Reeves’ budget targets the disabled and sick … once again

In a Sunday Times piece, chancellor Rachel Reeves has tried to get ahold of the narrative around her budget — beset with U-turns before it’s even launched.

She announced more welfare reforms, suggesting she is coming after sick and disabled citizens again.

Reeves: “trapping” people on benefits

In her version of events, Reeves argues that:

It will require us to reform our welfare system too, from a system that was designed to punish, trapping millions of people on benefits rather than helping them into work, into a system designed to help people succeed. Our reforms will ensure it doesn’t pay to be off sick instead of in work

But it’s not as simple as: get a job, strive and succeed. Especially if one is sick or disabled.

In the three months leading up to September 2025, the UK reported approximately 717,000 job vacancies. Yet about 1.79 million people are not in employment and 9.8 million are classified as economically inactive. And that’s before one considers whether they have the skills for the job.

In the Times piece, Reeves hinted at acknowledging these realities and providing “a guaranteed job opportunity” to young people.

Will she take a more active role in the way work is distributed by introducing a job sharing programme that stops some people working extremely long weeks while others are unemployed? We’re here to remind Reeves that 22% of people work a 60+ hour week in the UK and many more work 50+ hours, while unemployment figures continue to rise. This shows the limitations of unbriddled free market dogma.

Labour rebellion ahead?

The last time Reeves went after sick and disabled people, her proposed £5bn cut to personal independence payment (PIP) was dropped due to a Labour rebellion. But the government’s cuts to the health element of universal credit (UC) went ahead.

What about corporate welfare? In the 2023/24 year, government estimated subsidies to corporations at £32 billion. The previous year, the figure was £53 billion, driven by soaring gas prices and credit lines handed to profiteering fossil fuel companies. Now, Starmer has announced a further £22 billion bung to the fossil fuel sector for carbon capture projects that don’t work.

The free market is all well and good until corporations need a hand out. Reeves should be rebalancing a highly unequal society instead of going after the nation’s least well off.

Featured image via Reuters