A Huge Missed Opportunity

John Pring writes:

Labour’s first budget for 15 years has failed to do enough to address the “systemic challenges” faced by disabled people across society, user-led organisations have warned the Treasury.

The first budget speech of chancellor Rachel Reeves included no serious attempt to address the crises in accessible housing, adult social care and inclusive education – although there was some new funding – or the huge barriers in accessible transport.

Instead, there was a clear focus on “cracking down” on benefit fraud and investing in new schemes to push “inactive” disabled people into work.

Reeves mentioned the government’s fraud, error and debt bill, which the chancellor said would provide “direct access to bank accounts to recover debt”, strengthening the powers of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

The budget report highlights how the bill will also introduce “new powers to check benefits are being paid correctly using data shared by banks and financial institutions”, which disabled campaigners have warned will see DWP ordering banks to “spy” on the accounts of benefit claimants.

Reeves also confirmed that next April’s annual increase in working-age benefits would be just 1.7 per cent, because of the low rate of inflation in September.

The only direct mention of disabled people in her speech was when she said ministers would deliver the cuts to out-of-work disability benefits planned by the last government, although her comments sparked huge confusion among activists, disabled people’s organisations, charities and the media (see separate story).

Despite the failure to place any focus on disability equality, Reeves did announce a £1 billion increase in spending on special educational needs (SEN), a real terms increase of six per cent; and £600 million extra in grant funding for social care, although it is not yet clear if this is solely for adult social care.

Her speech came just days after a report published by the government found that tens of thousands more disabled children could have their needs met in a mainstream setting rather than a special school, if there were major improvements to the SEN system (see separate story).

The budget report also reveals an £86 million increase in spending on the Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG), which will support “around 7,800” more adaptations to disabled people’s homes, although Reeves made no mention of this in her speech.

That figure suggests DFG spending – which currently helps to adapt about 50,000 homes a year – will rise by nearly 14 per cent in 2025-26.

The budget report makes clear that work and pensions ministers plan to set out their plans for reforming disability benefits early in 2025.

Reeves said the government would soon publish its Get Britain Working white paper, which she said would take “an integrated approach across health, education and welfare” to addressing the “root causes of inactivity”.

The budget report says the government is providing “record levels of capital investment in health” to help reduce NHS waiting-lists and “thereby supporting people into work”.

And it says the white paper will show how the government will “test new approaches and collect robust evidence on how to tackle the root causes of ill-health related inactivity”.

It will set up eight “trailblazer” areas across England and Wales that bring together health, employment and skills services to “improve the support available to those who are inactive due to ill health and help them return to work”.

This will include NHS England “health and growth accelerators” in at least three areas to “develop evidence of the impact of targeted action on the top health conditions driving economic inactivity”.#

The government will also spend £115 million next year on a new supported employment programme, Connect to Work.

From 2026-27, the Connect to Work programme will support nearly 100,000 disabled people a year, with councils able to “tailor their delivery” of the scheme “in ways that meet their local needs”.

In total, the budget report says, the government will spend more than £800 million on disability employment support in 2025-26.

The budget report also says the government will spend £120 million in 2025-26 to support the purchase of new electric vans and support the manufacture of wheelchair-accessible electric vehicles.

In response to the budget, DPO Forum England – whose members include nearly 50 disabled people’s organisations, such as Greater Manchester Disabled People’s Panel, Inclusion London and Buckinghamshire Disability Service – has written to the Treasury to express its concern at the measures announced by Reeves.

It said the budget “fails to address the level of poverty experienced by disabled people” and that it saw the focus on getting the “economically inactive” back to work as “targeting vulnerable groups like the sick, disabled, and young people with mental health issues”.

It told the Treasury: “The increases in disability benefits, social care, and special educational needs funding are a drop in the ocean compared to the actual funding shortfalls, which are estimated to be much higher.” 

The forum said the budget had failed to “adequately address” the “systemic challenges” around inclusive education, carers’ support, and the institutionalisation of disabled children.

And it said the budget “appears to further the troubling regression of disabled people’s rights, falling short of the support required to rectify these issues and build a genuinely inclusive society”.

Julia Modern, senior policy and campaigns manager at Inclusion London, said the budget was “a huge missed opportunity to reset the relationship with disabled people”.

She said: “The chancellor claims her budget shows ‘no return to austerity’; she really should have added ‘except for disabled people’.

“While we are pleased to see modest increases in some budgets for essential services like the NHS and an additional £600 million for local government-provided social care (a drop in the ocean compared to the scale of crisis in the £28 billion a year system), there is nothing in the budget to address the huge rates of poverty among disabled people.

“Instead, our social security is being eroded.”

Disability Rights UK (DR UK) said the budget represented “a failure to make real change”.

A DR UK spokesperson said: “Despite the minimal uplift in spending to fund our crumbling public services, the budget doesn’t give disabled people the confidence that the services we rely on every day will tangibly get better.

“At the end of the day, the biggest announcement was one our community had been expecting: more disabled and working-class people seeing their benefits cut whilst there will be no real difference in our local services.”

Gabrielle Johnson, communications and membership manager for National Survivor User Network, said there was frustration “at the ongoing neglect of appropriate social security for those most in need of state support” and the government’s decision to “reinforce harmful rhetoric” through measures in its fraud, error and debt bill.

They said the bill would give DWP “access to benefit recipients’ financial records without their consent, criminalising disabled people and creating fear and anxiety around penalisation”.

And they said the Get Britain Working white paper evoked “familiar and damaging messaging around the inherent value of human life as a tool to economic productivity”.

Johnson said: “Seriously ill and disabled people, including those with lived experience of mental ill-health, distress and trauma, deserve dignity, care and personalised support, but our government seems unable to meet even the very basic needs of those made vulnerable by the policies they continue to implement.”

And:

The new Labour government’s policy on social security reform is in chaos after it issued contrasting statements and briefings on budget day about whether – and how – it would press ahead with planned Conservative cuts to spending on out-of-work disability benefits.

Disabled activists warned that the government’s refusal to clarify the position on reforms to the work capability assessment (WCA) would only add to the distress being felt by hundreds of thousands of claimants.

The confusion surrounds whether the government would implement controversial reforms announced by the last government that would tighten the WCA.

The changes would be introduced next year and would see 424,000 disabled people lose their entitlement to extra support of up to £4,900 a year by 2028-29.

It came as a high court “disclosure hearing” is due to take place today (Thursday) as part of a legal challenge into whether last year’s consultation on these changes to the WCA were lawful.

The full hearing of the legal challenge, taken by disabled activist and author Ellen Clifford, will take place on 10 and 11 December.

Yesterday’s chaos started with comments by chancellor Rachel Reeves (pictured), who was delivering her first budget speech.

She spoke of the need to “reduce the benefits bill” and “ensure that welfare spending is more sustainable”, and told MPs that Labour had “inherited the last government’s plans to reform the work capability assessment”.

She said: “We will deliver those savings as part of our fundamental reforms to the health and disability benefits system that [work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall] will bring forward.”

Although many disabled activists assumed she was referring to the plans to tighten the WCA – as did mainstream media and charities – there was no mention of any such cost savings in the budget documents.

When Disability News Service asked the Treasury why no savings were mentioned in the budget report and to clarify Reeves’ comments, a spokesperson claimed the chancellor was referring to “the government’s already-stated intention to reform or replace the work capability assessment”.

He added: “We’re taking the time to review this in the round before setting out next steps on our approach in the coming months.”

It then emerged that social security and disability minister Sir Stephen Timms had been briefing some disability organisations about the budget after the Reeves speech.

Reports from those who attended the briefings suggest that the government has not yet decided whether to go ahead with Conservative plans to tighten the WCA.

Sir Stephen reportedly said that a similar level of savings on social security would have to be made, but not necessarily by reforming the WCA in the way proposed by the last government.

But he is also reported to have said in another briefing that he would not go ahead with the Conservative WCA plans.

The chaos follows months of confusing and misleading statements from the new government on its plans for reform of disability benefits and disability employment.

Only last week, employment minister Alison McGovern appeared to quash claims made by Kendall – her boss – in a BBC interview that she was planning to send work coaches onto mental health wards.

And earlier this month, DWP refused to clarify comments by the prime minister which suggested that all claimants of long-term sickness benefits would be expected to look for work under Labour’s social security reforms.

Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) expressed anger at the confusion and lack of clarity on the government’s plans, and at the apparent commitment to further cuts to disability support.

Bob Ellard, a member of DPAC’s national steering group, said: “Disabled people are scared and angry, having waited too long for the budget expecting the burden of government failure to fall yet again on us.

“We’ve been led to expect better from Labour, only to find their attitude is just as uncaring and vicious as before.

“Our needs have been ignored as usual, and now more of us will suffer and more of us will die due to Reeves’ callousness.”

Rick Burgess, a spokesperson for Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People, said: “The lack of clarity on the WCA causes distress, as does the messaging around benefits that ministers have engaged in.

“The savings the government envisage logically can only come from fewer people getting disability benefits, yet disabled people are not reducing in numbers, we are increasing – not least due to long Covid – so this can only mean disabled people will be refused the support they have a right to while being hounded and spied upon by the state.”

Caroline Collier, from Inclusion Barnet’s Campaign for Disability Justice, said a “cloud of uncertainty still hangs over disabled people and the financial support they are entitled to expect”.

She said: “The sooner that cloud is lifted, the better – and we shall be holding the government to its word that disabled people will be fully consulted.

“And this absolutely needs to be an agenda that allows all disabled people a decent standard of living, provides genuine employment opportunities without compulsion and treats disabled people with respect.”