £12,000 worse off annually, according to calculations by anti-poverty charity The Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
Reeves failed to acknowledge this knock-on impact in her speech. Worse still, the Equality Impact Assessment of these changes that was published as the chancellor was still speaking, also made no reference to it (although these impacts were included in the distributional assessment published at the same time).
What’s more, restricting the eligibility for PIP may increase the number of unpaid carers if a Disabled or chronically ill person is no longer able to rely on the benefit to pay somebody to provide their care. This may force women who are currently just about managing to stay in work to reduce their hours or quit their jobs altogether to take on additional care duties for loved ones.
Forcing women out of the workforce in this manner is not only detrimental to their health and wellbeing, it directly undermines the government’s claim that the measures are necessary to reduce economic inactivity.
At the same time, cutting PIP may push some disabled people out of the labour market if they can no longer afford the adaptations and services that enable them to work.
Years of austerity have already weakened our economy and eroded our living standards, leaving us ill-prepared for economic shocks. Cutting vital social security and public services is not the path to improving living standards.
Ahead of the Spring Statement, the WBG, along with more than 40 women’s organisations across the UK, wrote an open letter to the chancellor highlighting the gendered nature of these cuts – and urging her to consider more equitable ways to raise revenue.
Rather than targeting some of the most vulnerable members of our society, the government should be looking into taxing those with the broadest shoulders in our society.
A 2% wealth tax on assets over £10m could raise up to £24bn a year – far exceeding the savings from the proposed disability benefit cuts. This measure has already been called for by Tax Justice UK, which campaigns for a fairer tax system, and Patriotic Millionaires UK, which describes itself as a nonpartisan network of British millionaires.
A wealth tax of this kind could be used for much-needed investment in the foundations of our economy, including our social infrastructure – from childcare and education to social care and local government services.
Moreover, it’s what the public wants. Some 77% would rather the government increase taxes on the very richest than cut public spending, according to recent polling by YouGov for Oxfam.
Investing in social security and public services is not just a cost, but an investment in our society and economy. By choosing to cut benefits instead of implementing a wealth tax, the Government is not just balancing numbers on a spreadsheet. It is making a political choice – one that will deepen inequality and harm those who are already struggling.
Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves wear the uniform of the rich and powerful. They have all had clothes bought for them by multi-millionaire Labour donor Lord Alli. CORRECTION: It appears that Rachel Reeves clothing was provided by Juliet Rosenfeld.Keir Starmer says that his Labour Party is intensely relaxed about assaulting the very poorest and most vulnerable.
