Labour must do the hard work of making employment accessible – instead of cutting benefits

Improving “people’s chances and choices by supporting those who can work to do so, and protecting those who cannot” – that’s how the work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall described her plans to start cutting £6.9 billion in health and disability benefits next year.

Despite huge opposition from disabled people, our organisations and a growing number of her own party’s politicians, Kendall seems to be set to attempt to push through the deepest cuts to the social security system we have ever seen.

What is the government’s reasoning for cuts that will lead to at least 350,000 disabled people being pushed into poverty? According to embattled minister for social security, Sir Stephen Timms, the government wants to “open up opportunities for people who have been out of work.” 

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How exactly cutting the rate of the universal credit health element by £47 per week will do anything but force people into deeper poverty is beyond me.

Ignoring the brutality of the cuts for a second is crucial to unpicking the logic the government seems to be exposing. Ministers claim that slashing vital support, often used to make ends meet for those at the sharpest edge of our economy, will push disabled people into work – a duty to work that, according to this government, disabled people seem to be avoiding.

We know these cuts won’t work to achieve the government’s goals. The DWP’s own estimates of the impact of Conservative proposals put forward for consultation in 2023 of the same mechanism of cutting support to push people to work, would cause 457,000 people to lose payments, but only 15,000 (3%) would gain employment as a result.

Yet the despite this knowledge, the government is ploughing on regardless. They’re promising that their Mayfield review and the of “employment support programmes”, which recent evidence shows cannot move high numbers of disabled people into work, will make up for the thousands of pounds that many of us will lose.

One has to ask – what jobs does the government think disabled people are going to be pushed into by these cuts? As Claire Andrews, development manager at Difference North East, explained to me: “No one is paying attention to the broken systems of applying for employment.”

Does the government understand the reality for those disabled people who feel able to work, who are struggling to find a suitable, safe role? Having done her own research into the distinct lack of accessible jobs, Claire found that “in 30 days, across the UK, the estimated number of remote jobs available on the government system, with a disability-confident employer, was just 21”.

That is just 21 remote jobs that disabled people could feel confident in applying for – that would be safe to try without risking our mental or physical health. The fact the government would cut support in the face of this evidence is shocking.

Many of us aren’t seeking remote or white-collar work, especially as our education system often fails to provide us with the support needed to enter this area of the workforce.

And what is it like as a disabled worker outside of the traditionally more flexible world of white-collar work? Recent research by the Trade Union Congress found that over half (55%) of trade union reps had supported members seeking reasonable adjustments at work. That makes it the second most frequent equality issue encountered.

As the TUC’s general secretary Paul Nowak explained: “Far too many disabled workers face seemingly never-ending barriers that prevent them from being able to work, progress in their career and thrive.”

Shockingly, the government’s green paper has no proposals for the barriers which make work inaccessible to us. In the long tradition of its predecessors, they are blaming us as disabled people for the world they have built.

Many basic changes that organisations like mine, Disability Rights UK, have called for to address these barriers have gone ignored. There have been no proposals to make the Equality Act tougher, with the government challenging employers who do not follow it, or for investment in the Access to Work Scheme. 

This scheme which has a social return on investment estimated to be £3.86 for every £1 spent, and yet it doesn’t seem to have crossed the minds of the treasury’s higher-ups.

Really, nothing is stopping the government from supporting disabled people to work. This could be done with no changes to social security payments. “Many disabled people rely on the social security system to provide support so they can work,” Paul Nowak added.

“The government should make sure that social security reform is done in the right way – those who need support to work must be protected and the scale of the cuts should be reconsidered.”

Many of us will have to live with the consequences of these cuts long before any of the government’s work programmes get introduced. Personal independence payment (PIP) cuts will begin in 2026, but employment support will not reach £1bn annually until 2030.

Instead, we are seeing a doubling down on a system of work that fundamentally doesn’t work for disabled people. In pursuing arbitrary savings figures, the government risks disabled people’s lives rather than testing new approaches that benefit disabled people, and the wider economy and society.

Thus, we must now look to Labour’s own MPs, many more of whom are speaking out every day. We hope that they realise ahead of the June vote that a moral duty sits with them not to risk disabled people’s lives with reckless cuts. Instead, they must do the real hard work of fixing our broken workplaces and making work accessible for all those who want to work.

Mikey Erhardt is a campaigner at Disability Rights UK.

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