Benefits crackdown ‘to save £5bn by 2030’, claims Liz Kendall as disability charities say cuts are ‘immoral’ – UK politics live | Politics
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- March 18, 2025
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Disability charities urge government to abandon ‘immoral and devastating’ benefit cuts
Liz Kendall, who is still taking questions in the Commons, is arguing that sick and disabled people will be better off from these plans. She said that people able to work would be helped back into a job, making them better off, and that people never able to work would enjoy new protections.
But if there is anyone in the disability world who is taking that positive a view of what is being planned, they don’t seem to have spoken up yet. The initial reaction from disability charities is overwhelmingly damning.
Here are extracts from some of the statements that have already dropped.
From Charles Gillies, policy co-chair at the Disability Benefits Consortium, an umbrella body representing more than 100 charities and organisations
These immoral and devastating benefits cuts will push more disabled people into poverty, and worsen people’s health …
Any targeted cuts to disabled people on universal credit and employment and support allowance will largely hit those who are unable to work and rely on these benefits to survive.
We are united in urging the government to abandon these cruel cuts.
From James Taylor, executive director of strategy at Scope
The biggest cuts to disability benefits on record should shame the government to its core. They are choosing to penalise some of the poorest people in our society. Almost half of families in poverty include someone who is disabled.
Life costs more if you are disabled. Ripping £5bn out of the system by 2030 will be a catastrophe for disabled peoples’ living standards and independence.
From Sarah Hughes, chief executive at Mind
Mental health problems are not a choice – but it is a political choice to make it harder for people to access the support they need to live with dignity and independence.
These reforms will only serve to deepen the nation’s mental health crisis.
Key events
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Around 900,000 people now getting universal credit sickness top-up could lose £2,400 a year from 2028-29 under reforms, IFS says
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Government launches consultation on ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting
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Oxfam says No 10’s decision to disown Lammy’s comment about Israel breaking international law in Gaza ‘appalling’
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TUC urges government to ‘reconsider’ scale of proposed disability benefit cuts
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Disability benefit cuts ‘will send even more families to food banks’, says Citizens Advice
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Kendall faces repeated calls from Labour MPs for rethink over plans to cut disability benefits
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Opposition parties say Labour cutting benefits is part of Tory-style austerity
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Disability charities urge government to abandon ‘immoral and devastating’ benefit cuts
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Tory DWP spokesperson Helen Whately says £5bn cuts do not go far enough
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DWP publishes Pathways to Work green paper
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Kendall says under-22s could be prevented from claiming health top-up for universal credit
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Kendall confirms benefit changes to save more than £5bn by 2029-30
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Kendall confirms Pip eligibility rules to be tightened, and assessment process to be reviewed
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Kendall says universal credit claimants with most severe disabilities will not face reassessment
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Kendall says reassessments for people on universal credit with health top-ups to be beefed up
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Kendall says UC payments being rebalanced, with standard rate going up, and some health top-ups frozen or cut
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Kendall says ‘right to try’ will let people on sickness benefits try work without immediately having benefits cut
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Kendall says WCA being scrapped, with Pip assessment process being used instead
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Kendall says government to consult on merging JSA and ESA benefits
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Liz Kendall tells MPs benefits system ‘holding our country back’
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Where support is available for people with mental health and benefit concerns
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Pip caseload up 12% over past year, DWP says
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No 10 says David Lammy was wrong to tell MPs government thinks Israel has broken international law in Gaza
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Farage accuses Badenoch of ‘hypocrisy’ over net zero, saying she could have opposed plans in 2019
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Badenoch says she won’t commit to leaving ECHR without plan to make it work, because that was flaw with Brexit
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Badenoch does not commit to Tories maintaining support for triple lock at next election
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Badenoch denies changing her mind about net zero target
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Badenoch explains three reasons why she’s ‘net zero sceptic’
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Badenoch claims parliament legislated for net zero without plan for how to achieve it
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Badenoch says Britain ‘stagnating or going backwards’, and people wrong to assume prosperity always guaranteed
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Environmentalists say it’s wrong and self-defeating for Badenoch to say net zero can’t be reached by 2050
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McFadden says Labour has ‘duty’ to reform welfare system because it was elected ‘on platform of change’
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McFadden suggests people with most severe disabilities won’t have to get their Pip reassessed
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Pat McFadden defends disability benefit cuts, saying you can’t ‘tax and borrow your way out of need to reform state’
Around 900,000 people now getting universal credit sickness top-up could lose £2,400 a year from 2028-29 under reforms, IFS says
The government has not yet published its impact assessment that will show how many people will be affected by the cuts to sickness and disability benefits announced today. That will come out next week, alongside the spring statement.
But the Institute for Fiscal Studies has published an analysis that does give some figures for the number of people likely to be affected. Here are the key numbers.
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The IFS says that about 900,000 people who currently get the health element of universal credit (UC) – top-up payments because they are sick (see 12.27pm) – but who do not get Pip (the personal independence payment) would be worse off by £2,400 a year from 2028-29. That’s because the new rules imply they would lose the top-up, it says.
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People claiming the UC top-up for the first time under these rules will get £2,500 a year less under the new system than they would have done under the old one, the IFS says.
The IFS also says that the changes are designed to incentivise more sick and disabled people into work. But it says some of the measures could be counter-productive. By linking receipt of the UC health top-up to claiming Pip, the new rules could encourage even more people to apply for Pip. And, by increasing the value of basic UC, that could reduce the incentive for people on it to get a job, the IFS says.
Commenting on the plans, Tom Waters, an associate director at IFS said:
This package is a fundamental break from the past few decades of welfare policy. The increase in basic out-of-work support, while not very large, is the biggest permanent real terms rise since at least 1980. With it is promised even higher support in the period shortly after job loss in the form of contribution-based unemployment insurance.
At the same time the health-related benefit system will be tightened, cut, and entitlement will no longer depend upon whether you can work or not.
The hope is more employment and fewer people in the disability and incapacity benefit system.
The risk is that it’s precisely the individuals receiving health-related benefits that are least responsive to financial incentives to work, and perhaps most in need of extra financial support.
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