Labour MPs have accused the chancellor of making “devastating” and “unacceptable” welfare cuts after the government’s own analysis showed they would leave more than 3 million households worse off and push 250,000 people into poverty.
Backbench MPs hit back after the government published its impact assessment of the benefits reductions which were announced in full on Wednesday as part of Rachel Reeves’s spring statement.
The analysis shows 3.2 million households will each lose an average of £1,720 a year. The cuts will be felt most keenly by those eligible for personal independence payment (Pip), 800,000 of whom will lose £4,500 a year on average.
Debbie Abrahams, the Labour chair of the work and pensions select committee, told the Commons: “All the evidence points to the fact that the cuts to health and disability benefits will lead to increased poverty, including severe poverty, and worsened health conditions. How will making people sicker and poorer help to drive our economy up and get people into jobs?”
Neil Duncan-Jordan, the MP for Poole, said: “We are talking about people’s lives here – my constituents are frightened.
“This policy will fuel the social determinants of poverty that ultimately create further pressure on the services the chancellor is trying to cut. And we know cuts won’t bring growth, they won’t create jobs – they will only create poverty.”
Many backbenchers are now considering voting against the changes to Pip at a Commons vote, which is expected in May, with rumours that one or more frontbenchers could quit to join the rebels.
Rachael Maskell, the Labour MP for York Central, said: “The devastating impact of people losing essential income will fall on disabled people. I will not accept or vote for measures that will put people at risk or push deeper into poverty.”
The government’s impact assessment shows just over 370,000 people who currently claim Pip will lose it, while another 430,000 who would have been eligible for the benefit in the future will not now get it.
A further 150,000 people will lose their access to carer’s allowance – equivalent to one in 10 unpaid carers. The charity Carers UK said they were the “first substantial cuts to carer’s allowance in decades” and would cause “huge anxiety for hard-pressed carers and their families who need every penny they can get to pay their bills”.
The average individual Pip loss of £4,500 a year, combined with the loss of £4,250 a year in carer’s allowance, could mean some households lose at least £8,740 a year as a result of the changes. More than 1 million unpaid carers already live in poverty.
Meanwhile, 2.25 million people who claim universal credit will be affected by the decision to freeze the health element of the payment, with each losing £500 a year on average. A further 730,000 future recipients will lose an average of £3,000 a year.
The OBR said the £4.8bn cuts package was “the largest package of welfare savings since the July 2015 budget” which was presented by the former Tory chancellor George Osborne and included a four-year freeze to most working-age benefits and cuts to tax credits and universal credit.
Several Labour MPs voiced their unhappiness during a fractious briefing by Darren Jones, the Treasury chief secretary, to backbenchers on Wednesday afternoon.
Of around two-dozen Labour MPs present, more than half a dozen criticised the cuts and as many as four indicated that they would vote against them, according to people present.
Jones caused further anger with a lunchtime appearance on the BBC, during which he tried to explain problems with how the benefits cuts had been assessed by using the analogy of his children’s pocket money.
“If I said to my kids: ‘I’m going to cut your pocket money by £10 per week, but you have to go and get a Saturday job,’ the impact assessment on that basis would say that my kids were down £10, irrespective of how much money they get from their Saturday job,” he said.
Steve Darling, the Liberal Democrat work and pensions spokesperson, called Jones’s comments “incredibly insulting” and called on him to apologise.
Other Labour MPs expressed their frustrations at the Office for Budget Responsibility, whose forecasts forced Reeves to make steeper cuts to benefits than had been expected just a week ago.
One backbencher said: “The parliamentary Labour party needs to be raising its voice about the OBR and the fiscal rules. This is driving our constituents into poverty and destroying faith in a Labour government to make tiny numbers on a balance sheet add up.”
Additional reporting by Jessica Elgot and Eleni Courea
