UK govt ‘cruelly’ cuts disability payments amid tight finances

LONDON: Britain’s Labour government Tuesday announced contested cuts to disability welfare payments, hoping to save more than £5 billion ($6.5 billion) by 2030 as it looks to shore up the public finances.

Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall told parliament she was delivering a “significant reform package” to help disabled people into work -- but some Labour MPs and charities hit out at the changes that notably included how claimants are assessed.

Centre-left Labour, traditionally accused by the right of excess spending on benefits, insists the cutbacks are essential to help fill a black hole of £22 billion ($29 billion) it claims to have inherited from the Conservatives after last year’s election win.

Tuesday’s announcement came ahead of finance minister Rachel Reeves’s Spring Statement on March 26, when billions of pounds of spending cuts across various government departments are set to be detailed.

Kendall told parliament that UK spending on benefits “continues to inexorably rise” following the Covid pandemic, while such expenditure is either stable or falling in comparable countries.

Before her announcement, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said “the government could not put off difficult decisions” and that the current benefits system “was not defensible in moral or economic terms”. The Disability Benefits Consortium, an umbrella body representing more than 100 charities and organisations, condemned the “cruel cuts”.