The MSM is now announcing Labour’s DWP plans for it. Shameful.

It hasn’t even been a week since Rachel Reeves’ announcement on Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) disability benefit cuts – that she’d pre-announced to the shitrag Sun – and which turned out to be: a non-announcement. It was only to be expected that the right-wing rumour-mill would spin into action to launder the DWP plans Reeves’ should have declared to Parliament and the public, but instead will clandestinely drip-feed to its dutiful client media over the next two months.

Low and behold, the Times was first to the tip-off this time with the news that:

Claimants could face cuts of £5,000 a year as government prepares for rows with backbenchers and campaigners over bringing down £65bn sickness bill

DWP benefit cuts: Labour’s latest Tory 2.0

By this, the Times was presumably referring to claimants getting Universal Credit in the limited capability for work-related activity (LCWRA) group. The DWP awards claimants in this group around £416 per month, on top of the standard rate. In particular, the outlet was crowing that:

Under one option being considered, the universal credit “limited capability for work or work-related activity” category would be abolished, which would require claimants to make preparations for work and see them lose about £5,000 a year.

Since it’s for disabled claimants and those with health conditions that the DWP has assessed prevent them from working, or looking for work, I shouldn’t have to spell out why this would be an unconscionably horrendous idea. After all, the basic rate of Universal Credit already leaves people destitute, and unable to afford the basic essentials. So this would be nothing short of a state-imposed destitution policy on chronically ill and disabled people who can’t work.

The Conservatives spent the best part of their last year in power parading what callous full-time pricks they are, chest-beating their ‘cuts and crackdown’ bit on benefits. So Labour’s response? “Hold my taxpayer subsidised pinot noir”.

Obviously, it’s not the first time this new Labour government has pitched itself as cruel Torier than thou, and I’ll hazard a guess it won’t be the last.

Labour’s plans for DWP PIP?

Other lowlight DWP revelations (well, if you can call them that at this point) also included:

• Scrapping the work capability assessment and bringing these in line with Personal Independence Payment (PIP) ones. Notably, since 2019, the Tories have had plans in the pipeline to roll functional health assessments into one as part of the DWP’s Health Transformation Programme. The move would deny more than 632,000 disabled people the health component of ESA and Universal Credit. Crucially, this would hit chronically ill people, and those living with mental health conditions hardest. As it turns out then, Labour really hasn’t taken this off the table. But that should hardly be surprising to anyone paying attention to the neoliberal capitalist cronies at the party’s helm.
• Making PIP a one-off payment for some claimants.
• Means-testing PIP – something which the DWP have made murmurings about for a long time, but which Labour hasn’t put any concrete plans in motion for – as yet. Nonetheless, the Times article is suggesting it’s considering this.

For more than half a year that Labour have been in power (and months more leading up to the elections), the party has failed to be upfront about its actual plans for benefits. In the meantime, its ceaseless dog-whistles over the ‘sickness benefits bill’ has caused enormous distress to chronically ill and disabled communities in the dark about its actual intentions for the social security on which they rely on.

So, Labour could have – should have – come out with what its plans for disability benefits actually are by now. Instead, it’s same old, same old, with ‘Downing Street sources’ and ‘senior figures’ telling all this to the right-wing corporate media outlet on the sly.

STOP with the false DWP PIP as an out-of-work benefit conflation

However, the Times let also slip that the merchants of outrage aren’t the only ones Labour has had a loose-lipped love affair with over its blueprint for DWP benefit cuts either.

Ministers have been whispering sweet nothings to Predatory Capitalist Inc. that soon, any DWP PIP claimant with a mental health condition Labour hasn’t yet killed through months deliberate uncertainty and vicious media vilification, it can parasitise profits out of as expendable, low-wage gigster bees.

Because hey, don’t forget kids, busting your ass for unlivable pay is good for your mental health.

Specifically, the Times article said that:

However, those with conditions such as depression and anxiety, the fastest-growing reasons for disability benefits, are likely to find it harder to claim. Ministers have told business leaders that changes to PIP thresholds and eligibility will be the first priority in spending cuts in March.

This is of course, disabled people with mental health conditions the right-wing rags and Whitehall have stirring up shit about ‘self-diagnosing’ and soliciting tips from so-called ‘sickfluencers’. The first is because NHS mental health service wait times are astronomical, and the second are literally just disabled people helping other disabled people navigate an atrociously complex and inaccessible application process. The government could spend time fixing both these things, but invalidating people’s mental health doesn’t cost them anything – and will even save the Treasury money. So, picking on people in mental health crises it is.

And here we go again with the corporate media erroneously peddling PIP as an out-of-work benefit. The implication is that stopping some people claiming PIP will push them into work. In principle, that’s possible, but only insofar as the fact that income-related benefits aren’t enough for disabled people to live on. The point of PIP is that since disabled people have additional costs, and the cost of living essentials is often higher too, the benefit is there to make things more equitable.

The thinking then seems to be that if you take that away, disabled people with mental health conditions will have to find a job. Setting aside that some claiming PIP already do work anyway, many getting PIP literally can’t work. So what this would actually do is push disabled people into deeper poverty. And let’s be clear: this will kill people.

The fact Labour ministers have been quick to assure ‘business leaders’ should tell you everything you need to know.

Listening to the valid fear, upset, and pain of disabled people it keeps stringing along with false announcements? Not so much. Labour doesn’t care about chronically ill and disabled communities. It’s all about the billionaire non-doms at Davos and Chief Exploitation Officers from the City, and that should be clear to everyone by now.

Rumour-mill raring to sell Labour’s plans to the public

Overall, the Times piece seemed to confirm a number of proposals Labour is mulling, if not yet entirely committed to. Or, perhaps more to the point, these are plans it wants to put in motion, but is sussing out how to sell to the public.

Evidence of this is the bid to manufacture public consent. For example, the Times article for one. And, the last half a year of anonymous “senior sources” from the DWP planting stories in the right-wing mouthpiece media. In October, we highlighted another of these in the Financial Times. Three months on, the Times article could almost be a rehashed cut and paste job – with ramped up dangerous plans thrown in for good measure.

Just as plausible is that some of these plans are there to make ‘softer’ proposals almost seem like a compromise. This spiel about abolishing the LCWRA group altogether could be that. After all, a few tweaks to the descriptors so LESS people get these benefits, looks a damn sight better than NO-ONE getting them. Is it a red herring then? Possibly.

However, with neoliberal Labour, people should also know by now that any plan that punches down, goes. If it can get away with it – and let’s be real, with its landslide election majority the Tories and rose-tinted liberal lackeys handed it on a platter, it could – it will invariably choose to do it. So, prepare for the worst.

Whatever of these dangerously bad ideas it decides to follow through on though, they will all only spell more harm.

We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again – this is the client media doing what it is designed to do. It’s airing these ideas to the public, so Labour doesn’t have to. In doing so, it can build the case for these changes by doing what it does best. In a nutshell: scapegoating oppressed and marginalised communities. Obviously, in this instance, that would be poor, chronically ill, and disabled people.

Wednesday’s tumbleweed was intentional, and so is this. After all, why would Reeves risk facing the flack when she could get some lap-dogs at the Times to sell these ideas for her? That is, by the time that the DWP finally fesses up its March, the economic case will be all the hate-merchants will have manufactured the public to care about. And of course, that’s just how the government wants it.

Featured image via the Canary