The welfare bill still forces people into poverty – we must remove the cuts entirely
Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Liz Kendall arrives in Downing Street (Credit: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Alamy Live News)
3 min read
Last week’s 11th-hour scramble to save the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill was a stark reminder of how not to make long-term welfare policy.
The sight of ministers cobbling together a fudged policy position at the despatch box, an hour before the vote, was not a good look. So much trust between government, disabled people and their organisations has been eroded over the last few months that it’s time we started to heal those wounds.
The Timms Review certainly offers a chance to do just that, providing we ensure that it is genuinely comprehensive and involves disabled people’s organisations in a meaningful and collaborative way to shape the benefits system for the better. Disabled people have to have an equal voice – not just a say – in how to shape the future, otherwise we will be right back where we started when Sir Stephen reports next November.
Amid all the confusion, it would be easy to think that we can now move on, but in reality last week’s decision to remove various parts of the bill doesn’t mean that everything has been resolved. The government quite rightly decided to remove the cuts to PIP and the freeze on the Universal Credit Health element for existing claimants, but tomorrow MPs will still be asked to support £2bn in cuts to disabled people’s incomes.
Colleagues are being overwhelmed with briefings and last-minute promises as they try to make sense of a bill so altered that it now seems more amendment than legislation. Even the title has been cut.
The reality of what’s before us is simple: around 700,000 future claimants will be affected by this £2bn cut, losing an average of £3,000 each a year. It’s estimated 50,000 people will be forced into poverty.
The amendments I have tabled would remove the cuts from the bill entirely, but still allow for the uprating of the standard allowance to take place.
If we are serious about having a complete root-and-branch look at the system of disability benefits, why has the government not placed the health element of Universal Credit into the Timms Review where it belongs? Surely, given the interaction between UC and PIP means that looking at one without the other is a waste of time, and risks changing one part of the system without taking into account how the impacts on the all the other parts. It simply doesn’t make sense.
We all understand that the welfare system we inherited from the Conservatives is broken. There are 4.8 million disabled people in poverty and the Trussell Trust report three in four of the people referred to their food banks are disabled or come from a disabled household.
Disabled people already tell us that the financial support they receive is not a luxury – and often don’t cover the additional costs that come with living with a disability. Without it, they fear they may struggle to live safely and with dignity.
That’s why I’m deeply concerned, not just about the people who will be forced into poverty because of this policy but also those who are already struggling to get by.
Any review of the benefits system must therefore look at whether or not payments cover the essentials, as well as making access to benefits simpler and more straightforward.
Any welfare bill brought forward by a Labour government should improve the lives of the most vulnerable, not make them worse. That’s the moral foundation of our movement, why I became an MP, and why millions of people vote for the Labour Party.
Neil Duncan-Jordan is Labour MP for Poole
