Labour
MPs condemn Rachel Reeves’s ‘unacceptable’ welfare cuts
Backbenchers
express anger as impact assessment shows 3.2 million households will be worse
off
Kiran
Stacey, Patrick Butler and Aletha Adu
Wed 26 Mar
2025 23.56 GMT
Labour MPs
have accused the chancellor of making “devastating” and “unacceptable” welfare
cuts after the government’s own analysis showed they would leave more than 3
million households worse off and push 250,000 people into poverty.
Backbench
MPs hit back after the government published its impact assessment of the
benefits reductions which were announced in full on Wednesday as part of Rachel
Reeves’s spring statement.
The analysis
shows 3.2 million households will each lose an average of £1,720 a year. The
cuts will be felt most keenly by those eligible for personal independence
payment (Pip), 800,000 of whom will lose £4,500 a year on average.
Debbie
Abrahams, the Labour chair of the work and pensions select committee, told the
Commons: “All the evidence points to the fact that the cuts to health and
disability benefits will lead to increased poverty, including severe poverty,
and worsened health conditions. How will making people sicker and poorer help
to drive our economy up and get people into jobs?”
Neil
Duncan-Jordan, the MP for Poole, said: “We are talking about people’s lives
here – my constituents are frightened.
“This policy
will fuel the social determinants of poverty that ultimately create further
pressure on the services the chancellor is trying to cut. And we know cuts
won’t bring growth, they won’t create jobs – they will only create poverty.”
Many
backbenchers are now considering voting against the changes to Pip at a Commons
vote, which is expected in May, with rumours that one or more frontbenchers
could quit to join the rebels.
Rachael
Maskell, the Labour MP for York Central, said: “The devastating impact of
people losing essential income will fall on disabled people. I will not accept
or vote for measures that will put people at risk or push deeper into poverty.”
The
government’s impact assessment shows just over 370,000 people who currently
claim Pip will lose it, while another 430,000 who would have been eligible for
the benefit in the future will not now get it.
A further
150,000 people will lose their access to carer’s allowance – equivalent to one
in 10 unpaid carers. The charity Carers UK said they were the “first
substantial cuts to carer’s allowance in decades” and would cause “huge anxiety
for hard-pressed carers and their families who need every penny they can get to
pay their bills”.
The average
individual Pip loss of £4,500 a year, combined with the loss of £4,250 a year
in carer’s allowance, could mean some households lose at least £8,740 a year as
a result of the changes. More than 1 million unpaid carers already live in
poverty.
Meanwhile,
2.25 million people who claim universal credit will be affected by the decision
to freeze the health element of the payment, with each losing £500 a year on
average. A further 730,000 future recipients will lose an average of £3,000 a
year.
The OBR said
the £4.8bn cuts package was “the largest package of welfare savings since the
July 2015 budget” which was presented by the former Tory chancellor George
Osborne and included a four-year freeze to most working-age benefits and cuts
to tax credits and universal credit.
Several
Labour MPs voiced their unhappiness during a fractious briefing by Darren
Jones, the Treasury chief secretary, to backbenchers on Wednesday afternoon.
Of around
two-dozen Labour MPs present, more than half a dozen criticised the cuts and as
many as four indicated that they would vote against them, according to people
present.
Jones caused
further anger with a lunchtime appearance on the BBC, during which he tried to
explain problems with how the benefits cuts had been assessed by using the
analogy of his children’s pocket money.
“If I said
to my kids: ‘I’m going to cut your pocket money by £10 per week, but you have
to go and get a Saturday job,’ the impact assessment on that basis would say
that my kids were down £10, irrespective of how much money they get from their
Saturday job,” he said.
Steve
Darling, the Liberal Democrat work and pensions spokesperson, called Jones’s
comments “incredibly insulting” and called on him to apologise.
Other Labour
MPs expressed their frustrations at the Office for Budget Responsibility, whose
forecasts forced Reeves to make steeper cuts to benefits than had been expected
just a week ago.
One
backbencher said: “The parliamentary Labour party needs to be raising its voice
about the OBR and the fiscal rules. This is driving our constituents into
poverty and destroying faith in a Labour government to make tiny numbers on a
balance sheet add up.”
Additional
reporting by Jessica Elgot and Eleni Courea
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