“In total, over 3 million households will lose out, including as many as 100,000 children being pushed into poverty.”
At a recent Parliamentary debate on cuts to disability support, Neil Duncan-Jordan MP urged the Government to change track and not implement the cuts, which will remove support for over a million disabled people. You can read his speech published in full below:
Most of us will be aware that this debate takes place in the shadow of the publication of the welfare bill that could usher in some of the deepest and most severe cuts to disability benefits since 2010.
Now we already know that the current benefits system isn’t working.
75% of those turning to food banks are disabled or live in a disabled household.
And the DWP’s own figures from March 2025 reveal that:
4.7 million people in disabled households are facing hunger and unsurprisingly women make up the majority of disabled people and carers.
Any losses or changes to benefits will therefore overwhelmingly fall on those who are already among the poorest in our society.
Now the government is right to say that the social security system is in need of reform. We know that benefits are far from generous and fail to cover the essentials of living. The process of claiming support can also be extremely complicated and confusing – which often leads to individuals either incorrectly filling in the forms or finding the process just too difficult to even start.
And the assessment process – outsourced to five private companies – can be slow and often open to appeal. Of course, all these things need to be addressed, but the fear among disabled people is that the changes outlined in the Pathways to Work Green Paper – amount to piling more cuts onto an already broken system that will end up hurting those who need our support the most.
Even the government’s own assessment shows the significant financial impact these changes will have on claimants.
For example, tightening the eligibility for Personal Independence Payments so that individuals will be required to score 4 points in at least one category will see 800,000 people lose the daily living element of PIP – with an average loss of £4500 a year. 57% of these people will be aged 50 or over.
We know the points system is already deeply flawed – especially for those with dynamic disabilities such as MS and ME. And the domino effect of tightening PIP eligibility will be severe – because PIP acts as a passport to other support.
150,000 people are set to lose their carer’s allowance if someone they care for no longer qualifies for PIP. This could see a loss to the household of £10,000 a year.
And we know that having a disability is expensive. On average, disabled households need over £1,000 a month more to have the same standard of living as non-disabled households.
Proposed changes to the health element of Universal Credit will freeze the benefits of over 2 million people and an estimated 730,000 new claimants will get a lower rate of £50 a week – with an average loss of £3000 a year.
The health element of Universal Credit will also be cut for those aged under 22 – removing vital support that helps young people into work, education and training. The government cannot claim to be wanting to help younger people into work while taking away their safety net.
All of these groups are people that are already struggling to make ends meet.
But in reality, the figures are likely to be an underestimate of the scale of the pain being proposed.
A recent Freedom of Information request revealed that 1.3 million people who currently get the standard daily living award will no longer qualify – significantly higher than the OBR’s estimated 800,000 – and as a result 350,000 will be pushed below the poverty line.
In total, over 3 million households will lose out, including as many as 100,000 children being pushed into poverty.
Now I have heard ministers repeat the claim that only 1 in 10 PIP recipients will be affected by the proposals, but this is based on a false assumption that people will get better at filling in the claim forms – and more people will be successful in scoring 4 points. There is absolutely no evidence to show that this will be the case. The 1 in 10 figure also doesn’t take into account potential new claimants that will lose out.
We already know that PIP is an underclaimed benefit – less than half of the disabled people that are eligible make a claim. So the recent increases in the numbers of claims are largely the result of declining public health combined with increased financial hardship.
The government suggests there is an unsustainable rise in the benefits bill, but as a % of GDP, we are spending the same amount on working age benefits as we were in 2015. Cuts to social security are not an economic necessity – they’re a political choice. And the suggestion in the media recently that the transitional arrangements for someone who loses their PIP will be extended from 4 to 13 weeks is really only delaying the fact that the government will be making people permanently poorer.
Now it is right for ministers to say that work can be a route out of poverty and that disabled people should be supported to find a job. But the proposed £1bn worth of support only comes in at the end of the parliament – three years after the cuts have been introduced.
The Learning and Work Institute estimates that only 45,000–90,000 people might find work through the proposed employment support, and this cannot plausibly offset the 3.2 million people who are having their benefits cut. This is a completely false equivalence.
You will know that PIP is not an out-of-work benefit, so cutting it is likely to undermine efforts to get disabled people into employment, rather than supporting them into gainful work. Too often, it’s the attitude of employers that is the real barrier to disabled people finding a job. The reluctance to offer flexible working patterns, harsh sickness absence policies and disability discrimination are the real blockers that disabled people face. Tackling these would be a better way of getting disabled people into the workplace.
Because cuts don’t make jobs – they only create more hardship.
The misguided view that cutting expenditure or tightening belts will bring savings relies on the same, discredited, arguments made about austerity.
We know this approach shrinks the economy and leaves everyone worse off.
According to the New Economics Foundation, the Government’s projected savings could be entirely wiped out due to depressed economic demand in local communities and cutting disability benefits will inevitably lead to increased costs elsewhere — such as rising pressure on the NHS and local authority social care.
But most of all, we will be seeing those that are already under financial pressure – even worse off.
That’s why virtually all of the major disability organisations are critical of the government’s proposals. Now I am sure I’m not the only one who believes the Government is rushing these proposals through, with MPs being asked to vote in a couple of weeks’ time before the OBR’s estimates of their employment impact, the review of the PIP assessment and the Keep Britain Working review into tackling health-related inactivity have been published.
Recognising that the benefit system needs to change, we should be bringing a halt to any proposals for cuts, redesigning the system with disabled people and their organisations and investing upfront to support those who can, get into meaningful work.
Labour created the modern welfare state, underpinned by universalist principles to provide dignity and fairness to people when they need a helping hand. That is what we should be doing now.
- Neil Duncan-Jordan is the Labour MP for Poole. You can follow him on Twitter/X, Facebook and Instagram.
- This article is a published version of the speech given by Neil Duncan-Jordan MP in the Parliamentary debate on the cuts to disability support on 17 June 2025.
