LABOUR are reportedly considering around £5 billion in cuts to the welfare budget – as disability rights campaigners warned ministers they would “boost poverty”, not employment.
Tough new rules are being drawn up for disability benefits, with the strictest set of measures projected to save £10bn and the laxest £2bn, The Times reported.
The most likely package will fall somewhere in the middle, insiders told the paper.
Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall (below) is said to be considering whether to scrap a Universal Credit grouping of people with “limited capability for work or work-related activity”, which the most recent figures said was 1.6 million claimants or 71% of the total.
They are given an extra payment of £416.19 per month and are not required to work or find employment.
Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) ministers are also said to be looking at tightening the rules on claiming Personal Independence Payments (Pip) to people with disabilities.
Off-off grants instead of regular payments are being considered, The Times reported.
Kendall is said to be urging the Treasury to allow the DWP to reinvest the money into back-to-work programmes for the long-term sick, while Chancellor Rachel Reeves would prefer the money to be used by other departments to compensate for her spending cuts.
James Taylor of the disability charity Scope, warned the changes will be “enormously harmful to disabled people”, adding: “Cutting benefits in a bid to boost jobs won’t work ― it will boost poverty instead. Investment in tailored, non-compulsory employment support will help disabled people and the economy.
"But making it harder to get benefits will just push even more disabled people into poverty, not into jobs.”
There are reportedly jitters within the Labour Party about the results of a child poverty taskforce which is due to report in the spring.
It threatens reopening wounds within the party which were exposed when Keir Starmer suspended seven MPs for voting for an SNP motion to scrap the policy.
Questions about scrapping the two-child benefits cap have been raised repeatedly during meetings of the group, Politico reports.
Experts believe getting rid of the policy, which limits the amount of benefits a parent can claim for children if they have more than two, would be one of the most effective ways of reducing child poverty.
One source told the news site that concerns about the policy were “not factional” and that all parts of the Labour Party were concerned about it, with another adding: “A lot of people will not want to see it still in place on the first anniversary of us winning the election.”
