The Government promised change, then chose cruelty

Written by Dan White from Disability Rights UK

Keir Starmer admitted in the fallout from the chaos of his flagship benefit reforms that he “did not engage” properly with his fellow Labour MPs. Honest, but he is missing the point, in his woeful attempt to appear humble, it shouldn’t be MPs he should regret not engaging with, but Disabled people, our organisations, and the public.

From the outset this plan to “reform” the welfare system has been mired in controversy. As a Disabled Peoples Organisation, we watched Labour Walk into power on a manifesto that promised co-operation with Disabled people and watched as that promise was broken and ejected in favour of further oppression, stereotyping and sanctioning. 

🚨BREAKING NEWS🚨

The Government's Universal Credit Bill has passed, rushing it through in one day, without a committee stage where Disabled people's voices could have been heard.

It's clear: the government views Disabled lives as nothing more than a cost-cutting exercise

— Disability Rights UK (@DisRightsUK) July 9, 2025

That sanctioning continues, as MPs voted through the welfare bill, with Stephen Timms MP telling the commons that labour was “elected to deliver change and that is what we must do.” That change, reading into Government thinking, is to change the lives of Disabled people, old and young for the worse, pushing up poverty rates and increasing reliance on the NHS and local government services, and human rights binned.

Perhaps Labour deliberately avoided initial co-production from the outset with Disabled Peoples Organisations such as Disability Rights UK, as any input we would have made to their welfare plans would have been the opposite to what they, and their treasury masters, wanted. We would have pushed for higher benefit rates to take into account the extra costs of living with a disability, we would have asked for a review of working practices at the DWP, we would have insisted on huge social care and health reform to provide supportive structures, radical I know, but logical and human rights based without looking for a pat on the head by the tabloid media.

It says a great deal about a society that it values your life as a human being by what you economically produce and not by how you live. Because many Disabled people are not economically active due to their disabilities, coupled with social model barriers, they are, in the eyes of Government, an inconvenience, an obstacle, a burden, something that should be fed scraps and blamed for continued economic downturns and flatlining GDP, this is the current impression held by Disabled people all over the country, our country.

It is apparent that Government, it’s leader who was a human rights lawyer, and the majority of MPs do not and have not experienced disability, and perhaps worst of all had absolutely no idea what they were voting for, just happy to vote and sit on a £90,000 salary and expenses, unconcerned for the humanitarian fallout from their decision or the anger of their constituents. This is government openly ignorant, cruel and happy to seemingly spread a message to the population that disability is nothing more than a drain on the public purse.

'It's disgraceful that people who earn £90,000 a year are trying to stop people getting a basic income which doesn't even meet their essential costs on Universal Credit.'

📽️Our Head of Policy, Fazilet Hadi, spoke today at the demo outside Parliament #BinUCBill pic.twitter.com/KSkCMKAhTV

— Disability Rights UK (@DisRightsUK) July 9, 2025

Yes, I am angry at these cuts. From a policy perspective, but more so from a parental perspective. My daughter is a wheelchair user who has had PIP for two years, however it is the generation below, a generation embracing life, who will grow into the repercussions of these decisions. Their future is being rewritten. Disability hate crime is already rising, so what world will these incredible young people move into? Their future support now hangs by a financial thread, they will inherit a system and country, apparently determined to do all it can to avoid giving them opportunity and more importantly, hope, just because they dare exist. They like us, must resist and find the will to undo the damage that has been done.

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