Last month, over 100 social workers supported an open letter written by the Social Workers Union’s Austerity Action Group to the Chancellor about Labour’s benefit cuts bill. What is obvious to so many of us – disabled people and allies – but what the government and press seemed to have to be reminded of time and again, is that disability benefits like PIP and Universal Credit aren’t luxuries. They are money to help pay for the extra costs of being disabled.
At the time, the government’s own figures showed that the combined Universal Credit (UC) and Personal Independence Payment (PIP) cuts would hit 700,000 families already in poverty. On top of that, by the government’s own estimate 250,000 more people would be pushed below the poverty line. These aren’t just numbers – they are real people, including members of our Austerity Action Group (AAG) who are disabled and disabled activists themselves.
A sign of the extremely rushed nature of this Bill are the knock-on effects of people losing benefits that hadn’t seemed to be considered. For example, when someone loses PIP they also lose their “marker of need” with councils and the NHS. That means they can’t access other support either. It’s like they disappear from the system entirely.
The Universal Credit Bill will now make no changes to PIP, but it will make big cuts to the health element of Universal Credit for future claimants and to Income based Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).
Thanks to activism from disabled people’s groups, the government dropped the PIP cuts and stopped freezing some UC payments. But they’re still planning to halve UC payments for new claimants and freeze them for people who claimed before April 2017. For now, disabled people live with uncertainty.
Most of these people have been assessed as having limited capability for work; they’re often called “unfit for work” for a reason. The government admits employment outcomes for this group will be minimal, but they won’t tell us the actual numbers until October.
The governments also hasn’t published poverty impact data for the remaining cuts to the health element of UC. So MPs have voted on something that will affect hundreds of thousands of disabled people without knowing how bad it will be. This lack of information is causing real distress for disabled people who don’t know if they’ll lose their support.
A member of the Austerity Action Group said:
“The severe conditions criteria require claimants to meet the same criteria ‘constantly’. Constantly is defined in the Bill as ‘at all times’ or ‘on all occasions on which the claimant undertakes or attempts to undertake the activity’. However, many degenerative conditions such as Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis and muscular dystrophy follow a slow path of decreasing ability, with periods of remission. So, most days you may be unable to turn the pages of a book, but you may have occasional good days when you can do so. Or your manual dexterity may be better first thing in the morning but get rapidly worse as fatigue sets in.
“At the moment, a claimant in these circumstances would get the full LCWRA amount, which from April 2026 will be £423.27 a month, because they meet the descriptor for the majority of the time. However from April 2026, new LCWRA claimants in the same position will only get around half this amount, £217.26, because they do not meet the descriptor constantly.
“This means that someone like me with a fluctuating condition applying after April next year will not be able to afford the support they so desperately need. It also does not take into consideration those with lesser disabilities who still need support. This can only result in more hospital admissions & admissions to long term care when the idea of PIP and its current premiums is to keep those with disabilities in the community.”
We will continue to campaign for disability benefits that properly support disabled people.
The Speaker of the House of Commons has certified this Bill as a Money Bill which means it can bypass the House of Lords’ approval to become law as the Universal Credit Act 2025. Because it is a Money Bill, the Commons can now ignore any amendments the Lords might attempt to make.
Cutting benefits will push more people into poverty. However, there are a few amendments selected for debate that can make things slightly less worse, which MPs need to support. Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) are urging you to use this email template to contact your MP: https://dpac.uk.net/2025/07/urgent-action-letter-to-send-to-mps-re-uc-bill
As an Austerity Action Group, we spent 14 years watching Tory cuts destroy the safety net. We won’t watch Labour carry on where they left off. The government says they’re fixing a broken system, but cutting support for disabled people isn’t the answer.
The government shouldn’t be making decisions about disabled people’s lives without proper impact assessments or consultation. The Austerity Action Group will continue to campaign for all of the cuts to UC to be dropped.