When Rachel Reeves pledged last week that a third runway at Heathrow would put money in the pockets of “working people”, the chancellor gave a bigger hint about the government’s plans than the headlines suggested. The phrase didn’t just claim that the economic benefit of big-money infrastructure projects would somehow trickle down to workers struggling to pay the rent. It implied that anyone who didn’t do their duty for the labour market – say, people too disabled or ill to work, family carers and jobseekers – should expect very little from Labour.
Such sentiments could be dismissed as empty rhetoric, of course, but by all accounts are actually a preview. In the autumn budget, Reeves committed to keeping the £3bn of disability benefit “savings” the outgoing Conservative government planned. It is now expected that a package of spending cuts will be finalised in the next fortnight, in what the Times describes as a “radical overhaul of welfare” that could see hundreds of thousands of disabled and chronically ill people lose their benefits.
Under one option reportedly being considered, the universal credit “limited capability for work or work-related activity” category would be abolished, which would require often severely disabled or ill people to make preparations for work. That could see claimants lose about £5,000 a year.
At the same time, personal independence payments (Pip) – which pays for some of the extra costs of disability and is unrelated to whether someone is in work – is said to be being lined up for an “overhaul”, with those with conditions such as depression and anxiety, the fastest-growing reasons for disability benefits, likely to be targeted. Options being looked at include one-off rather than monthly payments for some, or means testing. Vouchers for specific equipment or aids instead of cash – as planned by Rishi Sunak last year – have reportedly been ruled out. No change for either benefit has been confirmed.
If any of this feels familiar, it’s because it is – and not just that it was only a decade ago that the coalition government was “reforming” the system. Since the election last July, Labour ministers have been repeatedly dripping rumoured benefit crackdowns to the rightwing press, from specific plans to remove fraudsters’ driving licences to vague pledges to get hordes of people off out-of-work sickness benefits.
The point of these constant briefings may seem baffling, but there are two likely explanations: testing the waters before announcing firm policy; and/or communicating a message. For the latter, just look at the seemingly innocuous lines in the Times story: ministers have told business leaders that changes to Pip eligibility “will be the first priority” in spending cuts in March, as Reeves is “desperate” to reassure City bosses that “welfare savings” will cool the need for a tax-raising emergency budget.
It is not simply that such things invite uncomfortable questions about the influence of the rich on governance, but that they signal very clearly who matters to Labour – and who doesn’t. That is not necessarily an accident. Back in January, Reeves weakened changes to non-dom status after hearing “concerns” from business leaders. In contrast, concerns from disabled people – as well as multiple thinktanks and charities – about the proposed disability benefit cuts over the past six months have, funnily enough, not had the same effect. Disabled voters are apparently expendable. Wealthy potential donors less so.
Politics, at its core, is a matter of priorities: where public money will be spent, where it won’t, and how it will be raised. That a Labour government is seemingly willing to sacrifice poor and disabled people’s benefits in order to protect the wealthy and healthy from paying a bit more tax is the kind of dystopian deal that feels at best perverse and, at worst, a betrayal.
None of this is to say that Britain having an increasingly sick population is not a crisis that must be addressed. But it is to say that arbitrary cost-cutting is not the same as genuine reform, or that complex public policy should be dictated by the Treasury. I can’t help but wonder how many of those currently crowing to get disabled people “off benefits” will speak out against failings in the Access to Work scheme that are causing disabled people to lose their jobs. Wanting to get disabled people off the “welfare bill” is not the same as wanting to help them work.
In some ways, austerity under Keir Starmer and Reeves looks different than the last time we were here: unlike under David Cameron and George Osborne, there is no ideological drive to shrink the state nor an explicit nasty impulse to punish “skivers” – more a couple of management execs looking to balance the books. And yet even this bean-counting is flawed. Recent research for anti-poverty charity Z2K found the economic value of disability benefits far outweighs the cost: while there is a £28bn annual bill for administering the benefits, they give a potential £42bn economic boost due to how they improve wellbeing.
Besides, that Labour ministers’ motivations are (perhaps) distinct from the Tories is hardly much comfort to the disabled people reading yet another story musing how their only income could be taken away. If their disability benefits are cut when Labour wins an election, as well as when the Conservatives do, what exactly is the difference?
Much of this goes far beyond whether the red team or the blue team is in office. It is about the systems that normalise impoverishing and isolating disabled people while protecting the assets and power of the privileged. It is about the attitudes towards disability and poverty that make those with the least seem the right group to lose the most, and the dehumanisation that says their suffering doesn’t really matter.
As more potential benefit cuts are inevitably briefed in the coming days, it is worth remembering there are human beings behind every speculation. What to politicians and pundits is an abstract game is to others the fear of whether they will be able to eat regular meals or charge their electric wheelchair next year. That’s the thing about leaks. Drip-drip long enough and someone will eventually drown.