Cutting Backwards: The Policy That Forgot the People

Welfare reform doesn’t have to be cruel. Labour just chose to make it that way - and called it courage.

I want to start this post with an apology. Over the past few months, while I’ve been busy tracking Mango Mussolini and the flying monkeys he’s summoned here in the UK, I’ve neglected some of the quietly devastating things happening on our own doorstep. That’s on me, and there's no real excuse for that. I should have done better.

I know exactly why I got distracted. Trump's chaos is theatrical and immediate - designed for social media dopamine hits. Reform's manufactured outrage about TV licences and audit fees follows the same playbook. It's easy to write about because the villains perform their villainy so obviously. Whether it's Trump live-tweeting his crimes or Zia Yusuf posting context-free council spending figures, there's always a fresh scandal to dissect.

But while I've been tracking the populist implosion on both sides of the Atlantic, the Labour Party has been quietly dismantling the British safety net with all the fanfare of a council meeting about parking permits. They've decided that welfare reform means dusting off the old Osborne playbook, slapping a "new social contract" label on it, and hoping we won't notice it still reeks of austerity.

I think it's worth saying here that welfare should be reformed. The system, as it stands, is punitive, labyrinthine, and painfully slow to support people in real need. Proper reform can create dignity, independence, and genuine opportunity. But what Labour is doing right now? This isn't reform. It's not vision. It’s cutting support with a PowerPoint presentation. Disguised as progress, while the Treasury counts pennies scraped from disabled people’s pockets.

Maybe that's why I missed it for so long. Recognising that the supposedly good guys are doing bad things quietly is harder than pointing out that the obviously bad guys are doing bad things loudly.

The £5 Billion Cut That Missed the Point

The government's new Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill, championed by Liz Kendall with all the enthusiasm of someone selling timeshares in Chernobyl, is being sold as a compassionate, responsible step towards "rebalancing" the system. But peel back the branding, and what you're left with is a set of cuts that will leave 3.2 million households worse off and push at least 250,000 more people - including 50,000 children - into poverty.

This isn't me being hyperbolic, these numbers come straight from the government's own impact assessment - the same government that keeps insisting this is about creating opportunities for working people.

Under the new rules, 800,000 people will lose access to PIP, facing an average income hit of around £4,500 a year. The justification? A vague insistence that the criteria have been too generous, especially when it comes to "everyday tasks." Needing help to cook a meal doesn't count anymore if you can microwave one. If you can wash the bottom half of your body unassisted, that's apparently close enough for government work.

If this feels like a deeply unserious way to assess real human need, that's because it is. But here's what makes this particularly delicious: even Labour's own MPs think this is weapons-grade nonsense, with more than 100 of them having signed a reasoned amendment to stymie the bill.

If you’re good at your numbers, that works out to more than a quarter of Labour's parliamentary party - so horrified by their own government's flagship welfare reform that they're willing to torpedo it completely. This has gone well beyond gentle dissent or loyal opposition - this is a full-scale mutiny, and when your own backbenchers are calling your poverty-inducing policy cruel, you might just want to pause for a second and ask whether you might just be the baddie in this particular story.

What Reform Actually Looks Like (Spoiler: It's Not This)

The saddest part? This could have been so different. And we know this because someone's already doing it better.

Just 400 miles north, Scotland built something radical with their Adult Disability Payment system: they assumed disabled people were telling the truth - revolutionary, right?

The results? A higher approval rate compared to PIP's, with fewer reassessments and claimant satisfaction rates that make PIP look like root canal surgery. It's more humane and more efficient - fewer appeals, less bureaucracy, less NHS strain. But Labour looked at this success story and chose the Victorian workhouse approach with better fonts.

Instead, Labour's grand vision involves:

• Freezing UC health support at £97/week until 2030, cutting it to £50 for new claimants

• Scrapping Work Capability Assessment, replacing it with tighter PIP assessments

• A 13-week grace period for those losing PIP (poverty with a snooze button)

And the employment support? A £1 billion fund that might help 3% of those affected by the cuts. It's like offering someone a plaster after you've chopped off their leg.

So my question is, if Scotland can build a system based on trust and dignity, why in the world could Labour not do the same? Because the fact is that behind the cold statistics and treasury calculations are real people whose lives are about to get significantly and unnecessarily harder, including:

Mental health claimants (39% of PIP recipients) whose invisible conditions will be dismissed if they can wash half their body, regardless of whether they can't leave the house for weeks.

Carers losing £4,250 a year when the person they care for loses PIP - some households losing £8,740 annually.

Single parents looking at £2,500 less per year in UC health support - money that often covers the transport and childcare that makes work possible in the first place.

Young people under 22 lose health top-ups entirely, offered CV workshops instead of support to manage chronic conditions while studying or working.

The Missing Piece: Making Work Actually Work

Here's what Labour's approach completely misses: disabled people face massive barriers to employment that have nothing to do with benefit generosity.

Employers still discriminate - sometimes unconsciously, often not. Workplaces remain inaccessible. Recruitment processes favour neurotypical candidates. Flexible working arrangements are grudgingly offered rather than genuinely embraced. The Access to Work scheme is underfunded and bureaucratic. Occupational health support is patchy at best.

Meanwhile, PIP very often provides exactly what disabled people need to work - funding for transport when public transport isn't accessible, equipment that employers won't provide, support workers, or simply the financial cushion that makes part-time work viable when full-time isn't.

Good, effective employment policy would focus on employer incentives for accessible hiring, mandatory workplace adjustments, expanded Access to Work funding, and flexible arrangements that work. It would cost more upfront but generate far better returns - every disabled person in sustainable employment saves the state around £18,000 annually while contributing taxes.

Instead, Labour chose the lazy option: make people poorer and hope desperation does the rest. It's not just cruel - it's economically illiterate.

The Privilege of Not Needing Support (Yet)

At this point, it’s worth saying: I’m writing this from a place of real privilege. I don’t need disability benefits. I’m not on Universal Credit. I’m not navigating PIP assessments or choosing between heating and eating. I’m incredibly - almost impossibly - lucky.

But that luck? It’s extremely precarious. If something happened to my health or my husband’s tomorrow - a stroke, a cancer diagnosis, a breakdown - we’d be relying on the exact system Labour is now dismantling with spreadsheets and soundbites.

And that’s what keeps me up at night. Most people cheering these cuts on are in the same boat - comfortable, secure, and confidently convinced it’ll always be that way. But life doesn’t work like that. Illness doesn’t ask how well you’re doing before it knocks.

We’re all one accident, diagnosis, or layoff away from needing the safety net. And when that moment comes, you’ll want it intact. Not trimmed for efficiency. Not buried in red tape. Not calibrated to fail quietly. This isn’t about “other people.” It’s everyone’s story eventually - we just arrive at different scenes.

Where Do We Go From Here

This isn’t about being idealistic or unrealistic. It's about recognising that when 108 of your own MPs rebel against your flagship policy, when disabled people are telling you it will make work harder rather than easier, when Scotland has already built a better system based on trust rather than suspicion - maybe you've got this wrong.

Labour had the chance to lead with vision. They had fourteen years to plan. To actually address the real barriers that keep disabled people out of work - employer bias, inaccessible workplaces, inadequate support systems. To build on Scotland's success and show that reform can mean dignity, not degradation. To prove that a progressive government understands the difference between efficiency and cruelty.

Instead, we got Treasury arithmetic dressed up as moral policy, cuts that make employment impossible while claiming to incentivise work, and a welfare bill so backwards it's triggered the biggest Labour rebellion since the election.

And the thing always worth remembering is that this affects all of us. Those of us lucky enough not to need these systems yet are still just a diagnosis, a redundancy, or an accident away from discovering whether the safety net will catch us or abandon us. The question isn't whether you need disability support today - it's what kind of country you want to live in when you do.

The rebellion shows that many Labour MPs understand this. But they need our support to change course.

If you believe we can do better than this - that true reform means building people up, not tearing them down - then back Richard Burgon's petition calling for wealth taxes instead of disability cuts. Because the choice isn't between fiscal responsibility and reckless spending, it’s between a society that invests in people and one that abandons them.

Labour still has time to choose which one they want to be.

Right now, it's not looking good.