“We need to keep pushing MPs to stand against these cuts and any future cuts. That includes rejecting the proposal to prevent disabled people under 22-years-old from accessing the health element of Universal Credit which punishes those without a support network or wealth to fall back on.”
By Megan Thomas, Disabled People Against Cuts
After many long months fighting the welfare cuts, there is only one question for the disabled people’s movement – where do we go next? We have seen a huge resurgence in organising amongst the disabled people’s movement to pressure the Labour Government to reverse the cuts.
What is it about these cuts specifically which has galvanised the movement? Disabled people are no stranger to being the scapegoat for a government trying to find a place to save money. Partially, this is a result of the scale of the cuts, as these were some of the worst cuts to welfare since the 1970s. There has been very little consultation with disabled people of the 22 proposals in the Pathways to Work Green Paper, only 10 were up for consultation. Without the Government being willing to properly engage with us, we’ve had to take matters into our own hands.
Another cause is that a lot of disabled people across the country feel betrayed by the cuts. For years, Labour has reassured disabled people that the period of never-ending cuts from successive Conservative Governments would come to an end when they were in power. Unfortunately, now instead of the change that was promised, disabled people have just seen more of the same.
So, over the past few months, disabled people have fought back. Sometimes that’s looked like taking to the streets. We have protested outside Parliament for every vote, including disabled people protesting for two days in a row during a heatwave demanding change. Across the UK, consultation events have seen protests, with disabled campaigners in Manchester taking over their event. In May, disabled people’s organisations came together to bring 120 disabled people to Parliament to speak to their MPs about why they needed to vote against the cuts. Disabled people’s organisations and campaigns groups have coordinated people across the UK to email and call their MPs, asking them to stand against benefit cuts.
All this pressure had an impact. There was widespread rebellion across the Labour backbenches and concessions over the change to PIP eligibility criteria were announced one hour before MPs had to vote. The concessions are nowhere near enough to protect the over 700,000 disabled people that will lose £3,000 a year because of the cuts to Universal Credit, or disabled people who may get opened up to sanctions. However, the rebellion does show something important – we can fight these cuts and we can win.
What Next?
As any activist will tell you, this is just the beginning. As we refocus, here are some of the next steps.
We need to keep pushing MPs to stand against these cuts and any future cuts. That includes rejecting the proposal to prevent disabled people under 22-years-old from accessing the health element of Universal Credit which punishes those without a support network or wealth to fall back on. That means protecting Employment Support Allowance for disabled people who need that fund, instead of removing and putting a time limit on that support.
A key task for the disabled people’s movement and its allies is to push back against disablist narratives about benefit scroungers. We are very concerned about the implications that without the cuts, they will no longer be able to remove the 2-child benefit cap or cut SEN (special educational needs) education. We reject this narrative that they have no other option, particularly when they are not pursuing policy like raising money via a wealth tax. We need to hold the Government accountable for refusing to change policy shown to be one of the largest contributors to child poverty and blaming disabled people standing up for their rights.
One of the Government’s concessions to the rebels was a commitment to a co-produced review of the PIP assessment process. Called the Timms Review and led by Disability Minister Stephen Timms MP, they have a difficult task to rebuild trust with disabled people, if at this stage it’s possible at all. We’ve heard many times about how the Government will work with disabled people to disappointing results. Even before this paper was published, we heard that they had consulted disabled people’s groups, but there is debate over whether it is worth engaging with a review in which we are not sure we will be listened to.
Next term, we wait to see what the Autumn Budget has in store for us and what will be inside the Pathways to Work White Paper. We’ll be divided again, between the End of Life Bill and the cuts, but we’ll be there. When disabled people gathered on the 9th July, we knew it was unlikely for the Bill to fall, but there was another key message we wanted to send – so long, we aren’t going anywhere.
- Megan Thomas is a representative for Disabled People Against Cuts.
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