Rumours and threats of deep cuts have been circling for some time – 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 as ‘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 current Welfare and Pensions secretary, has tried to give a positive spin to what amounts to a death sentence for many.
Labour ministers backing these cuts have spoken about giving people ‘dignity’ and saving them from being ‘trapped on benefits’.
In reality, this move is being carried out by Starmer’s ‘financially responsible’ cabinet in order to pay for warmongering and interest to Britain’s parasitic creditors.
Of course, the Labour leaders have conveniently failed to mention the increases in the defence budget that 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
What they have emphasised, however, are the eye-watering projections for future spending on disability benefits, which is set to increase from £48.5 billion to £75.7 billion by 2029-30.
Such projections have 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’.
Kendall announced that 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, however, Pip itself is not being spared in Labour’s planned massacre of the welfare system.
Eligibility criteria for Pip are 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.
This is a disgusting indictment of the state of British society today, and a clear demonstration of why Liz Kendall’s claim of caring about disabled people’s ‘dignity’ is completely hollow.
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
Pathway to poverty
The Resolution Foundation have warned 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.
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”.
In other words, disabled people being denied benefits are expected to apply for jobs that don’t exist! For this government, however, this is a problem for another day.
‘Better off’ working
Scandalously, Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden has even gone so far as to deny that these cuts are about saving money. Instead, he has claimed they are “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 super-exploitative working conditions in Britain that have 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 that 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 has said, this is exactly the kind of thing that a big business Labour government would do.
This is precisely the kind of action that Starmer’s government has been taking since getting into power nine months ago, on a promise of no more 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 that 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 wealthiest, 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 in favour of using the wealth hoarded at the top of society for social good. But we must also tell the truth. Under capitalism, particularly in times of crisis like today, attempts to tax the rich will be met with fierce resistance by the bosses and bankers.
Rachel Reeves already tried a similar approach by raising taxes on businesses in the Autumn Budget. The capitalists 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 on workers and the poor. 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: to the winter fuel allowance, to child benefits, to public services, and more.
This requires a serious confrontation with Starmer’s government – a fight that the unions so far have been unwilling to undertake.
We know that the 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 – seized as part of the fight for socialist revolution.
