Rumours and threats of deep cuts have been circling, and now the truth is out. In what they are calling ‘the largest welfare reforms for a generation’, Labour has announced £5 billion worth of disability benefits cuts by 2030.
Just last week, Starmer stood in Parliament and insisted there would be no return to austerity – yet this £5 billion cut is the most severe attack on welfare provision since 2015.
Not even Tory MP Ian Duncan Smith went this far in his time as the hated Work and Pensions Secretary, resigning from the role in 2016 over “indefensible” planned cuts to disability benefits which were ultimately kicked into the long grass.
Disability groups and charities have been quick to denounce the government’s decision ‘immoral’ and ‘devastating’, and rightly so. These attacks are set to ravage the lives of millions of the most vulnerable people in our society.
NEW: Today’s announced reforms to disability and incapacity benefits represent a fundamental change to how the state supports people out of work.
As a whole they’re expected to save over £5 billion by 2029–30, the biggest cut to welfare in any fiscal event since 2015:
[THREAD] pic.twitter.com/wmG00WYKG7
— Institute for Fiscal Studies (@TheIFS) March 18, 2025
Budget responsibility?
Outrageously, Liz Kendall, the Welfare and Pensions secretary, has tried to give what is a death sentence for many, a positive spin. Labour ministers backing these cuts have spoken about giving people ‘dignity’ and saving them from being ‘trapped on benefits’.
In reality, the move was carried out by Starmer’s ‘financially responsible’ cabinet having been alarmed by the eye watering projection for future spending on disability benefits. Set to increase from £48.5 billion to £75.7 billion by 2029-30.
Conveniently, this absolutely had nothing to do with suggested increases in the defence budget which were announced last week.
A few days ago Starmer announced a £6bn increase in defence spending. They are taking it from the disabled. pic.twitter.com/ZH7VcRWVIc
— Jorge Martin ☭ (@marxistJorge) March 19, 2025
Such projections apparently brought out their more ‘charitable’ side and their desire to ‘incentivise’ Universal Credit (UC) claimants to go back to work, especially those who receive a UC health issue ‘top-up’.
Liz Kendall announced she is looking to scrap the top-up altogether and move people over to receiving a Personal Independence Payment (Pip) which covers additional costs from being disabled.
Current estimates suggest that this change would leave claimants roughly £40 a week worse off. Even if claimants are moved over, Pip itself is not being spared in Labour’s planned massacre of the welfare system.
Eligibility criteria for Pip is set to be tightened significantly, with more frequent reassessments of eligibility for all but the ‘most disabled’.
Who exactly falls within Labour’s category of the ‘most’ disabled remains a mystery.
Currently, it appears that people who cannot cook a simple meal unassisted, but can heat up food in a microwave, will no longer be eligible for Pip payments at all. Neither will those who need assistance with getting in and out of the shower, putting on trousers, or using the toilet.
The Labour Party is disgusting.
Billions for bombs. 💣
Billions in offshore tax havens 🏝️
Yet this is what they are doing to the most vulnerable people in society pic.twitter.com/kCRSRqIS53— Ravi Mistry (@RaVz94) March 18, 2025
This is a disgusting indictment of the state of British society today, and makes Liz Kendall’s claim that this is all in the interest of disabled people’s ‘dignity’ all the more hollow.
Pathway to poverty
The Resolution Foundation warned yesterday that these vicious attacks will leave an estimated 1.2 million people £4,200 to £6,300 poorer a year by 2029-30. Many who will be impacted have said they will be forced back to food banks, or skipping meals entirely.
It is already the case that 8.6 million of the 14.9 million people living in poverty in the UK are in families that include a disabled person, a report by the Social Metrics Commission found.
And in fact, Carers UK estimated last year that if every one of the 5.8 million unpaid carers in the UK – 1.2 million of which live in poverty – decided to stop caring and join the workforce, it would cost the state £184 billion a year.
To make up for the £5 billion in cuts, Liz Kendall has kindly promised the DWP will be spending an extra £1 billion on employment support. This budget will look to cover “tailored and personalised support to help people on the pathway to work.”
Interestingly, in the very same speech she noted that benefits claims are up to four times higher in places “that were decimated in the ‘80s and ‘90s” and where consequently “economic demand is weakest”.
For this government, the question of how disabled people being denied benefits are expected to apply for jobs that don’t exist is a problem for another day!
‘Better off’ working
Scandalously, Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden, when asked, even went so far as to deny that the cuts were about saving money. Instead, he claimed they were “intended to fix a broken system”, freeing people from benefits who would be “better off returning to work.”
The question that the over a million people who are now facing complete financial desperation will be asking is: better off for who?
Better for Labour’s desperate attempts to balance the books, certainly! But the reality is that for many, it is working in Britain which has made them so sick in the first place.
Poor jobs; low pay; long hours; increasing the retirement age; social isolation and a growing mental health crisis; an enormous NHS backlog – all of these have all contributed to the situation today, with Britain becoming the literal ‘sick man of Europe’.
Yet when questioned, Sir Starmer doubled down, stating he feels these cuts are in line with “Labour’s values” and the benefits system as it stands is “morally indefensible”.
‘Not a Labour thing to do’?
Even before the announcement was officially made, Labour MPs Diane Abbott and Clive Lewis had spoken out against the cuts, stating this was “not a Labour thing to do” and not “the kind of action a Labour government takes.”
Sadly, this flies in the face of the facts: as Starmer himself said, this is exactly a thing for Labour to do.
This is precisely the kind of action the Labour government has been taking since getting into power nine months ago on the promise of no austerity. These latest attacks go hand in hand with their programme to ‘get Britain working’.
In an interview with Times Radio, Stephen Timms, the Social Security and Disability minister, even refused to deny the possibility more cuts would be made in the future. “Who knows what will happen in the next five years?” he said blithely.
The Green Party has been quick to put forward their alternative: taxing the wealt
hiest, thereby placing the weight of the welfare bill on the broadest shoulders. Diane Abbott, offering the same alternative, suggested this could raise £24 billion a year.
Communists are not opposed to the wealth hoarded at the top of society being used for social good. But we must also tell the truth. Under capitalism, particularly in times of crisis like today, this is a pipe dream.
Rachel Reeves already tried a similar approach by raising taxes on businesses in the autumn budget. Big businesses grew hostile in response, making cuts to jobs and in some cases even threatening to stop investing further in Britain.
While he was lying about the cuts not being about saving money, McFadden admitted, “I don’t think you can, in the end, tax and borrow your way out of the need to reform the state.”
By accepting the logic of capitalism, the only solution Labour can pursue is to attack state spending – devastating cuts like these are only the tip of the iceberg for workers under Starmer’s Labour.
Labour has declared war. The same old calls for ‘tax the rich’ are not enough. A serious response would involve the labour movement standing up against all the cuts that have been announced – on winter fuel allowance, refusing to scrap the two child benefit cap, and more.
This requires a serious confrontation with the Labour government, that the unions so far have been unwilling to engage with.
We know that enough money exists in society for everyone, including the most vulnerable, to have a dignified life. But we cannot tax it away from the wealthy – it must be expropriated.
