Leading trade unionists, MPs, and campaigners will take the Labour Party government to task over its austerity-riven budget and vicious Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) cuts to disabled people’s benefits. The People’s Assembly is coordinating a major ‘Welfare not Warfare’ and ‘No To Austerity 2.0’ demonstration for 7 June.
No to austerity 2.0: groups gear up for another DWP Welfare not Warfare demo in June
Pressure is mounting on the government over its austerity 2 budget, and after it blamed migrants for the state of broken Britain on Monday.
Campaigners, activists, MPs, and trade unions are coming together. They will host what they are calling the first anti-austerity demo under a Labour government. In particular, they are gearing up to counter the latest attack on chronically ill and disabled people’s welfare entitlements. Starmerite Labour has firmly couched these plans in its rampant neoliberalist austerity ideology.
The protest is partly in response to the plans DWP boss Liz Kendall laid out in March to ‘reform’, that is – cut – chronically ill and disabled people’s benefits. It set this out in its Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working green paper.
Notably, the paper included a suite of regressive reforms to make it harder for people to claim disability benefits like Personal Independence Payment (PIP). The changes it’s proposing target neurodivergent, learning disabled, and those with mental health disorders. Moreover, disabled people who need help with things like cutting up food, supervision, prompting, or assistance to wash, dress, or monitor their health condition, will no longer be eligible.
And revelations from a Freedom of Information (FOI) request has also shown that the changes will disproportionately hit PIP claimants over 50 as well. Specifically, the criteria goalpost shifts will deny 1.09 million (nearly 70% of those who could lose out) the Daily Living component of PIP. Part of this cohort is obviously also people Labour is already hammering with the Winter Fuel Payment cuts.
Labour lies: time to call it out
Overall, Labour and the DWP have already lied about the number of people its Green Paper plans will affect. Research keeps exposing the devastating scale of the governments planned cuts. While its impact assessment calculated 370,000 current claimants, and 420,000 future ones would lose their DWP PIP entitlement, it’s likely to be much higher than this.
Another FOI made by a member of the public unearthed that around 209,000 people getting enhanced rate DWP PIP Daily Living will lose it. On top of this, around 1.1 million people getting the standard rate will lose it.
In total then, nearly 1.4 million people could, on reassessment, lose their Daily Living element of DWP PIP. However, as the Canary’s Steve Topple previously noted, this doesn’t tell us how many could lose their full PIP altogether. This is because the data does not show how many of these people get standard or enhanced Mobility Element of DWP PIP.
Nonetheless, it’s evident that the plans will be enormously detrimental for chronically ill and disabled people. And in early June, parliament is expected to vote on these plans.
It’s why the People’s Assembly ‘No To Austerity 2.0’ demo for Welfare not Warfare will bring together a wave of opposition. Together, they’ll call out the Labour’s cuts to disability benefits, Winter Fuel Payments, and proposed cuts to public services to fund increased arms spending. On 7 June, the People’s Assembly and its supporters will be uniting to demand Welfare not Warfare and No To Austerity 2.0.
Coming together to oppose the DWP cuts
Major trade unions, including NEU, PCS, RMT, UNISON, UNITE and others, along with NHS campaigners and disabled activists, have pledged to support the action.
Diane Abbott MP, who recently hosted a debate in parliament over the cuts, will speak out against the government’s plans. Trade union leaders from Unite the Union, PCS, NEU, RMT, alongside veteran campaigners from the anti-austerity movement, will speak about the need to defend welfare and public services and invest in education and good jobs.
Increased votes for Reform UK in local elections in England in May 2025 show Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves’ Austerity 2.0 is fuelling a right-wing backlash.
The People’s Assembly demo will hold Labour ministers’ feet to the fire over their shameless, careerist lurch to the right. They’ll make known that this Labour government can get away with its brutal scapegoating of marginalised communities no more.
Featured image via the Canary
