Labour uses conference to sideline disabled people… unless they are working

The Labour party has used its annual conference to stress – once again – that its focus is on supporting “working people”, rather than disabled people who are unable to work.

In his 6,300-word speech to the conference on Tuesday (pictured), the prime minister did not mention disabled people once, other than in relation to the work of carers, care workers and volunteers, and a brief mention of his late disabled brother who he said was “badly failed by the education system”.

In contrast, he mentioned “working people” 17 times, including telling the conference audience that the state will be “accountable to working people”, that he wanted to see “working people in control of their public services”, and arguing that it was “working people who paid the price of Tory decline”, while stressing that “Labour is the party for working people” and that he would “fight for working people”.

The concerns about Sir Keir Starmer’s focus on “working people” date back to 2022 and a speech he made to Scottish Labour’s annual conference, at which he declared publicly that Labour was “the party of working people”.

His chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has an even longer troubling track record, having said 10 years ago that Labour did not want to be seen as “the party to represent those who are out of work” and that it was “not the party of people on benefits”.

In his own speech, earlier on Tuesday, health and social care secretary Wes Streeting stressed his determination to build a National Care Service “worthy of the name”.

Labour’s only significant social care announcement was the first ever fair pay agreement for care workers, with an initial £500 million in funding to deliver “better pay, terms and conditions” for adult care workers across England.

In contrast to the prime minister’s speech, Streeting mentioned disabled people three times, highlighting how many disabled people were now surviving with conditions “that would have cut their lives short thanks to breakthroughs in medical science that allows them to not only survive, but to thrive”.

He said that “if we want to match longer lives with better lives, then we must build a social care system to meet their needs”.

And he highlighted the government’s decision to provide more funding for disabled facilities grants, which has provided “safety, dignity, independence and quality of life”, as well as “the biggest uplift in carers’ allowance since the 1970s”.

It has been clear since at least 2022 that Labour’s priority in government would be lifting the pay of care workers before any moves to reduce or scrap care charges.

Any firm decisions on long-term reform will wait for the conclusions of an independent commission, led by former civil servant Baroness [Louise] Casey.

The first phase of the commission will report next year, but the second phase, with recommendations for longer-term reform, will not be completed until 2028.

Last year, Disability Law Service published research which found that disabled people across England were continuing to face unlawful discrimination and inequality on an “unparalleled” scale because of “unjust” social care charging policies.

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