Government ignores warnings of new DWP deaths, and UN intervention, as MPs pass universal credit cuts bill

Labour MPs have voted to impose £2 billion-a-year cuts on disabled people who cannot work, despite a last-minute intervention by UN disability rights experts, and repeated warnings that the bill will cost lives.

Despite efforts to defeat the much-changed bill, or at least soften some of its remaining measures – particularly by a small group of backbench Labour MPs – the universal credit bill* was easily passed by MPs last night (Wednesday). 

It will now be debated in the Lords, but peers will almost certainly not be able to make any changes to the bill, and it is now likely to become law later this month.

Disabled people and disabled people’s organisations were last night using words such as “shameful”, “cruel”, “a gut punch” and “a deep concern” to describe the bill and the process that led to it being approved by MPs. 

The bill will see cuts to spending for new claimants of the universal credit health element of more than £2 billion-a-year by 2029-30.

By 2029-30, this will mean 750,000 universal credit claimants who cannot work for disability-related reasons seeing their health element addition frozen at £50 a week, compared to the £97 a week existing claimants currently receive.

Existing health element claimants and just 80,000 new claimants – less than 10 per cent of new claimants – will be protected from this cut because they are terminally-ill or qualify for Labour’s new “severe conditions” group. 

Although there was some relief last week that the government withdrew planned cuts to personal independence payment (PIP) – at least until the end of a year-long review headed by social security and disability minister Sir Stephen Timms – there was still significant opposition from Labour MPs to the bill’s cuts to out-of-work disability benefits.

Disabled Labour MP Olivia Blake – who later voted against the bill – told fellow MPs that it would push many disabled people further into poverty.

She said: “Disabled people know what is best for us. 

“We should be investing in people’s independence, not leaving them on the sidelines or pushing them into poverty. 

“That is a matter of justice, but in the end it saves money as well.”

Nadia Whittome – who also voted against the bill – paid tribute to the disabled people whose “tireless campaigning” led to the government removing its planned cuts to PIP from the bill, but she said the legislation would still take about £3,000 a year from many disabled people in the future.

She described herself as a disabled MP – possibly for the first time in the Commons – and warned that “benefit cuts and loss of payments help to trap women experiencing domestic abuse, make children grow up in poverty and even cost lives, like that of my constituent Philippa Day”, whose death was caused by flaws in the PIP system**.

Whittome was among several MPs who pointed to a letter sent to the UK government late on Monday by the UN’s committee on the rights of persons with disabilities, expressing concerns about the bill and its apparent assault on disabled people’s rights (see separate story).

And she praised the work of DPO Forum England for helping her draft a new clause that would have ensured the government had to produce a document showing the human rights impact of the bill before it could be implemented.

Whittome said: “As a disabled MP, I have first-hand experience of the disability benefits system. 

“We have all met constituents who are already not getting the support they need. 

“The question today is this: do we let their number grow?”

Labour’s Alison Hume – who voted against the bill – called for an urgent change to the culture of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

She mentioned the death of Jodey Whiting and the successful eight-year campaign of her “incredible” mother, Joy Dove, to prove via a second inquest that the department’s decision to wrongly stop her disabled daughter’s out-of-work benefits after a string of safeguarding failings was the “trigger” for her to take her own life.

Hume said her own experiences with her disabled son showed her that “the culture of the DWP is hostile to disabled people. 

“That culture must change if we are to have any chance of building a sustainable, fair and compassionate welfare system for the future.”

Independent MP Zarah Sultana warned that MPs’ decisions on disability benefit cuts and reforms have previously led to deaths.

She also mentioned Jodey Whiting, and Errol Graham, who starved to death after his out-of-work disability benefits were wrongly removed, and she said his death was “not a tragic exception, it was a political consequence”.

She said: “These are not just names; they are the human cost of decisions made in this place.”

John McDonnell, a long-time supporter of the disabled people’s anti-cuts movements, who voted against the bill, pointed to a banner that had been brought to the House of Commons by disabled activists during the David Cameron Conservative government, which showed disabled people who had taken their own lives because of austerity cuts and reforms to disability benefits.

McDonnell, a suspended Labour MP, said: “It was one of the most distressing things I have seen in my political life, and I wept that day.

“I do not want that to happen again. 

“Let us be honest, as sure as night follows day, if cuts go through on the scale proposed, people will lose their lives. People will suffer immense harm. Let us all understand that.”

Steve Darling, the disabled Liberal Democrat MP and his party’s shadow work and pensions spokesperson – who joined his party in voting against the bill – said the events surrounding the bill had been “chaotic” and “shambolic”, while it had been “irresponsibly rushed through”.

He also accused the Labour government of using Sir Stephen “as a human shield” because of the decision to appoint him to review PIP instead of carrying out immediate cuts.

Although he later voted for the bill, disabled Labour MP Liam Conlon linked the increase in the number of claimants of disability benefits with a “decade of savage cuts to our NHS and community care services”.

He said: “This country now has the lowest life expectancy in western Europe, one of the highest rates of preventable deaths among rich countries, and one of the lowest numbers of neighbourhood nurses and GPs per head among wealthy nations. 

“The dismantling of preventive care has not only brought our NHS to the brink; it has done more than anything else to drive the increase that we are discussing in the number of people who are on health-related benefits and who are disabled.”

Cat Eccles, the Labour MP for Stourbridge – who voted against the bill – another who mentioned the UN letter, spoke of previously claiming universal credit after experiencing health problems.

She told MPs: “I was in receipt of universal credit for about a year, receiving £690 a month, but that did not even cover my rent and bills, and I was at risk of losing my rented home. 

“Thankfully, I had friends and family to support me, but not everyone is that fortunate.

“My confidence plummeted, and the feelings of failure, rejection and uselessness at not being able to sustain myself were all-consuming. Nobody chooses this life.”

She added: “In my constituency of Stourbridge, many people have thanked me over the past few days for voting against this flawed bill last week – not just disabled people and their families and carers, but charity workers, work coaches, nurses and local authority staff. 

“Nobody supports this bill: not Deaf and disabled people’s groups; not charities; and not health organisations. Not even the United Nations supports it.”

Richard Burgon, who voted against the bill, asked fellow Labour MPs whether they could support a bill that would cut the support of 750,000 disabled people who were already on low incomes.

He added: “Disabled people who come to see us in our constituency surgeries will not understand if we, as Labour people, vote for this cut to universal credit tonight or abstain. 

“We will live with that vote in every single constituency surgery between now and the next general election.

“This is not a left and right issue in the Labour party; this is a right and wrong issue.”

Three other disabled MPs – Emma Lewell, Marsha de Cordova and Marie Rimmer – all voted against the bill, although they did not speak in the debate.

But some Labour MPs who had opposed the PIP cuts voted yesterday for the cuts to the universal credit health element, and measures to create a new “severe conditions” group, for claimants who are likely to have fewer requirements to engage with work coaches than others receiving the health element.

Labour MPs who have previously opposed cuts to disabled people’s support but who voted for the bill last night included Debbie Abrahams, who chairs the work and pensions committee; Vicky Foxcroft, the former shadow minister for disabled people, whose resignation as a whip helped kickstart the backbench Labour rebellion over the PIP cuts; and disabled MP Marie Tidball, who voted against the PIP cuts last week.

Another disabled Labour MP, Jen Craft, also voted in favour of the bill, as she had last week.

There was one small government concession, secured through the efforts of Tidball and others, who had called for a firmer commitment to co-production with disabled people of the Timms PIP review.

Sir Stephen promised there would be a majority of disabled people or representatives of disabled people’s organisations on a group he will set up that will “lead and deliver” and co-produce the review, but he shied away from promising that disabled people on this group would have a veto on the review’s conclusions.

Instead, he said he would “aim for a consensus among all those taking part”.

He said the outcome of the review would be “central to the legislation that follows”.

He claimed that the universal credit bill would “protect existing claimants in a powerful way, including those with fluctuating health conditions, but it will move decisively to a more proactive, pro-work system”.

And he claimed that the bill “begins to repair a broken system that holds people back, by removing work disincentives from universal credit”.

All the non-government amendments aimed at improving the bill, and which were voted on, were defeated, and the final vote on whether the bill should be approved and passed to the House of Lords was passed by 336 votes to 242.

Before yesterday afternoon’s debate, disabled activists warned that the events of the last few weeks would leave many disabled people struggling to trust Labour MPs for the final four years of this parliament. 

Andy Mitchell, in parliament yesterday for a last-ditch lobby of MPs, said: “It’s such a betrayal of everything we believed Labour stood for.

“Working with Timms is going to be really difficult after what he’s done and said.”

And Megan Thomas, from the Coalition Against Benefit Cuts, who was also helping organise the lobby, told Disability News Service: “Disabled people are seeing this as a betrayal.

“This is not what we were campaigning for, it’s not what we were promised.”

*Previously named the universal credit and personal independence payment bill

**The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, DNS editor John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP’s actions and failings, including those of Jodey Whiting, Errol Graham and Philippa Day, is published by Pluto Press

Credit for this article goes to John Pring with the Disability News Service