At the core of the government’s plan is a massive overhaul to Personal Independence Payments (PIPs). PIPs are paid to people with a disability, regardless of how much they earn or whether they are in work. Indeed, in many cases, people use them in order to access work opportunities. Requiring help to wash and dress, prepare and eat food, go to the toilet, or remember to take medicine wouldn’t qualify you for support.

Other proposed reforms include:

• Freezing the Universal Credit health top-up for current claimants, cutting it for new claimants by £2,444 a year and denying these payments to young people aged 18 to 21.
• Implementing “Right to Try” legislation for ill and disabled people to ensure they are not penalised for trying to go back to work. 
• Scrapping the work capability assessment for the Universal Credit health top-up and replacing it with a general PIP assessment.
• More face-to-face assessments for people claiming disability benefits. 
• No reassessments for people with chronic disabilities. 
• £1 billion investment in jobs programmes to get people back into work.

To be clear, there are some positive measures in the government’s green paper. I welcome, in particular, the Right to Try guarantee. This would mean that people who accept a job offer are not subject to automatic re-assessment if it doesn’t work out. In other words, they will be able to fall back on the same level of benefits they currently receive. This is a compassionate and pragmatic policy which removes a crucial disincentive for ill and disabled people from re-entering the workforce.

Sadly, I fear positive measures like the Right to Try will be seriously undermined by the sheer scale of the cuts being proposed. Running counter to this are the government’s plans to tighten eligibility for Personal Independence Payments, which many disabled people rely on to access work.

I am also concerned that some of the government is not consulting on some of the most significant changes being proposed.

Cutting support to those who rely on it most is cruel and counter-productive. It’s not too late for the government to change course on these proposals but if they do come to a vote, I will be voting against them. Disability benefits like PIP are a lifeline which sustain people and enable them to live independent lives. Being ill or disabled is not a choice and the reality is that any one of us might need to fall back on this social safety net at some point in our lives.

Scope has called these the “biggest cuts to disability benefits on record”—a damning indictment considering the cuts made by the Tories over the last 14 years. They will be disastrous for disabled people’s independence, equality, choice and control.

Early analysis of the government’s green paper by the Resolution Foundation found that up to 1.2 million people will lose £4,200 and £6,300 a year. Many hundreds of thousands more will lose out on incapacity benefits. Some people could be losing nearly £10,000 a year by 2029/30.

This is happening in a context where disabled people have bore the brunt of the Tories’ austerity and cuts. The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities found that ‘grave and systematic violations’ of Disabled persons’ rights had taken place because of austerity measures and welfare reforms since 2010.

Nearly half of all families in poverty include at least one disabled person. PIP is a gateway benefit, which entitles family members to claim other benefits: from carer’s allowance, to Blue Badges and Disabled Persons’ Railcards. Half of the 1 million carer’s allowance claims in the UK are tied to PIP claims.

One study attributed 148,000 excess deaths between 2011-2019 to austerity measures implemented by the coalition government. Cuts have consequences and I am worried we will count the ultimate cost of this policy in lost lives.

From early analysis, we can see that these cuts are going to have devastating consequences for some of the poorest and most systematically disadvantaged people in our country. Until the government publishes the equality impact assessment for its green paper, it isn’t clear exactly how many people will be affected, where these cuts will fall, or who will be hit hardest. The government has committed to publishing a full impact assessment of this policy and I’ll be holding them to this.

When the Tories were in power, they repeatedly refused to publish full equality impact assessments of major policy decisions, even though these are vital to informed debate. A key test of this government will be whether it reverses these cuts if this assessment shows, as we fear, that they will harm people with protected characteristics. The last Labour government that wrote equality into our law. This government must comply with that.

Nobody is pretending that the government has not inherited a dire financial situation. Equally, nobody could seriously suggest that the way out of this situation is to repeat the same dismal policy choices that put us here in the first place. 

Ripping £5 billion out of the social security system is a political choice, prioritising short-term savings over long-term investments in our collective wellbeing as a society. We don’t need a re-run of the last government’s raids on the social security system, we need to tax the rich.

Discussion on this is blocked by much of the establishment but there are a range of other options, including a 2% wealth tax on assets over £10 million, which would raise up to £24 billion a year. On the very week, the government announced these cuts, millionaires parked a bus outside Parliament to call for just such a tax. When millionaires are literally begging to pay more tax, the government has to think again.

Every week, I hear from constituents affected by mental health issues and this is inseparable from the society we have inherited. There is a correlation between the widespread mental health we are experiencing as a society and austerity, low-quality gig economy work, entrenched inequality, crumbling public services, unaffordable housing and escalating living costs.

This government was elected with a mandate to tackle the deep-rooted issues holding us back as a country and a society. We know the number of people who rely on sickness or disability benefit is rising. This is a very complicated issue with deep-rooted social causes. The underfunding of mental health services over many years has left many young people without the support they need to cope. The government is working to bring down record-high NHS waiting lists created on the Tories’ watch, undoubtedly another major factor behind the rise.

I’m concerned that the government’s rhetoric and policy conflates symptom with cure. Rather than tackling the underlying socioeconomic determinants of a mental health epidemic and rising sickness claims, disability benefits cuts would simply remove support. Indeed, as many people have pointed out, cutting income for people who are ill or disabled is liable to worsen their living conditions with ramifications for their health. Likewise, forcing people into work when they are not ready could have similar results.