Urgent letter from UN to Labour government warns: We think your cuts continue Tory attack on disability rights

A UN committee of disabled experts has told the government that its new benefit cuts bill appears to be a fresh attack on disabled people’s rights, a year after it issued a similar warning to the Conservative government.

The letter sent to the UK government by the UN committee on the rights of persons with disabilities followed intensive efforts by disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) to provide the UN with evidence of the impact of the government’s planned cuts to out-of-work disability benefits.

The UN letter suggests the Labour government is continuing on a path laid by successive Conservative governments through their cuts and reforms to disabled people’s support since 2010.

Last year, the committee told the Conservative government it had made “no significant progress” in the more than seven years since it was found guilty of “grave and systematic” violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, following an inquiry sparked by a complaint by Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC).

Now the committee has told the UK government that it has “received credible information indicating that if approved, the [bill] will deepen the signs of regression that the Committee indicated in its 2024 report on the follow-up to the inquiry.”

This week’s letter was sent by the committee to the UK government on Monday evening.

It pointed to cuts to the health element of universal credit for most new claimants; the risk of these cuts increasing disability poverty; the lack of proper consultation with disabled people’s organisations; and concerns over the use of artificial intelligence to monitor the bank accounts of universal credit claimants.  

But it also highlighted “public statements” by MPs and government departments that have portrayed disabled people as “making profit” from benefits, committing benefit fraud, and “being a burden to society”. 

The letter gives the government until 11 August to respond, with the committee set to examine the concerns publicly at the UN in Geneva later in August.

The initial work to compile evidence for the committee was carried out by a small group of disabled activists within DPO Forum England, which later expanded to include representatives of other disabled people’s organisations (DPOs).

These other DPOs included the coalition that monitors implementation of the UN convention in the UK, DPAC, Disability Rebellion, Crips Against Cuts, and Amnesty International UK’s disabled people’s human rights network.

Their evidence had to be redrafted after the government agreed last week to remove measures to cut billions of pounds of spending on personal independence payment from the bill.

The DPOs were convinced that the bill would still prove highly damaging to disabled people, and activists met online last Friday with Jorge Araya, secretary of the UN’s committee on the rights of persons with disabilities.

They stressed the urgency of the situation, with the government set to rush through the legislation before the summer recess on 22 July.

They managed to produce a detailed letter describing their concerns by Monday, allowing Arraya to secure the committee’s approval, and send its letter to the UK government.

Within hours, disabled activists were contacting MPs who have backed parliamentary efforts to scupper the bill, and several of those MPs mentioned the letter in yesterday’s final Commons debate on the bill before it passes to the Lords (see separate story).

Rick Burgess, co-chair of DPO Forum England, who helped put the letter together, said: “I think it’s shameful that yet again, disabled people have had to appeal for international help to defend us against our own government.

“This was meant to be a change of government, and we are having to do the same things against a similar kind of hostility. 

“It’s shameful, it’s absolutely shameful.

“The Labour party needs to look at itself and they need to look at the people in charge of it and say, ‘what have we let happen here within our party?’ if they have got a shred of their integrity or principles.”

Mark Harrison, a member of the Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance steering group, said he was glad the UN committee had expressed its concerns about the legislation and the “poisonous rhetoric” of ministers in justifying the cuts.

He said: “It feels like Groundhog Day, except it is not Cameron and Osborne but a Labour government attacking us, our rights and living standards.  

“This is terrible politics, a Labour government vilifying disabled people and using the Tory media to parrot their lies. 

“They will live to regret this, as disabled people and the public will remember in the same way as they did with pensioners’ winter fuel payments, the two-child benefit cap and continuing austerity for local government and the NHS.”

The Department for Work and Pensions said it would respond to the UN committee’s letter in due course.

It produced the following statement: “We are changing the broken social security system we inherited so it helps people across the country to live with dignity, genuinely supporting those who can work into employment, and ensuring the safety net will always be there for the most vulnerable.

“We are putting the views and voices of disabled people at the heart of our review to ensure PIP is fit for the future, and are only making changes to the benefit once we have completed the review.”

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