Labour’s welfare plan will force disabled people out of work, not into it

17 March 2025, 14:12

We all agree that the welfare system needs change — but the current government’s proposal for benefits cuts disguised as “reform” will only reduce the number of disabled people in work.

Key to the current government’s proposal is cutting Personal Independence Payments (PIP), a benefit that many working disabled people use to cover the extra costs of working with a disability.

For instance, many wheelchair users are forced to commute via taxi due to the UK’s lack of accessible transport. (Notably, this government appears to have scrapped the pledge to put accessibility at the heart of new rail policy). Disabled people across the spectrum face costs of purchasing and maintaining assistive devices that allow them to do their jobs, especially when long wait times for the Access to Work scheme can lead to lost job opportunities.

⁠⁠The policymakers pushing these cuts seem to misunderstand the purpose of PIP, repeatedly misquoting it as an out-of-work benefit rather than a key policy tool for ensuring that disabled people can work in a society that puts them at a significant economic disadvantage. Cutting PIP will only reduce the number of disabled people in work.

Labour’s so-called welfare “reform” is shockingly uncreative and shows a lack of literacy with respect to the daily policy challenges of disabled people.

In a meeting months ago with Stephen Timms, I told him that the DWP has two choices: they can either continue to lazily throw quick-fix disability employment programs, campaigns, and policy changes at the wall without an evidence base to see what sticks — wasting the British taxpayer’s money and playing with the lives our country’s most marginalized — or, they can do the work to ask disabled people who want to work what keeps them from doing so, and construct targeted policies to address those barriers.

Smart reform is possible, but only if government consults with disabled people to locate and address the root causes of being out of work. Further weakening the UK’s dwindling social safety net risks creating an environment for disabled people akin to that of the United States, where the disability benefits system disincentivizes work, resulting in low disability employment and high poverty, institutionalization, and homelessness.

With the backdrop of a social care crisis that leaves many without vital care at home, a staggering NHS backlog for treatment, broken promises for accessible transport, a failing Access to Work system, rising noncompliance with accessible housing standards, and an assisted suicide bill with an unprecedented lack of safeguards, cutting key benefits is the last thing a competent government should do to create a society where disabled people can survive, let alone maintain employment.

In the words of Paralympian and House of Lords Member Tanni Gray-Thompson, in a near-future where a government-assisted suicide service is poised to be easier to access than the disability services and benefits required to live, these benefits cuts will “push disabled people to end their lives.”

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Anna Landre is a wheelchair user and PhD researcher at UCL. She is originally from the US, where she helped shape reform of their disability benefits system.

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