The Nasty Party

There is nothing new about a Labour Government like this, and it is not going to improve, but although he is completely wrong about the Triple Lock, Ben Kentish writes:

They waited 14 years for this. Fourteen long years in opposition, much of that spent decrying what they said was the cruelty of Conservative chancellors and highlighting how Tory policies would harm the poor and the needy. And now, after that lengthy wait, finally back in power, Labour is on the verge of ramming through benefit cuts that exceed anything recent Conservative governments even attempted.

Such is the determination, it seems, of Sir Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and Liz Kendall to ignore the loud warnings and desperate pleas from their own MPs, charities and many of those set to be affected by the changes. Instead, the Government seems intent on pushing ahead with plans to cut or further restrict personal independence payments (PIP) – a lifeline for 3.6 million disabled people.

Ignore the spin about this being a moral decision – it is a shameful, unnecessary and unjust attack on some of the most vulnerable people in this country. The changes are the result of a need for cost-cutting because of Reeves’s self-inflicted pressure to meet her own fiscal rules, and because the economic growth the Chancellor repeatedly promised shows no sign of materialising. In fact, UK growth forecasts are regularly being downgraded. At the same time, the cost of government borrowing has increased since Reeves’s Autumn Budget – partly as investors lose confidence in the UK economy.

The Chancellor needs to offset these failures, and Britain’s long-term sick are an easy target. And so, they look set to be asked to foot the bill for politicians’ mistakes. One wonders what Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, who did so much during their time in power to lift people out of poverty, make of their Labour successors pushing people back into it.

But let’s be generous for a moment, and dedicate some time to the Government’s claims about what these changes will achieve. Downing Street insists that reforming PIP will help encourage people into work and that there is therefore a strong “moral case” for making disabled people worse off.

This might make sense in theory. In reality, there is very little evidence that cutting benefits boosts employment – a point made by group of concerned charities this weekend. This argument also misses the crucial fact that PIP is paid to disabled people regardless of whether they are in work, meaning many of those set to lose out will already have jobs. When this was put to Starmer on Saturday, he responded with a barrage of hot air. Perhaps the PM knows this argument is baseless.

Ministers’ second argument is an economic one: that the country cannot afford to spend more and more on incapacity benefits. This has some truth to it: the cost of disability benefits has soared since the pandemic. But this is an argument for tackling the causes of the nation’s worsening ill-health: a mental health crisis, shockingly long waiting lists, long Covid, widespread stress and anxiety, poor diets, a loneliness epidemic, shattered communities – not a reason to inflict further suffering on the victims of those problems.

Trying to address what makes Britain so sick will take time, though, and Reeves needs money now, so it seems the sick and disabled must suffer. One other point about affordability. Dishonesty oozes from the pores of any politician who tries to insist that spending on disability benefits is unsustainable while maintaining their support for the triple-lock on pensions.

As I have written before, even the Tory architects of the triple-lock now admit it is completely unaffordable and should be ditched. Yet the Government remains committed to this absurd policy that hands more and more of taxpayers’ money each year to all pensioners, regardless of whether or not they have any need for it.

The triple-lock currently costs the state around £11bn a year – a figure that is forecast to rise to up to £45bn a year by 2050. The savings made by cutting disability benefits? Reportedly around £5bn a year. In other words, this Government will find the money to keep making even the wealthiest pensioners even more wealthy, at more than double the cost of maintaining PIP.

Do Government ministers think this is the change people voted for? Or that they will be rewarded for this act of cruelty? I doubt it. Voters wanted an end to the divisive, toxic approach of the last 14 years – an opportunity to hope and believe that something better was on the horizon. Labour promised that change, but increasingly it resembles more of what went before. As time goes by, Starmer and Reeves appear to be adopting Conservative policies and Conservative rhetoric even more fervently.

Perhaps that is unfair, for in various areas this Government is going further than the Tories dared. Even the most hard-line Conservatives could scarcely dream of cutting foreign aid to 0.3 per cent of GDP, while some of the rhetoric the Home Office has been pumping out recently would have made Theresa May blush. And even George Osborne, who inflicted so much harm on people reliant at benefits, baulked at the idea of cutting PIP. In fact, when he proposed doing so in 2016, the austerity chancellor was forced to back down after a backlash from Tory MPs including Iain Duncan Smith, who resigned from government over the plan, and Boris Johnson. Starmer, Reeves and Kendall risk going where even Osborne dared not.

Among those who put their faith in Labour last summer were many disabled people who rely on benefits to stay afloat. After 14 years of being demonised and victimised by Tory governments, they dared to hope that change was coming. I speak to many of them on my LBC show. How do they feel now? In many cases, appalled, betrayed, and very, very afraid.

Ministers dress all of this up to pretend they are taking brave, tough decisions. They are not. Exploiting Britain’s long-term sick to cut costs is an act of cowardice, not strength. It is the easy way out.

There are other options for Reeves to raise money, of course: a small wealth tax on the super rich, for example, or forcing global tech companies to pay their fair share of tax on UK profits. But that would require a real battle, and real bravery.

Disabled people, on the other hand, are an easy target. They do not have well-funded lobbying groups to defend their interests. In its desperation to find some cash, the Government is going after those least capable of fighting back.

Taking pensioners’ fuel payments away, slashing foreign aid, cutting disability benefits: none of this was in the Labour manifesto. There is no real mandate for any of it. If ministers think they will be rewarded for this cross-Whitehall exercise in punching down, I suspect they will be disappointed. For if it carries on like this, Labour Party risks going into the next election looking like the new “nasty party”. There is still plenty of time for Starmer and Reeves to avoid that. Scrapping their cruel benefit changes would be a good place to start.