As The Telegraph reported last night:
Sir Keir Starmer has caved to welfare rebels by agreeing that existing disability claimants can keep their benefits.
In a major concession, The Telegraph understands that the Prime Minister has agreed that nobody currently getting the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) will lose out.
Instead, changes to who is eligible for the money, which is given to help people with the extra cost of disabilities, will only apply to new claimants.
The change will cost the Treasury around £1.5 billion a year by the end of the decade, slashing the original savings from the welfare cuts plan by a third.
Let's be clear about what this means.
It means every young person coming of age who is in need of support will not get it in future.
It means people developing chronic or degenerative illnesses in the future will find it much harder to get support.
It means those barely coping now, but who know they will get worse with age (and that is commonplace) will not get the help they require.
As Neil Kinnock said in the 1983 general election campaign, of the Tories:
I warn you not to be ordinary.
I warn you not to be young.
I warn you not to fall ill.
I warn you not to get old.
He should now say it of Labour. Those are the situations that create the risks we now face, imposed by this Labour government.
He should be ashamed to be still in that party.
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Is no steer hoping, that to quote the senior GOP person Mitch McConnell defending King Donald’s cuts to Medicaid, those who will suffer the future cuts will/have to “get over it”.
The wafer thin majorities of the concerned Labour MPs are still very much at risk.
Why? We will not get over it!
There were two relevant articles in the Guardian. Both grotesque in their own ways.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jun/26/starmer-offers-massive-concessions-on-welfare-bill-to-labour-rebels
“Massive concessions” – whilst gliding over the reality outlined in the blog. The other truly gormless article was on McSwine:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jun/26/starmer-aide-morgan-mcsweeney-labour-welfare-rebellion
I have no idea who Pippa Crerar is & care even less – but coming out with this nonsense suggests a LINO cheerleader:
“While many of those same MPs who now criticise McSweeney owe him their seats, and few doubt his golden electoral touch,” eh?
A village-idiot could have won the last election for LINO. McSwine has no “golden elec’ touch” he is just a ghastly zionist who happened to be in the right place @ the right time. If anybody is out of touch – it ain’t the LINO MPs, it is McSwine and his fellow navel-gazers. It is most unfortunate that the LINO MPs retreated. They should have stuck to their guns. What is also clear is that LINO does not give a stuff about the young or the future of the country – by definition the two are linked.
Crearer is an award winning investigative journalist.
Just sayin’…..
Pippa Crerar – formerly at The Mirror, now Political Editor at Guardian. You don’t get either of those jobs without being a safe pair of hands.
I read a lot of her Mirror work during the defenestration of Corbyn. She wasn’t the worst, but she played her part.
As for these “massive concessions”, if the cuts are insupportable for vulnerable people ALREADY on UC and PIP, why are they okay for vulnerable people with the same needs who haven’t claimed yet?
Its as if the actual needs of the vulnerable don’t come into it, the discussion is about balancing budgets, black holes, and electoral appeal.
Yet again, the “black hole” that faces Labour, is not fiscal, but MORAL. A complete empty moral vacuum.
“Labour’s black hole – not fiscal but moral”
I like the last line….I may borrow that
Its all these retained rights that cause so much fun in the administration of benefits and leads to error.
Tom, Dick and Harry are all in the same position but all end up being assessed under different rules
I think it it worse than this.
NO PIP award is given for life, even if the recipient has a life long incurable disability or illness.
(the benefit DLA it replaced was for these people)
Awards are for a fixed period of say 2, 3. or 5 years. When your award is coming to an end you are “invited” to reapply and have to go through the entire assessment process all over again. Including appeals if necessary.
I assume these “new” claims after 2026 will be awarded under the new rules. So all people currently getting PIP are only “protected” until they are reassessed, which ALL claimants will be. This “protection” was in the original Bill, so as far as I can see NOTHING has changed re PIP.
Thank you.
I think that is critical.
It does seem many in the Labour backbenches found more backbone than any MAGA politicians in the US ever have, and decided to stand for their principles. Unless they decide to stop doing this then this latest change should not change the voting maths, because it doesn’t change whether it’s leaving a group destitute, just delaying when it fully kicks in.
I’m appalled at this *cruel* response from Stammer and co.
How dare he say current claimants will keep getting the same benefits, but those who are not yet sick or disabled will have to take cuts. Talk about “I’m alright Jack” but FU. Why should benefits be different just because you happen to become sick or disabled after a random cut off date? It sounds gross misjustice to me. Grrrr!
Time Liebour got rid of Stammer and Reeves at the very least.
I should perhaps mention that I’m in receipt of highest level of both aspects of PIP. My car is a Motability car, so the mobility component goes to pay for that. For many people who are disabled it’s likely to be the only way they can afford to have a car, especially those who need adaptations.
So I well understand what a difference PIP makes to sick and disabled people.
I never ever thought that even this Liebour would become so cruel, small minded and mean. Not that I’d vote for them ever, even before this – I’m a proud Green Party member. 🙂
PS, we’re now hoping to get off to Llyn on Monday, after husband’s dental appointment. I’m afraid I over-did things yesterday trying to get packed. Eheu!
Kinnock is probably rubbing his hands in glee? We did not vote for him – what- in 1992? He had to step aside for Mandy and Blair.
I mean, look at our politics since Thatcher. All it has been is some sort of revenge cult on ordinary British people driven by the Establishment – we – the ordinary folk – let down the Empire – not those who ruled it with their out of time feudal beliefs and methods, their complacency. I think that our political parties hate the ordinary people they have to court for votes. They hold us and it in contempt. I mean all those rich people and all their money. It’s money that wins votes. Not policy.
The Tories came into power in 1979 blaming people for the ‘state of Britain’ on unions and leftish thinking and wrought chaos with their hard medicine – one of which – monetarism – was quietly dropped. Then in 1997 we got New Labour which was concessionary party, conceding Thatcherite points but still with a social conscience but which effectively built on top of the Tory PSBR foundations of PFI, managerialism in the NHS and public sector (we don’t trust you to manage!). The conversion to Thatcherite principles was because of the Tory Establishment backed fiscal straightjacket imposed and supported by the MSM on the basis that the state had no money. Labour had no counter narrative to offer, still racked by insecurity, even though the evidence as we know it is out there that Thatcher’s ‘theory’ of money was total bollocks. Really, the retrenchment of the state was still on track.
The big problem with Labour? It was all perception management – invest a little here, take a lot/give away there, stay on track and in line with the Establishment long term plan. Duplicitous. That was New Labour.
Then we have the crash of all crashes in 2007/8, and the opportunistic Tories (and the short memory of the British public) enabled a gleeful, revengeful Blair aping Tory party to come in in 2010 with what emerged as a punishment detail for the public daring to reject the Tories. The amount of any investment New Labour made was completely wasted by Cameron as everything everywhere was cut by ignorant buffoons like Eric Pickles. Then we had May, then we had Johnson and we nearly voted in Jeremy Corbyn in between and that was far too close for comfort for the Establishment who then did a real hatchet job on the man from outside and within the Party with concocted stories of second Jewish holocaust in little old England. But at least these Tories were strangely honest and forthright – there were no pretentions anymore about what they wanted on behalf of the Establishment. Get rid! And they did.
And now its Stymied’s Labour’s turn to be a tool for the Establishment, and the punishment beatings are still going on. This time Labour is punishing us for voting in Cameron and Johnson and BREXIT. Yes, it’s all our fault again, Stymied and Darren Jones whose intellectual contribution to modern Labour is – ahem – ‘ ‘You have to take the world as you find it’. Wow! Thanks Darren mate. At least you said the truth for once. Fuck being progressive eh? I mean why didn’t Stymied not just issue a piece of paper with Jones’ statement on it for his manifesto?
So, we have remember that voting is an inconvenience to the Establishment that has become nothing but a performance and we may be getting to the point where our politico’s don’t even care to cover it up anymore. Voting means nothing more than giving a kindly pat to a sheep or cow to make it move along the abattoir kill line to be ‘stunned’ and casually torn up to eat, just like the politicians are tearing up our future to secure the future of the ‘deserving rich’ who fund them and give them well paid jobs in what they have helped to create.
And here is a short list of Do Be s:
Do Be a Zionist
Do Be a no longer mandated president of Ukraine
Do Be an investor in arms/war materiel companies
For all the above, financial support can be as bounteous as you want it to be. Cuts, what cuts?
Here we go again – BBC Radio 4 Today this morning – On the Welfare Bill changes – Justin Webb to Meg Hillier Chair of the Treasury Select Committee …”How will this be paid for?”
I despair.
Apologies for posting twice in this thread, but I just read an article that seems relevant to me. Sounds like the consultation didn’t actually “consult” the disabled people who turned up in Wales very much! (rolls eyes)
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/dwp-consultation-branded-injustice-disabled-campaigners-wales
And just to cheer everyone up a little (if that’s at all possible!) let’s have a suitable song from Warren Zevon… “Don’t let us get sick”, don’t let us get old, don’t let us get stupid, all right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELe4vC3oM5E
On X Prem Sikka writes: Starmer’s concessions on disability benefit cuts are divide and rule.
A disabled person applying before Nov 2026 would get Pip and UC health element, receives £8,930 in total.
Person applying after Nov 2026 would get £2,370, no PIP.
Bill must be stopped.
Source: “Changes to benefit reforms reduce saving from bill by £3bn in 2029-30 but create huge difference in support between claimants” (27 Jun 2025)
https://ifs.org.uk/articles/changes-benefit-reforms-reduce-saving-bill-ps3bn-2029-30-create-huge-difference-support
I agree with Prem