Spring Statement: ‘Government should break the disability-poverty link, not entrench it’
As a Liverpudlian who moved to Middlesbrough to study during the Thatcher years, I was reminded last week about Yosser taking the same journey to seek work. Alan Bleasdale’s much acclaimed drama ‘boys from the Black Stuff’ may well get a repeat in light of Liz Kendall’s proposed welfare reforms.
The words ‘gizza job’ and ‘I can do that!’ from Jimmy ‘Yosser’ Hughes as he watches the demolition of a Tate and Lyle factory in 1980’s Liverpool has resonance today for people struggling with life and being workless. Like Yosser, many of us want to work but encounter barriers to opportunity, including sneering attitudes and systemic discrimination.
Instead of setting out proposals to support people into work from the outset, the government has woven a narrative about cutting benefits by £5bn and shifting resources to defence. They are indeed economic pressures that have to be addressed but not at the cost of disadvantaged people or through austerity plus.
Things were not helped in the days prior to the Welfare Statement with Wes Streeting taking to the airways to question the legitimacy of anxiety, Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and poor mental health being experienced by many young people. The tone was reminiscent of Yosser being labelled a lazy ‘scrounger’ rather than his loss of self-worth due to the stigma of being jobless and having to deal with psychiatrists, social workers and creditors.
‘Reducing benefits doesn’t drive people into work but deeper into poverty’
Liz Kendall was somewhat late pitching in with claims about the value of work and respecting people’s dignity, but nonetheless a welcome change in tone. In her Commons Statement she rightly said: “disabled people and people with health conditions who can work should have the same rights, choices and chances to work as everybody else.”.
It wasn’t enough though as she laid out a set of proposals which leave most claimants with uncertainty about consequences for themselves. Delivered in the context of reducing budgets, the government has created an unnecessary maelstrom of fears. They would be wise to give some clarity on who will be protected.
Reducing benefits doesn’t drive people into work but deeper into poverty. The Department of Work and Pensions’ own figures claim that, by 2029/30, more than three million families who currently receive benefits or will be recipients in the future will suffer an average loss of £1,720 per year. The government’s welfare changes will also push 250,000 people, including 50,000 children, into relative poverty.
This is the worry with the cut to the means-tested health element of universal credit. People currently assessed as having “limited capability for work-related activity” (LCWRA) receive £4,992 a year in addition to the standard rate and are not expected to work. Even though the standard rate is set to increase, it won’t match what many will lose from the reduced health top up and nobody under 22 will qualify. The freeze in the health element of universal credit is also set to hit future claimants particularly hard, with 730,000 future recipients facing a staggering average loss of £3,000 per year.
Collapsing Work Capability Assessments (WCA) into Personal Independence Payment (PIP) Assessments will have a significant negative impact for a potential million claimants where new criteria excludes them from PIP and/or the health element of Universal Credit. Whatever lines are drawn the potential to move people closer or over the cliff edge is alarming.
Reforms include merging Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) and Employment Support Allowance (ESA) into a single contributory benefit. The new time limit proposal will be concerning to many long-term claimants. Whilst the ‘Right to Try’ Guarantee is encouraging, it isn’t applicable to some disabled people with long-term conditions that will not improve.
‘Despite talk about reasonable adjustments, people find themselves pushed out’
Conservative failure over the last 14 years to bring down NHS waiting lists means that too many people are unable to work. Tackling the backlog in appointments, diagnostics and treatment to significantly contribute to people’s fitness and wellbeing to work. Yet the uncertainties surrounding benefit reform could exacerbate people’s circumstances, resulting in additional public services being needed. All this re-assessment will add to people’s stress and bring GP’s more administrative burdens.
The announcement that tailored employment support will be funded with an additional £1bn is welcome. It will be important for the government to engage with disability organisations to shape this provision, alongside listening to their concerns about proposed changes to benefits. Access to Work provides a range of support to disabled people in employment but has a woeful track record in providing adequate support in a timely way, resulting in some people losing their job.
The range of jobs many of us could do are somewhat limited. Liz Kendall is unlikely to employ someone who is blind like me to cut her hair, rewire the family home or drive her around Job Centres that are apparently bulging with prospects.
Employment initiatives tend to focus on recruitment with little regard to retention. Acquiring a health condition or experiencing the onset of disability is common during working life. Despite much talk about reasonable adjustments, people find themselves pushed out. Employers lose experienced, skilled and committed workers because they fail to understand things can be done differently.
Many disabled people working in public services will be worried about the threat of redundancy following Sir Keir Starmer kickstarting ‘Project Chainsaw’ with NHS England and Pat McFadden signalling cuts to the wider Civil Service. There has been no indication from the government that disabled people will be protected in any way.
READ MORE: Spring Statement: Reeves under fire from Labour’s three biggest unions
‘Labour is in danger of reconstructing poverty, not breaking the link between disability and poverty’
Technological improvements frequently make job tasks more difficult for disabled people because adaptations do not keep pace with mainstream changes. I managed Access to Work contracts across the UK during the 1990’s when blind telephonists were being laid off by banks, public services and other employers due to switchboards being replaced by direct dialling and information points being merged into large customer call centres. Generally speaking, the new kit wasn’t accessible and new ways of working failed to be inclusive. Whilst some people learned new skills, many were made redundant and left to languish on benefits. We are always playing catch up epitomised by the government publishing the Green Paper last week, but still accessible versions are not available.
Work in the future is set to be even more transformational and widespread with artificial intelligence taking on routine administrative and data intensive roles. Improved productivity will help Britain’s competitiveness but there are serious risks for the employability of disabled people in this accelerating complex workforce.
The daily living component of Personal Independence Payments (PIP) covers 8 categories, from the ability to prepare food to making decisions about money. There are 2 categories for the mobility component. Under current rules, claimants are given the standard rate if they score between eight and 11 points across all categories on either component, while scores over 12 receive the enhanced rate. Changes to the Daily Living component means someone who scores 4 points in just 1 category will qualify whereas someone scoring consistently across most categories which accumulate a higher result would not. The spiralling PIP budget is unlikely to be brought under control without people with ‘less severe conditions’ not being eligible.
My overwhelming sense is that Labour ministers are driven by economic choices rather than bringing disabled people into the mission to breakdown barriers to opportunity. Labour is in danger of reconstructing poverty, not breaking the link between disability and poverty. The absence of a comprehensive Disability Strategy to improve the life chances of disabled people suggests the foundations of these reforms are weak. The overall costs of benefits will no doubt fall but whether securing positive outcomes for sick and disabled people are ambiguous. The devil will be in the detail to whether adequate protections are robust, support is effective and those of us calling to ‘gizza job’ works.
Left Foot Forward
Fast forward 14 years since the Sun's repugnant 'Beat the Cheat' campaign, and the same misguided and exaggerated vilification of disabled people has resurfaced, this time under a Labour government.
The cyclical nature of British politics, perpetuated by a media ecosystem that endlessly regurgitates the same ‘outrages,’ is in full force once again.
More than a decade has passed since the Sun’s repugnant ‘Beat the Cheat’ campaign, which encouraged vigilant citizens to report their disabled neighbours to a benefit fraud hotline.
The media frenzy came as the then-chancellor George Osborne tore into the benefits system, fuelling a toxic rhetoric that permeated the right-wing media narrative, which fed into the public discourse around social security.
There were 1,788 recorded incidents of disability hate crime in England and Wales in 2011, an increase of more than 18% on the total for 2010 and the highest since the data was first recorded in April 2010. Yet in the same year, there were just 523 convictions for the offence.
Disability charities had little doubt that the worsening climate was being driven by the demonisation of disabled individuals as ‘benefit scroungers.’ The Department for Work and Pensions came under fire for its reckless rhetoric, particularly its suggestion that three out of four people receiving incapacity benefits were faking disabilities.
Fast-forward 14 years, and the same misguided and exaggerated vilification of disabled people has resurfaced, this time under a Labour government. In her Spring Statement this week, Chancellor Rachel Reeves confirmed the health element of Universal Credit will be cut by 50 percent for new claimants by 2029/30 before being frozen. Reeves said this is to meet Labour’s fiscal rules: balancing the budget so day-to-day costs are covered by revenues and ensuring debt falls as a share of GDP within five years.
The Spring Statement followed an earlier announcement of the government’s plans to slash £4.8bn from the welfare bill. Most of these savings will come from personal independence payments (PIP), with the eligibility threshold raised, meaning an estimated one million disabled people will lose their benefits.
The ‘wrong choice’
The welfare cuts will leave an estimated quarter of a million more people, including 50,000 children, in relative poverty after housing costs across the country by the end of the decade, according to the government’s own impact assessment.
As the true impact of the welfare reforms becomes clearer, a growing rift is emerging within Labour ranks. More than a 20 Labour MPs have said publicly that they will not back the government when proposed welfare reforms are voted on in Parliament.
Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has also weighed, saying the government is making “the wrong choice” by restricting disability benefits.
Ahead of the Statement, people with disabilities and campaigners for disability rights gathered in protest at the cuts up and down the country.
“Disabled people will not allow themselves to be made scapegoats for Rachel Reeves cuts while millionaires remain untouched by cuts,” said Linda Burnip, co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC).
Writing in the Times, Reeves defended her handling of the economy, saying her plan was starting to “bear fruit” with wages up and interest rates down.
“I won’t shy away from the challenges we face, and change won’t happen overnight,” she said. “But the prize on offer to us is immense.”
As we saw in the 2010s, fuelled by government policy, right-wing media assaults on disabled people have resurfaced recently with alarming hostility.
In a particularly revolting post on X, Tom Harwood, deputy political editor at GB Newswrote: “Make all the free cars the government gives out to people with autism or ADHD look like this and see how many people *really* need to claim them.”
Similarly, during a segment on GB News, presented as a debate on whether PIP payments are justified, health secretary Wes Streeting was provocatively asked why someone with ADHD should be receiving a £52,000 BMW through the Motability scheme.
“Why on earth do you need a taxpayer-funded car with ADHD?” the presenter pressed.
Instead of defending the Motability scheme, Streeting capitulated to the narrative pushed by the right-wing network. He responded: “I think that is a very good challenge and one of the reasons why we are looking at the whole issue of welfare reform.” This is in spite of a recent parliamentary report which highlighted the benefits of the scheme to many disabled adults who, unlike their non-disabled counterparts, often lack access to a car and face significant financial challenges. Perhaps Wes hadn’t read the report.
In fact, the Motability scheme is, bizarrely, a particular bone of contention for the right.
‘The Mobility scheme was never designed to buy 50-grand Mercs for bedwetting boy racers in balaclavas with made-up mental illnesses. Scrap it now!’ bellowed Richard Littlejohn’s headline in the Daily Mail.
In a classic case of right-wing Groundhog Day, Littlejohn even admits that it was “14 years ago today, in the wake of the financial crash,” when he first railed against the Motability scheme.
“Even then I was astonished to learn that the government was leasing flash German cars for people on disability benefits,” he continued.
But his particular gripe focuses on the rising number of Motability users, with a record 815,000 people enrolled in the scheme, a jump of 170,000 from the previous year, according to data from, well, the TaxPayers’ Alliance. Sigh, yes, the think-tank that always seems to be behind the sensational headlines fuelling right-wing outrage. It’s a classic case of right-wing media conveyor belt propaganda, getting an ostensibly credible think-tank or organisation to produce a piece of ‘research’ on a topic they are preoccupied with, which is then heavily promoted in the right-wing media.
For some context: the Motability scheme was established in 1978 to provide an affordable way for people with disabilities to lease cars, wheelchair-accessible vehicles, scooters, or powered wheelchairs. It has since helped millions of disabled people, and their families, regain mobility and independence.
The scheme is managed on a day-to-day basis by Motability Operations Ltd, under contract to the Motability Foundation. The Motability Foundation also provides charitable grants to help disabled people access the scheme and make the most of their vehicles. These grants are means-tested to ensure support is directed to those who need it most.
There is some evidence of limited abuse of the system: the iPaper for example, reported that 11,000 benefit claimants have had the taxpayer-funded cars taken from them for misuse, a fairly low percentage it has to be said. Nonetheless, it’s an issue that needs to be dealt with. But sadly, it’s been used by certain factions on the right to fuel negative sentiment towards the disabled
The outrage even earned a double-page ‘special report’ in the Daily Mail, entitled: ‘The most outrageous benefits scandal of all.’ The report starts by focusing on one alleged Motability claimant ‘scammer.’ “It was only when his mother came under investigation for suspected benefit fraud that a different picture of his physical abilities emerged,” the article claims, adding:
“DWP staff not only observed him walking a mile unaided through the Devon town of Axminster with a guitar slung across his back but also lifting heavy weights at a local gym.”
Yes, the actions of one man are framed as representative of hundreds of thousands, if you take the Daily Mail’s reporting at face value.
‘Under strain’
Away from the clamour of the right-wing welfare-haters, the Resolution Foundation provides an explanation as to the rise in disability benefit spending.
In its ‘Under strain – investigating trends in working-age disability and incapacity benefits’ report, the foundation argues the primary driver for the rise is not higher benefit generosity, but simply a growing number of working-age claimants. As Britain ages, becomes less healthy, and experiences a higher prevalence of disability, more people require support, either due to work restrictions or additional needs.
The foundation suggests that to reduce benefit spending, attention must focus on addressing the underlying causes of health conditions and impairments that limit the ability to work. This requires coordinated efforts from the NHS, public services, and employers, in addition to the DWP and Treasury, it says.
Less unpopular than increasing debt or taxes?
In her Spring Statement, Reeves argued that the UK has to ‘move quickly in a changing world’ and confirmed a £2.2bn increase in defence spending. Such increases require sacrifices elsewhere, and this has been broadly used to justify the cuts to welfare.
Writing in the FT, Stephen Bush notes how the problem for Keir Starmer is that British voters are generally opposed to all the ways you could potentially pay for increased defence spending.
He points to recent polling that shows cutting unemployment and disability benefits is more popular than raising government debt or taxes on individuals.
Bush argues, the government is over-indexing on “voters don’t like tax rises” and under-indexing on “can we keep Britons safe without being willing to court unpopularity over tax?”
In other words, instead of merely following the latest polls and focus groups, the government should show leadership, and in doing so, perhaps earn some respect.
Why not a wealth tax?
Which brings me to the issue of wealth tax. Advocates argue that by not implementing one, the UK is missing out on £460 million a week, which could help fund defence.
Polling even shows overwhelming public support for a wealth tax. A new poll for the TUC found that 71 percent of the public believe the wealthy should pay more tax to fund public services. It also found that 65 percent of UK adults would ‘have more trust in politicians’ if government improved public services.
There are arguments against the wealth tax: that billionaires will up sticks and go elsewhere (they don’t); that it kills off enterprise (it doesn’t); and that people hide their money (that bit is true). Maybe a truly radical government would really change the relationship between direct and indirect taxation and consider the virtues of hypothecated taxes. That though would really put the cat among the right-wing pigeons, including those in the Treasury.
There is little evidence that Starmer and co will embrace such a radical policy, perhaps out of fear of how the right-wing media would inevitably react.
And it’s not difficult to understand their fear in this sense. For the right-wing media, Labour’s approach to welfare reform is still too moderate and costly.
Andrew Neil’s Daily Mail headline last week summed it up:
“Is that it? An opportunity of a generation to tackle Britain’s bloated welfare bill has been squandered. And we’ll all the poorer for it.”
Neil criticised the reforms proposed by work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall, claiming they amounted to little more than a “tinker here, a dabble there, and a promise of more money for a system already wallowing in it.”
“It’s turned out to be a modest exercise in fiscal arithmetic rather than a much-needed radical reform,” he continued
Neil’s right about one thing – Labour needs to be more radical, radical in challenging the right and their sensationalist, fear-mongering headlines. Targeting people with disabilities to placate these voices will only alienate the voters Labour should be courting.
As former Labour chancellor John McDonnell urged ahead of this week’s Spring Statement, Labour should focus not just on short-term economic stability but on addressing long-term inequality.
“This government has one last chance to take a progressive path. Otherwise, we’re at the point of no return,” McDonnell wrote.
Sadly, his advice was ignored.
Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is author of Right-Wing Watch
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