Labour’s welfare overhaul has been “rushed” after Rachel Reeves “killed the economy stone dead with her Budget”, a leading Tory has warned. Shadow chancellor Mel Stride hit out at the changes to benefits unveiled yesterday.
Sir Keir Starmer’s Government announced £5 billion of welfare cuts sparking a backlash from some backbench MPs. Speaking on Sky News, Mr Stride said: “Let’s be clear, this has been rushed. There was no mention in the Labour Party manifesto, for example, about changes to the Pip benefit.
“Labour have fought shy on welfare because it’s deeply divisive within their own ranks.
“They’ve suddenly come to it late in the day because the Chancellor has killed the economy stone dead with her Budget last October and now needs to find some money for her emergency budget next Wednesday.
“So that’s what going on here and I’m afraid that doesn’t make for good policy, particularly in the area of welfare where you do need to take your time and be thoughtful about it.”
The Government yesterday announced a raft of welfare measures aimed at bringing more working-age people back into jobs.
Among the most significant moves is the tightening of eligibility for personal independence payments (Pip), a benefit aimed at helping those with disability or long-term illness with increased living costs.
Elsewhere, ministers will scrap the work capability assessment for universal credit, the test of whether someone can get incapacity benefit payments based on their fitness for work.
This will be replaced by 2028 with a single assessment considering the impact a person’s disability has on daily living, rather than their fitness to work.
Writing in The Times newspaper, Sir Keir pointed to the 2.8 million working-age people out of work due to long-term sickness, claiming this was a “damning indictment of the Conservative record” on welfare.
The Prime Minister added: “The result is devastating for the public finances. By 2030 we are projected to spend £70 billion a year on working-age incapacity and disability benefits alone.
“But more importantly it has wreaked a terrible human cost. Young people shut out of the labour market at a formative age. People with complex long-term conditions, written off by a single assessment.
“People who want to return to work, yet can’t access the support they need. All this is happening at scale and it is indefensible.”
