Labour out-Tories the Tories

The head of the DWP, the Department of Wickedness and Persecution, Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall, the mad axe-woman of Westminster, today announced the biggest cuts ever to sickness and disability benefits, kicking away the crutches of some of the most vulnerable in society. The scale of the cuts is horrifying, all the more so considering we have just come through fourteen years of Conservative performative cruelty from which Labour marketed itself as offering change. The only changes are in the faces of those twisting the knife into the sick and disabled and in the fact that whereas the Tories stabbed the poor in the front, Labour has stabbed them in the back.

What Labour has just done is even worse than what we got from the Tories, we expected cruelty and contempt from the Conservatives, and that’s exactly what we got. Labour offered hope and relief to people who were battered, bruised and reeling from fourteen years of Conservative abuse, only to snatch it away as soon as Starmer got the votes he’d lied and dissembled so long to win. Labour has added betrayal to the cruelty and contempt.

These changes are billed as saving £5 billion by the end of the decade. As she rose in the House of Commons to make her announcement, Kendall berated the Tories for having allowed the bill for sickness and disability benefits to increase to the level it currently is. Just think on that for a second, today we witnessed the shameful spectacle of a Labour minister attacking the Tories for not being harsh enough on the sick and disabled.

Nowhere in Kendall’s diatribe was any consideration of why mental health issues are increasing in prevalence, especially amongst the young. There was no thought that it might have anything to do with the increasing gulf between the obscenely rich and an entire generation which sees itself locked out of ever owning their own home, ever finding a secure and well paid job, ever escaping the stress and worry of being one pay cheque away from destitution. Labour has few answers to those wider issues. It certainly isn’t about to do anything to redistribute the vast wealth that those who have profited from privatisation and the destruction of the public sector hoard like jealous dragons.

Instead there was an underlying assumption that those with mental health problems are ‘at it’, and that they are undeserving of support, compassion and understanding. A few days ago, the Health Secretary Wes Streeting, a man who is addicted to donations from private healthcare companies, proclaimed that mental health conditions are being “over-diagnosed”. I’m sure his degree in history abundantly qualifies him to make confident proclamations about medical diagnoses.

Kendall announced that it will become harder to claim Personal Independence Payment (PIP), the main disability benefit for disabled people in England and Wales. PIP has recently been replaced by the devolved benefit, Adult Disability Payment (ADP) in Scotland, but I applied for PIP prior to ADP being rolled out in Scotland, and know from personal experience that it’s already a very difficult benefit to get. Half of those who apply for it are turned down. Over 70% of decisions are overturned on appeal in favour of the claimant.

Knowing how horrendous, demeaning, and stressful the process of applying for PIP was, I put off applying for a year and a half after I became eligible. Even when you have a visible and obvious physical disability like I do, a disability which medical professionals have assessed as being life-long, I still had to appeal against the DWP’s initial decision which was riddled with errors and outright lies, and when I was finally granted PIP at a rate in accordance with my true needs, I was told I’d have to be re-assessed in three years, despite submitting a letter from a medical professional stating my needs would be life long. The DWP seems to assume that the part of the brain controlling motor and sensory function which was killed off during my stroke in October 2020 might magically grow back. Spoiler alert, dead brain tissue does not grow back.

This cruel and intensely intrusive assessment process is now set to become even harsher. The changes seem designed to exclude those claimants who live with mental health problems.

I was due a PIP reassessment in at the end of June this year. I was having sleepless nights about it even before Kendall’s announcement today. However to my immense relief I was transferred to Scottish Adult Disability Payment in February this year. The Scottish Social Security Department have informed me that they will reassess my claim under the Scottish system in April. I have heard far more positive reports about the Scottish reassessment process, but I am still apprehensive about going through it.

Even though PIP is being phased out in Scotland, the money that the Scottish Government is allotted in the Scottish Block Grant for the equivalent Scottish benefit is ultimately determined by how much the Westminster government spends on PIP in England and Wales. The Fraser of Allander Institute reckons that the changes Kendall has made to PIP could lop £115 million off Holyrood’s budget. The Scottish Government will have to look to raising taxes or cutting spending in other areas if it wants to maintain the existing eligibility criteria for ADP.

Elsewhere, swingeing cuts are being made to non-devolved benefits. Incapacity benefits are being frozen until 2030 at £97 per week, a real-terms cut when inflation over the next five years is taken into account. New claimants will get even less from 2026, with the benefit being slashed to just £50 per week, though the Government has said this will be topped up with a new premium.

After the cuts were announced, Health Secretary Wes Streeting heckled the Tory benches, taunting them by claiming that it must be so painful for the Tories watching a Labour government doing the things that the Tories only ever talked about, kicking away the crutches from the disabled and overturning their wheelchairs. Streeting talked like a man who does not care if his Ilford constituency gives him the boot, he will land straight into the board of a healthcare multinational where he’ll earn millions.

People will suffer grieviously due to these cuts, PolicyEngine, a calculator which measures the impact of policies and is used by the Treasury, estimates that the social security reforms will push 134,000 into poverty and 28,000 into deep poverty. People will descend further intp despair. But Starmer and Kendall will continue to pontificate about tough choices that they themselves never bear the brunt of.

Streeting ended his smug oration with: “The public are asking “What is the point of the Conservative Party?”

Well indeed, you revolting plastic facsimile of a human being, what is the point of the Tory party when Labour is doing all the vile work of the Tories? There is no need for the Tory party now Labour is more Tory than the Tories.

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