Disabled activists and unions come together to fight threatened cuts to benefits in Labour’s first budget

Disabled activists and unions have come together to fight what they fear will be a renewed, hostile attack on disabled people who rely on social security at next week’s budget.

A parliamentary meeting this week heard disabled campaigners and senior union figures discuss how to fight cuts to social security that – it has been widely predicted – will form a key part of the first budget of Labour chancellor Rachel Reeves.

They say disabled people are again being scapegoated for the country’s financial problems, just as they were in the 1990s, the 2000s, the 2010s and by the last Conservative government.

They say that this hostile rhetoric, which is yet again “demonising” claimants of out-of-work disability benefits, is “contributing to a narrative that is miles away from the reality” of disabled people’s lives.

And, they say, it encourages disability-related hostility and hate crime.

Monday’s meeting was supported by the coalition of disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) that is monitoring the implementation of the UN disability convention in the UK.

Among the unions who have promised to play a key role in the new campaign is PCS, which represents many frontline Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) workers.

Paula Peters, from Disabled People Against Cuts, who chaired the meeting, said disabled activists were “scared, anxious, burnt-out and tired from fighting” but were “still fighting”, and she said there were now even more people who were angry than there were in 2010.

She said: “We will take the fight to the government, we won’t give in, we won’t give up, and we will never, never stop resisting… we will take the fight to Labour.”

She said the campaign would have to build “a massive anti-austerity movement that brings everybody with us”.

She pointed out that further cuts to disabled people’s support were being discussed as a backbench Labour MP, Kim Leadbeater, is introducing a bill to legalise assisted suicide, which will be debated and voted on by MPs next month.

Peters said: “If they bring that bill into law, what’s to say [they won’t tell us], ‘You don’t need social security, you don’t need housing, you don’t need healthcare, because you can have this instead.’”

Disabled campaigners later discovered that Leadbeater and fellow campaigners were about to hold a meeting to discuss her bill in the adjoining committee room in Portcullis House.

Martin Cavanagh, DWP group president for PCS, told Monday’s meeting that there had been a return to the harsh narrative of the pre-pandemic years in which claimants were seen as “workshy” and “sponging off the taxpayer”.

If anything, he said, “it’s actually getting more hostile now” than it was before the pandemic.

He said he believed Labour’s first budget in 15 years would see a “continuation of the Tories’ cuts to the benefit system” with “the same oppressive, punishing regime that the Tories have administered over the past 15 years”.

He said that unless there is a “seismic sea change… then our campaigning has to continue” and “we have to build the biggest coalition that we possibly can”.

Cavanagh told the meeting: “We are long past the time where we can just tinker round the edges of the benefits system.

“We believe we need a fundamental review of the benefits system, one that places dignity and respect at the heart of the system rather than the punitive regime that we have come to expect, sadly, over the past two decades or so.”

He added: “We know as a fact that where we as a union are better organised, and we have a stronger membership density… the conditionality and sanctions regime is nowhere near as brutal as it is in other parts of the country where our membership density is significantly reduced.”

He said PCS would continue to work with DPAC and other unions such as Unite, Unite Community and Equity – which were represented at the meeting – to campaign for a “better and fairer system”.

John McDonnell, Labour’s shadow chancellor under Jeremy Corbyn, who hosted the meeting and is currently sitting as an independent MP, said the campaign coalition would need to “dominate” any debate on the consequences of cuts or reforms that would impose “further pressure” on benefit claimants.

He said: “It is true that it is a toxic inheritance from the Tories, there’s no doubt about that.”

But he said the argument “must be that there is no need for any cuts in welfare” and what they should be doing is “halting Tory proposals” from the last government, particularly those that are set to tighten the work capability assessment (WCA) from next April.

He said there had been contradictory briefings from the government but “from the rhetoric that we have heard so far around welfare benefits, they might well continue on with the Tory reforms”.

He said campaigners needed to be able to explain how disabled people’s “wellbeing, suffering and even survival” could be at stake.

John McArdle, co-founder of Black Triangle Campaign, who travelled to Westminster from Edinburgh for the meeting, said he believed disabled people needed to “prepare ourselves for the worst” and consider legal action if any cuts were proposed, because they would lead to “hundreds of deaths”.

He said: “I think we have demonstrated through our campaign work over the last 14 years how lethal the system is.”

Other organisations represented at the meeting included Disability Rights UK, WinVisible, London Unemployed Strategies and the Commission on Social Security.

Meanwhile, disabled activist Ellen Clifford – who helped co-ordinate the campaign meeting – is awaiting a judicial review that will hear her claim that the last government acted unlawfully when it announced plans to tighten the WCA.

The case will be heard in the Royal Courts of Justice on 11 and 12 December.

Clifford said last year that a DWP consultation on the plans to tighten the assessment process appeared to have been used as a “smokescreen for cuts”.

She also argued that the eight-week consultation period on the changes – which are due to be implemented in April – was too short and that the consultation was not accessible to many disabled people.

The Resolution Foundation said this month that the changes would save DWP an estimated £1.3 billion in 2028-29.

According to DWP, the changes will mean 424,000 disabled people will lose their entitlement to extra support of up to £4,900 a year – and will start being subject to conditionality and sanctions – by 2028-29 as they are moved out of the universal credit limited capability for work and work-related activity group.

The reforms will increase employment by just 15,400 by 2028-29, the Office for Budget Responsibility has estimated (PDF).

It is not yet clear whether these cuts will be implemented by the new Labour government.

An answer to that question is likely to emerge at next week’s budget.

Picture: Paula Peters (left), campaigner Tony Baldwinson and Ellen Clifford after the parliamentary meeting 

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