Rachel Reeves just destroyed disabled people’s lives AND public services in one fell swoop

Rachel Reeves’ spring statement has marked out the goalposts for a Labour Party government that has, perhaps irredeemably, lost its way. Reeves has delivered deep cuts for both DWP benefits and public services. On top of that, defence spending is set to increase with the Ministry of Defence to receive an extra £2.2 billion in just the next financial year.

2025’s spring statement is an insult to poor people, and an austerity approach to a country in crisis. The rise in defence spending while welfare is cut makes it clearer than ever that the Labour party hate disabled people, and poor people.

Rachel Reeves and her Labour lies

The BBC reported that:

• Incapacity benefits under universal credit (UC) to be halved and cut for new claimants.

Chronically ill and disabled people’s elements of Universal Credit are also to be frozen at £97 a week – and reduced to £47 a week for new claimants – with only people with the most severe conditions able to apply for a top-up. People under the age of 22 will no longer be able to claim incapacity benefit top-ups under universal credit. And, Reeves has also enforced:

• a stricter eligibility test for personal independence payments (Pips), the main disability benefit, from November 2026.

Initially, the government had claimed that Reeves’ proposed cuts would save them £5 billion. However, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has hard to clarify that the savings will actually be £3.4 billion. However, whilst headlines covering the spring statement might breathlessly report on projected savings, the reality is very different.

Is it really a saving for the government if people are pushed into poverty, and struggling to exist? Is it really a saving if education and healthcare all decline, while food prices go up and the government throws money towards its warmongering? And, is that saving worth it if the poorest people are left with even less money and services?

The cherry on the cake here was that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) even admitted that Reeves’ cuts will mean disaster for many people:

The potential impact of these reforms on poverty projections has been estimated using a static microsimulation model. Using this model, we estimate there will be an additional 250,000 people (including 50,000 children) in relative poverty.

As the Guardian reported:

Relative poverty is defined as having a household income below 60% of the median.

What does Labour even mean anymore?

Reeves announced her cuts for poor people with the added comment:

The Labour party is the party of work.

Reeves is being purposely obtuse here – Labour is not the party of work, it is the party of workers. It should be the party that understands that people who cannot work should not be punished. It should be the party that defends the rights of workers to work safely and without exploitation.

Keir Starmer’s Labour love to talk about being the party of work. The implication seems to be that working people don’t want to subsidise people who can’t work. That’s bullshit. Plenty of working people are happy for their taxes to go towards public services, to disabled people, and to everyone else who needs a better quality of life. Who the fuck wants their taxes to go towards war-mongering?

Being a working person is not inherently a moral good.

If we allow Labour to conflate “working person” with “good person,” all of us will be much worse off. People who cannot work and people who work and still cannot afford the basics are not bad people. Disabled people deserve a good quality of life, where they don’t have to scrap to survive. Every single person, working or otherwise, shouldn’t have to scrap to survive. Reeves’ pathetic comments about Labour being the party of work are a divisive tactic designed to make her welfare cuts acceptable.

The fact is, they’re an absolute disgrace.

Disabled futures: wilfully ripped apart by Rachel Reeves

Instead, Reeves’ spring statement has cemented Labour as the party of the wealthy. Reeves’ choice to single out PIP payments in particular is a political choice, not an economic necessity. She said, of those receiving PIP, that:

It is a waste of their potential and a waste of their futures.

This is absolute nonsense that betrays a purposeful ignorance of who PIP is actually for. PIP is not a benefits payment contingent on work. PIP is for disabled and chronically ill people, and is intended to help with the extra costs that come with being disabled. A 2024 report from disability organisation, Scope, found that:

On average, disabled households need an additional £1,010 a month to have the same standard of living as non-disabled households.

PIP fraud rates are judged to be at 0% by the DWP. PIP is notoriously difficult to get, and often a dehumanising and demeaning experience. The fact that Reeves is still targeting it shows that Labour are the enemy of disabled people, poor people, and working people.

How exactly are disabled people wasting our potential and futures? Or, are the government in fact robbing disabled people of our futures by making it harder and harder to even exist?

Featured image via the Canary