Last month, Starmer’s Labour announced the biggest cuts to disability benefits in a generation: nearly £5bn by 2030.
A coalition of 100 charities has declared these cuts “immoral and devastating”.
Claimants of PIP (personal independence payments) are still set to lose up to £10,000 a year. And from 2026, new claimants of the health element of Universal Credit will be put on a halved rate, receiving £2,800 less per year.
Official estimates predict that up to 250,000 people – including 50,000 children – will be pushed directly into poverty.
The removal of PIP will also mean that unpaid carers will lose their carer’s allowance. Many are facing the loss of two-thirds of their income overnight.
“We live in fear of the whims of successive governments,” said one disabled woman (who also cares for her disabled mother) to The Guardian. “I can’t sleep at the moment, I’m so scared.”
The sheer volume of protestors at Parliament against benefit cuts
Video from @TheCanaryUK https://t.co/5n25LK6Mnj— DPAC (@Dis_PPL_Protest) March 26, 2025
It is not just the direct financial consequences. Disability benefits also act as a priority marker for other parts of the welfare system, such as housing, council tax relief, and debt enforcement safeguards.
Starmer has “signed my death sentence” with these cuts, stated a disabled woman in Birmingham, who had only recently secured permanent housing.
Rubbing salt into the wound, millions of households have also seen extortionate rises in council tax, energy bills, water, car tax, broadband, and more this month, in what the media has dubbed ‘awful April’.
This follows years of sharp price rises amidst flatlining real wages.
People on benefits have described how they are already buying less food, avoiding using heat and electricity, showering less, and having to miss out on contact with friends and family.
“I can afford to exist,” explained one PIP claimant on social media, “but not to live.”
“Honestly, I’m screwed,” said another person at a protest in Truro, which RCP members attended. “If PIP goes, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Welfare, not warfare!
Protests against Starmer’s draconian cuts have taken place up and down the country, with widespread demands for ‘welfare not warfare’.
It is no coincidence that Starmer has promised billions towards rearmament alongside billions in fresh austerity attacks.
For the capitalists and their representatives, support for imperialist war abroad goes hand-in-hand with a war on the poor at home.
Many see this connection instantly, and are furious.
Britain has spent almost £13bn on the war in Ukraine – with Starmer promising to keep sending £3bn per year until the bitter end – while implementing brutal cuts to fill a £22bn ‘black hole’ in the public finances.
At the same time, over £100bn per year goes straight from the public purse into the pockets of Britain’s parasitic creditors, to ensure that the bankers and billionaires get their pound of flesh.
#WelfareNotWarfare #CripsAgainstCuts
Well done to #CripsAgainstCuts for the day of action today supported by DPAC Activists. Big turn out in Bristol today
Here are two photos from the action in Bristol
Photo credit; 📷📸 Mark Simmons pic.twitter.com/8hG3gyIs6J— DPAC (@Dis_PPL_Protest) March 22, 2025
In London, one purchaser of The Communist said they thought that Starmer and Reeves were both “lying bastards” who “should be put on trial”.
We 100 percent agree! It’s time to sweep out all these criminals, warmongers, and liars in Westminster!
With an escalating trade war pushing the global economy into a new recession, things are set to go from bad to worse for British capitalism.
This means that more cuts are on the way – painful cuts to jobs, public services, and living conditions.
The communists also call for ‘welfare not warfare’; for an end to militarism and austerity.
For us, however, this is not an appeal to those in power for a few extra crumbs from the rich man’s table, but a battle cry for workers and youth to overthrow the entire system that is signing the death sentence for millions of people around the world.
Below, readers of The Communist share their experiences of the cuts to PIP, and the burning anger that their friends and family feel about this outrageous attack on disabled people. Do you have a story you’d like to share? Write to us!
Invasive and humiliating
Holly, Sheffield
Anyone getting PIP will tell you how incredibly difficult it would be to defraud the current system.
To be awarded any points, you must present strong medical evidence over a long period. With NHS waiting times, it can take several years to gather this.
The process is horrendously invasive and humiliating, having to describe extremely personal details of how you bathe or toilet to a complete stranger. But we go through the dreaded process because we have no choice: living with a disability is expensive.
The discrimination, stigma, and austerity faced by disabled people in the capitalist system is crushing. Frankly, PIP is not enough to cover the treatments most of us need.
Even after accepting my disability and the loss of the life I imagined I’d have, I faced a feeling of helplessness. I felt I couldn’t leverage any change; being unable to work, I couldn’t strike, for example.
This, in part, is what led me to organise – as disabled people, we need working class solidarity more than anyone if we ever want any hope of ending this oppressive capitalist regime.
Don’t squeeze us to breaking
Anthony, Kingston
My mother has relied on benefits all her life and is disabled herself.
“I have two daughters, both of whom are disabled,” she said. “We should all be angry, it’s fucking disgusting. If they can’t wash themselves, how the fuck do you expect them to go to work? We are squeezed as is, don’t squeeze us to breaking.”
In 2014, it was found nearly 90 people a month were dying after being declared fit for work. No matter how Labour try to spin it as a ‘moral issue’, we see it’s a financial one; a continuation of the past decade of austerity.
“This is nothing short of butchery, social murder, from people we thought we could trust,” my mum continued. “How is this any different from the Tories? If anything, it’s worse.”
Par for the course
Hanah, Oxford
I was disgusted hearing Labour’s attacks on welfare, though it’s par for the course of capitalism really.
I have cerebral palsy and in 2018 I was transferred, amidst Tory austerity, from DLA to PIP. Forty pages of forms required me to justify in meticulous, inhuman detail – abandoning any scrap of dignity – exactly why I might be considered disabled.
The mandatory reassessment day comes. I am made to recite everything I had written in my form to my unqualified assessor. In an official DWP letter, I am told the capitalists have discovered the cure to my conditions: I scored ZERO! How miraculous!
I had just lost a third of our income. This drove me to severe suicidal depression, like many others who lose their benefits.
This is simply a repeat of the same capitalist policies masquerading in a different skin: austerity is an inescapable part of this system which cannot provide for any of us.
Betrayal
Ben Bickford, Peckham
Last month, I attended a Crips Against Cuts demonstration on the Southbank.
The message from the platform was clear: PIP doesn’t allow disabled people to live – it barely lets them survive.
Speakers also recounted being stranded on trains by rail companies, even after notifying stations in advance. Some had been dismissed from jobs after becoming disabled, labelled “health and safety risks” by employers unwilling to accommodate them.
There was a strong sense of betrayal toward Labour, with warnings that the coming cuts could cause more deaths than Tory austerity. Many demanded the rich be taxed to resolve the funding crisis.
But these are not just policy failures; the state defends capital, not the vulnerable. This is class war – it’s time we fought back.
Replace the system
Molly S, Newcastle
Last month I attended two rallies in my home city about the cuts. At both events speakers discussed how both many workers are disabled, and how many disabled people are unable to work due to lack of accessibility.
When I had PIP, the money went on things like grocery delivery; non-prescription medication; taxis to hospital appointments; taxis to work when I was too unwell to use public transport; adaptations for making me more independent, etc.
But, like many disabled people, getting a job caused me huge financial stress rather than alleviating it. It caused complications with my UC and housing benefit, which meant that I was left with only my minimum wage earnings and PIP to cover a significant increase in living costs.
Making access to this financial aid even harder will reduce the quality of life of the vast majority of disabled people and force some of them out of work, not into work.
There’s enough money in “the system” to meet everyone’s needs if it were spent correctly. I am convinced that taxing the rich is not enough – we need to fully replace the system with a planned economy and a government under workers’ control.
