We can force government to back down over benefit cuts ‘if we turn anger into action’, say activists

Disabled activists – and a suspended Labour MP – have told campaigners that they can win the battle to force the government into a U-turn over its planned cuts to disability benefits.

But they also warned the Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) online campaign meeting of the considerable harm that would be caused to disabled people if the cuts were not scrapped.

One disabled activist said the “distress and the damage” the proposals were already causing people’s mental health was “immeasurable”, and called for disabled people to “turn our anger into action”.

Another activist said there would “undoubtedly be increased mental distress, self-harm, benefit deaths and suicides” and “immense pressures on public services” if the cuts were implemented.

She called for action by disabled activists “that teaches future governments not to come for us again”.

John McDonnell, the suspended Labour MP and former shadow chancellor, who has supported DPAC for nearly 15 years, told the meeting he was “really petrified” about the potential harm that would be caused by the cuts.

But he said there was “an opportunity here for us really in campaigning terms to turn this around and defeat these proposals”.

Reports suggest that the government will soon announce cuts of more than £5 billion to disability benefits, mostly focused on personal independence payment (PIP).

But Sunday’s meeting heard that the government was vulnerable to both outside pressure and anger from within the Labour party at the proposed measures.

A planned green paper on disability benefits had apparently been set to be published this week, but it now seems to have been delayed until next week, because of the anger caused by government media briefings about the cuts. 

At least 150 disabled activists and allies attended Sunday’s Hands Off Disability Benefits! online campaign meeting, to plan how to fight back against any cuts that are announced.

Ellen Clifford, coordinator of the coalition of disabled people’s organisations monitoring the implementation of the UN disability convention in the UK, told the meeting that the government’s apparent plans to cut £5 billion from spending on PIP would cause “a significant increase in disability-related poverty and there will be a knock-on to child poverty rates”.  

She said: “There will undoubtedly be increased mental distress, self-harm, benefit deaths and suicides. 

“There will be increased pressures on the NHS, mental health services, social care services and an increase in survival crime. 

“This will put immense pressures on public services that are already struggling now.”

Clifford, also a member of DPAC’s national steering group and award-winning author of The War on Disabled People, added: “I know people are frightened – I’m frightened – but I think we should focus and remember what we can achieve when we come together.  

“We chased Atos out of the contract for the work capability assessment; we forced George Osborne to do a U-turn when he came for PIP in 2016.   

“We have the links, we have a memory of what worked through the last decade-and-a-half, so in some ways we are in a better position now to resist than we were then.

“I know that we’re burned out, we’re fighting on multiple fronts, but we do have brilliant younger activists coming in. 

“I think we can do this, and more than that, I believe we can do it in such a way that teaches future governments not to come for us again.”

McDonnell told the meeting that the Conservative-led 2010 coalition had refused to monitor the impact of its cuts to social security, including the work capability assessment reforms.

But he said that the “wonderful” book by Disability News Service editor John Pring* showed that the Department for Work and Pensions “is a killer department, because so many people lost their lives as a result of the welfare benefit cuts that took place during the years of austerity under the Tories.  

“Well, as sure as night follows day, if this level of cuts takes place, people will be at risk and we will lose people.”

He said it had been a “hell of a shock” that the new Labour government was set to announce “another round of austerity measures”, 15 years after austerity cuts were introduced by the Conservative coalition “on a scale that we’d never seen before”.

He said both the prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, were breaking their promises that “that there would be no further austerity, that they would end austerity”.

And he said it was “dreadfully, dreadfully shocking” that they had “decided to go down the path of cuts”, with government media briefings suggesting they were “looking at quite extensive cuts in welfare”.

McDonnell said the government would be “targeting disabled people” with these cuts.

He said it was “so like 2010, where a Conservative government thought the easiest way to get cuts through public expenditure was to target the people they thought couldn’t fight back: disabled people and the poorest”.

He said the government should instead introduce a financial transaction tax on the City of London, and a wealth tax, so the government “can start investing in the services that people need to support them to live a full and independent life”.

McDonnell told the meeting that there was “an opportunity here for us really in campaigning terms to turn this around and defeat these proposals.

“And we can only do that if we mobilise effectively in these coming months, and that’s what DPAC was founded for, and that’s what all of us in DPAC now will have to do in this coming period.”

Mark Harrison, from DPAC Norfolk, said he and fellow disabled activists were taking the fight against the planned cuts “right into the heart of the Labour party” by protesting outside the next meeting of Norwich Labour party tomorrow (Friday).

He said a motion opposing the cuts from a local Labour branch would be discussed at the meeting and DPAC Norfolk was hoping to be invited into the meeting to speak to members before the motion was voted on.

There will also be a protest outside Labour-controlled Norwich City Hall on 26 March, the day of the chancellor’s spring statement.

And DPAC Norfolk has called for people to record videos of “what they think about the proposed cuts to social security and benefits and also what effect it’s having on people in terms of their mental health”.

He said the “distress and the damage it’s doing to people’s mental health is immeasurable”, with politicians and others “writing in The Sun, going on TV, and calling disabled people benefit cheats and benefit scroungers, and a drain on society”. 

He said he believed there would be a revolt within the Labour party “if we step up our campaign, because people didn’t join the Labour party to screw disabled people, they didn’t vote for MPs and MPs didn’t go into parliament to vote through cuts on disabled people, so we think they’re very vulnerable”.

Harrison called on disabled people to set up local DPAC branches, contact their MPs, organise local campaigns, and approach trade unions and Labour party branches, and local and regional media, who were now “working alongside us very often because they don’t agree with this either”.

He said: “I think we have to be bold. 

“I think we have to turn our anger into action, into organising disabled people, people in mental distress, against the cuts, against new austerity, and against these attacks on our benefits.”

Harrison said he believed disabled people could defeat the planned cuts “because people wanted change after 14 years of Tory rule and Tory austerity and Tory attacks on disabled people. And, you know, people didn’t vote for this.

“So we’re all angry, but we do need to get even. We do need to organise.”

Paula Peters, a member of DPAC’s national steering group, who chaired the meeting, said disabled people were “terrified” about the government’s plans.

She said: “This has been an especially difficult time for disabled people, with a bill going through parliament on assisted dying in England and Wales.

“The context makes changes to social security even worse as it feels like we’re fighting for our rights on multiple fronts.”

Austin Harney, from the PCS union, which represents many frontline DWP workers, and a member of the TUC disabled workers’ committee, told the meeting that his fellow PCS members in DWP were being “forced against their will” to implement sanctions on disabled people and others claiming benefits, which he said was “an outrageous disgrace”.

Although he said it was not official PCS policy, he said he wanted union members to take unofficial strike action in support of how disabled people are being treated in jobcentres.

He said the government was trying to “divide and conquer” by setting non-disabled people against disabled people. 

Harney told the meeting: “It is a frightening era that we’re going through; we need to raise this as a major issue for disabled people in the trade union movement.”

*The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP, is published by Pluto Press

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