Tuesday briefing: The devastating toll of Labour’s disability welfare cuts

Good morning. After weeks of leaks and speculation, in parliament yesterday the work and pensions secretary, Liz Kendall, set out the government’s plan to cut the benefits bill. Her announcement covered a lot of ground, and she said that it was necessary to fix a system that is “failing the very people it is supposed to help and holding the country back”.

When the dust settled, the consequences of that mission looked stark. In order to claw back £5bn a year by the end of the decade as the UK’s growth prospects worsen, the government is removing benefits for up to 1.2m people with disabilities – and cutting incapacity benefits in favour of a smaller rise for those who are able to seek work. Taken together, the changes are the biggest cuts to welfare since George Osborne was chancellor in 2015.

Kendall says that as well as saving money, the changes will help to get more people into work. But many on her own backbenches disagree, and charities representing disabled people say that the changes are a betrayal of the most vulnerable people in society. Today’s newsletter runs you through the changes the government wants to make, and why they are under such fierce criticism. Here are the headlines.

Five big stories

1. Ukraine | Vladimir Putin has agreed to a limited ceasefire, halting attacks against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, after a phone call with Donald Trump. But the Russian leader declined to commit to a month-long full truce, leaving the chances of a quick end to hostilities looking slim.

2. Middle East | The wave of deadly airstrikes that shattered the ceasefire in Gaza is “only the beginning”, Benjamin Netanyahu has warned, promising that the new offensive would continue until Hamas is destroyed and all hostages are freed. With more than 400 dead, the attack represented the single deadliest day since the first month of the war in 2023.

3. UK news | A 19-year-old man who shot dead his mother and two younger siblings had planned to kill 30 children at a primary school, a court has heard. At a sentencing hearing on Tuesday, prosecutors said that Nicholas Prosper wanted to “achieve lasting notoriety as a mass killer”.

4. Society | Sir Gareth Southgate has expressed his concern that “callous, manipulative and toxic influencers” are taking the place of traditional father figures for isolated young men. Delivering the prestigious Richard Dimbleby Lecture on Tuesday, the former England manager warned that young men are being “tricked” into believing that “success is measured by money or dominance”.

5. Space | Two Nasa astronauts stuck on the International Space Station (ISS) since June 2024 finally arrived back on Earth on Tuesday evening, more than nine months after they were supposed to come home. Sunita Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore’s were stranded after the spacecraft which took them up had technical issues.

In depth: ‘This is not the kind of action a Labour government takes’

How confident is the government that vulnerable people will be protected from the impact of its plan to cut the welfare bill? You might find an answer in what was missing from Liz Kendall’s extensive announcements yesterday: any analysis of her plan’s impact on equality and poverty rates. When those assessments are finally published, other analysts think that they will show a sharp rise in the number of people facing serious hardship – but because their release has been timed to coincide with the spring statement, they are likely to be buried.

Kendall spoke less about the cuts than she did about the much smaller measures the government is taking in mitigation – and said she was “not interested in being tough”. But the bottom line looks very tough indeed.

What did Kendall announce?

The plans set out yesterday were in a green paper – a consultation document put out ahead of final decisions on policy. But many of the measures it contained were marked as not being up for consultation.

As expected, the government backed away from the idea of freezing the personal independence payment (Pip), the main working-age benefit for people with disabilities, after an outcry from Labour backbenchers. Here’s some of what did make the cut.

Pip assessments will become much more onerous. Pip is worth between £1,500 and £9,610 a year, and is meant to mitigate some of the significant additional costs associated with having a disability. It is not means-tested, and not linked to whether or not the recipient is in work. In England and Wales, 3.66 million claimants are eligible for Pip, against 2.14 million in January 2020.

Pip gets paid out on the basis of a scored assessment measuring the applicant’s difficulties with various everyday tasks and mobility. Now, instead of just needing to hit an overall score, applicants will have to reach a minimum threshold in specific categories to qualify for the “daily living” component of the payment.

What that means in practice is that many people with life-changing disabilities, who are disproportionately likely to be living in poverty, will lose a lot of money. You can see the scoring system here: now, somebody who needs help to take medication, eat, wash their lower body, go to the toilet and put on underwear may not be eligible, because all of those issues come under different categories.

This change is responsible for the vast majority of the savings that will be made, but it barely got a mention in an article by Keir Starmer in the Times this morning: he said only that it would “target more fairly those who have the highest levels of sickness and disability”. In the absence of any government figures, the Resolution Foundation estimated that between 800,000 and 1.2m people will lose between £4,200 and £6,300 a year.

A big cut to incapacity benefit, and a smaller increase to the basic rate of universal credit. The government has said this change is necessary to avoid incentivising people to get themselves signed off work. Yesterday, we got a sense of the extent of the change: an increase of £768 a year to the basic rate of UC, against a decrease of £2,444 a year for new claimants of the incapacity top-up. About 1.8m people already claiming the top-up will have their payments frozen until 2030 – so a real-terms cut every year.

The work capability assessment for means-tested incapacity benefits will be scrapped. Instead, a single system will be used for both Pip and the incapacity top-up to UC.

But reassessments for people with the most severe conditions will end. At the moment, even those with very severe lifelong disabilities are subjected to repeated checks.

Under-22s could be prevented from claiming the health top-up to universal credit. This change will be subject to consultation. The government says that any savings will be reinvested into work support for young people.

A new “right to try” guarantee, ensuring that anyone disabled or sick can attempt to work without putting their benefits at risk if it proves to be impossible.

About £1bn more to be spent on employment support to help the long-term sick back into work. But Citizens Advice has warned that without much broader support in place around issues like housing, the investment will not be enough to counter the losses that many of the same people will now face.

How much money will be saved?

Kendall said that by 2029/30, the cuts should amount to about £5bn a year. She also argued that they were necessary to blunt the sharp growth in the number of people who are out of work in the long term, and so would have a wider positive economic impact.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said that it was hard to be certain about the amount that the Pip eligibility changes will save, because “the way claimants approach the assessment is likely to change in response”.

The IFS says that the UK’s bill for incapacity and disability benefits has risen by £12bn since 2019-20, and now stands at £48bn; it is forecast to hit £67bn by 2030 if nothing changes. But it’s also worth noting, as Patrick Butler points out in this piece, that public spending on pensioners’ entitlements has risen with little political controversy from 5.3% of GDP to 6% over the last 20 years, during which period the working-age adult benefits bill has remained static.

Could the government face a backlash?

It is already in the middle of one. As Patrick Butler wrote in this analysis piece: “If campaigners had been relatively restrained in their criticism of government up to now – Labour had to be better than the last lot – it felt that accord was unravelling.”

The Disability Benefits Consortium, an umbrella body, described the changes as “immoral and devastating”. Like other charities, it warned that the result would be more disabled people living in poverty, and in worse health. The disability equality charity Scope said the changes would likely result in more pressure on the NHS and social care system.

The Guardian’s scathing leading article calls the changes “a wrong and cruel decision that ministers should live to regret”. Jessica Murray heard from some of those who will be affected by these changes on Sunday. And for a sense of how angry disabled people are, see this piece on the Disability News Service from last week on the response from activists with the Disabled People Against Cuts campaign. One leading activist, Ellen Clifford, urged those attending to respond in “a way that teaches future governments not to come for us again.”

What about in parliament?

Yesterday, the Guardian’s Jessica Elgot confirmed the answer to a key question that has been hazy in the days ahead of the announcement: there will have to be a parliamentary vote on the changes to the Pip assessment system. That is expected to come within weeks.

Many Labour backbenchers have registered their disquiet, some of them on the record, over the last week. The reversal on freezing Pip from next year may have mollified some, and even if dozens of backbenchers rebel – around 30 are thought to be ready to do so – the measure is still all but certain to pass. But the vote is still likely to be the most severe test of Keir Starmer’s authority so far.

Notably, few of those who opposed the bill were among the most recent intake of MPs, who tend to be very loyal to Keir Starmer. Instead, it fell to longer-serving Labour MPs to lead the revolt. “I would like [Kendall’s] department to be able to look my constituents in the eye … to tell them this is going to work for them,” said Clive Lewis, the MP for Norwich South. “My constituents, my friends, my family are very angry about this and they do not think this is the kind of action a Labour government takes.”

What else we’ve been reading

• Richard Blair could hardly be more different from his father, George Orwell – and at 80, he is still reckoning with his staggering familial legacy. Simon Hattenstone’s interview casts new light on a remarkable relationship. Archie

• Hotels housing asylum seekers have become a flashpoint for public anger and media stigmatisation. Sonia Lambert spent a day inside one, speaking with those who are so often spoken for – about their lives, journeys, and hopes for the future. Nimo

• After yesterday’s devastating strikes on Gaza, Emma Graham-Harrison has a lucid analysis piece on the political dividend for Benjamin Netanyahu – even if many Israelis view it as a betrayal of the surviving hostages. Archie

• After decades of progress in preventing and managing HIV, experts hoped to eliminate it as a public health issue within the next five years. Now, aid cuts threaten to derail that goal, Kat Lay reports. Nimo

• A “hall-monitor” tone from centrist liberal and progressive circles has alienated many American men. Writing for the New Yorker, Andrew Marantz visits streamer Hasan Piker, exploring his world and how he became one of the few leftwing internet personalities with a strong male following. Nimo

Sport

Football | Real Madrid stunned Arsenal 2-0 at the Estadio Alfredo Di Stéfano to take control of their Women’s Champions League quarter-final tie. On an abysmal surface a the Estadio Alfredo Di Stéfano, goals in either half from Linda Caicedo and Athenea del Castillo secured a first-leg victory for Spanish side.

Football | Thomas Tuchel ushered in a fresh dawn with England by spelling out to the players that it was purely about winning the 2026 World Cup. Dan Burn, part of the squad for the first time, said Tuchel told the players that an atmosphere of “brotherhood” where no one was “afraid to speak up if something is not right or should change” would be crucial to their chances of success.

Boxing | Imane Khelif has said she is looking forward to defending her Olympic title in Los Angeles, and will not be intimidated by Donald Trump, who wrongly claimed she was transgender last year. Speaking to ITV News, Khelif said: “The US President issued a decision related to transgender policies in America. I am not transgender. This does not concern me, and it does not intimidate me. That is my response.”

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