Tory plans for billions of pounds in disability benefit cuts ignore echoes of reforms that led to hundreds of deaths

Conservative plans to cut £36 billion a year from social security spending have completely ignored the risk of harm to disabled people, despite past Tory governments being responsible for hundreds, and probably thousands, of claimant suicides and other deaths.

On Tuesday, party leader Kemi Badenoch spoke of the need for “some tough decisions and some tough love” as she announced the publication of Welfare that Works: The Conservatives’ plan for Welfare Savings.

The document includes seven separate attacks that target disabled people’s support (see separate story), with these measures making up half of the £36 billion-a-year cuts.

Helen Whately, the party’s shadow work and pensions secretary – although she calls herself the “shadow welfare secretary” – told the invited audience of journalists and Tory supporters that making these cuts was “morally the right thing to do”.

But the 52-page document includes not a single mention of “safeguarding” or the risk to many long-term and new claimants of disability benefits if the cuts were introduced.

Among the measures announced in the plan are to force every claimant to undergo a face-to-face assessment, apparently eliminating the long-established reasonable adjustment that allows a small proportion of claims to be decided only on paper evidence, and possibly also ending telephone and video assessments.

Another proposal would remove cash support from claimants with what the party calls “milder mental health issues and neurodiversity conditions such as anxiety, depression and ADHD”, across both personal independence payment and the universal credit health element.

Both measures risk repeating the harm caused by post-2010 Conservative-led governments, which were closely linked to deaths such as those of Michael O’Sullivan, David Barr, Ms DE, Roy Curtis and Ker Featherstone.

But there is no mention of safeguarding in the report, or of claimants in vulnerable situations, and the need to protect those claimants from the risk of harm.

The closest Badenoch came to such a reference was when she told the launch event: “Of course, there are people who genuinely cannot work, people with serious illnesses or severe disabilities. We must have a safety net for those people.”

But she also told the event: “Conservatives believe that real compassion means not writing people off.

“We understand that a nation is built by millions of people getting things done every day, overcoming challenges, taking responsibility for their future.

“That is why fixing Britain’s welfare system and getting Britain working again is a moral mission for the Conservatives.”

Her words mirror those of Iain Duncan Smith in December 2010, when he told Sun readers – when talking about the old incapacity benefit (IB) – that they were right to be “upset and angry” when they saw neighbours who do not work, because such “unfairness saps away at our sense of togetherness in society”.

Duncan Smith, at the time the Tory work and pensions secretary, told the Sun that Britain used to be “the workshop of the world” but had now “managed to create a block of people” who “do not add anything to the greatness of this country”.

He added: “They have become conditioned to be users of services, not providers of money. This is a huge part of the reason we have this massive deficit.”

In subsequent years, the reforms Duncan Smith was introducing – trying to force IB claimants into work by putting them through the new work capability assessment – would be linked to an estimated 590 suicides in just three years, according to government-funded research by Liverpool and Oxford universities.

None of the media organisations that were chosen to ask questions about the party’s proposals on Tuesday mentioned the past deaths connected with cuts to disability benefits, and the risk of future deaths if the Tory plans were introduced, even though all of them have reported on such deaths in the past.

The Conservative party is not currently engaging with Disability News Service, although it refuses to say why.

It had not responded by noon today (Thursday) to a question about its failure to mention safeguarding in the report and launch event.

Picture: (From left to right) Ker Featherstone, Roy Curtis, and David Barr