People with special needs are terrified of Starmer’s reforms

“People are just scared. There is no point in the state in Britain supporting us if we get into trouble. In fact, it’s the opposite. It doesn’t look like this will fundamentally change under Labour.”

That’s what a friend of mine with special needs said as we were chewing the fat. With the government introducing a review of disability “benefits” next year – the quotes are because, given my own experience, I find it difficult to see the benefits of disability – I could only nod along. As you can probably guess, it wasn’t a happy conversation.

Why the delay? I think I can answer that. First of all, remember that this is a government that has left almost every banana peel in its path, in stark contrast to, say, Tony Blair’s first Labor government. There is therefore a rather pressing need for Keir Starmer and co to return to prominence. So we have been treated to the Prime Minister going out and declaring that “Britain isn’t working” while promising the “biggest employment reforms in a generation”.

The country’s employment centres, or Jobcentre Plus as they are now known, will in future become part of a “National Jobs and Careers Service”. The language is of ‘help’ and ‘support’. The NHS will be involved in efforts to tackle “economic inactivity” caused by long-term illness. Another point of attention is young people. It all sounds great. But companies will play a key role in determining whether this is a success or a failure. And they have pointed out that it takes a certain amount of cognitive dissonance to say all these things when you have increased employers’ national insurance contributions (NICs), an increase that acts as a tax on jobs.

Hidden in the Department for Work and Pensions announcement is a promise to “bring forward measures to overhaul the health and disability benefits system so that it better supports people to enter and remain in work and to tackle rising benefits bill.” What do those words mean in practice? We don’t know exactly. However, Labor has said it is sticking to the previous government’s pledge to cut £3 billion from benefits over five years. This could be quite a challenge at a time when unemployment is rising and companies say the proliferation of networking will force them to increase the number of applicants by cutting staff. None of this bodes well for Britain’s disabled people.

“It looks quite bleak,” Fazilet Hadi, head of policy at Disability Rights UK, told me. “They are sticking to the Tory plan to cut £3 billion from benefits, but say they won’t necessarily stick to the way the Tories would do it. They say they will talk to disabled people about how they will implement the cuts. That’s not really a great offer.”

If Starmer’s big announcement on jobs is the carrot, next year’s review is the stick. The first thing that neither the Tories nor Labor seem to be able to understand is that many people with special needs are simply too sick to work. The second point is that there are a large number of people who want to work but find the job market a cold and hostile place – where recruiters only see the disability and not the person. The third is that many of us who have jobs rely on the meager support available to keep it that way.

Now that this is the case, I have a question for Liz Kendall, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions: how will cutting that support help you achieve your target of an 80 per cent employment rate? It appears that on the one hand the government is unfolding plans that are ambitious and largely to be welcomed, while on the other hand it is preparing to sabotage them. All this on top of an assisted dying bill that terrifies many of us – myself included.

The best part is that the attitude of the British public is much more compassionate and humane than that of the British government. Polls have consistently shown that people are opposed to the replacement of benefits such as the Personal Independence Allowance (PIP) with patronizing and dehumanizing vouchers, and even believe that the amounts awarded are too low. So once again we have a government that seems completely out of step with the electorate. Maybe Kendall and Starmer might want to think about that.

James Moore, The Independent