“Despite the concessions, Labour MPs should still vote against this bill. The idea that we should ‘bank the wins’ and support the remaining legislation is wrong. A party that created the welfare state should not be complicit in dismantling it.”
By Ellen Morrison-Smith, Disabled members’ representative on Labour’s NEC
After last week’s backbench rebellion, the Benefit Cuts Bill has become an albatross around the government’s neck. It should never have been introduced, and the fact that it was – without meaningful engagement with disabled people and our organisations – is a profound failure of both our politics and Labour values.
Plans to cut Personal Independence Payment (PIP) would have been devastating. Those cuts would have torn away lifelines from disabled people, stripping vital support that helps us not just to survive, but to live with dignity. The climbdown – forced by disabled people’s campaigning, grassroots activism from groups like Disabled People Against Cuts, and a significant backbench rebellion – is welcome. It’s right that the government has now removed PIP cuts from the bill and committed to a review. But this is not the victory some would like to claim.
The bill that remains is still a danger to disabled people. Cuts to the health element of Universal Credit will hit some of the poorest. It will punish future claimants who cannot work, stripping away vital support when they need it most. It is fundamentally unjust. The two tier system that many argued against for PIP ahead of the second reading last week, will still be in place. Existing claimants will be hundreds of pounds better off per month than future claimants. None of us want to be part of a system that creates and embeds needless inequality.
This could have been avoided. Time and again, disabled people and our organisations have called for co-production. I have made this case relentlessly, in meetings with Labour ministers, in policy submissions, and within the Party’s own structures. For years, we have said that changes to social security must not be done to us, but with us.
Yet this bill was drafted without us. An active decision was taken to ignore us. And now we are told that the PIP changes will be revisited as part of the so-called Timms review, which will allegedly be co-produced. But how can we trust a government that excluded us when it mattered most? How can we have confidence in this process when the starting point was so deeply flawed?
Co-production is not a tick-box exercise to be used after policy is written. It means disabled people being involved from the outset, shaping decisions that impact our lives. This bill has demonstrated the opposite.
Despite the concessions, Labour MPs should still vote against this bill. The idea that we should ‘bank the wins’ and support the remaining legislation is wrong. A party that created the welfare state should not be complicit in dismantling it. We should not be voting for cuts to disability benefits, whether now or in the future. This bill is not aligned with Labour’s values.
Disabled people have fought hard to defend our rights. We have marched, we have lobbied, we have made ourselves heard. And we will continue to do so. But we should not have to fight our own party to protect the most basic forms of support.
Labour must go back to the drawing board. This bill needs a complete rethink, with Disabled people leading the process from the very beginning. Anything less is not good enough.
And anything less is not Labour.
A note to MPs:
There are some amendments that should be supported if the bill is not withdrawn:
- Proposals to improve the ‘severe conditions criteria’ which would make this more reasonable in practice as current wording demands that a disabled person experiences descriptors ‘constantly’
- Removal of the unjust change to the Universal Credit health element that would see future claimants considerably worse off that current claimants
- Further detail of the Timms review, including commitments on time and how it will be legislated
- Anything that supports further reports and analysis of proposed changes before cuts are implemented, and any delays to the date cuts begin
- Ellen Morrison-Smith is the elected representative for Disabled Members on the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee – you can follow her on Twitter/X.
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