{"id":83583,"date":"2025-07-01T07:06:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-01T06:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=83583"},"modified":"2025-07-01T07:13:31","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T06:13:31","slug":"labours-failed-its-pip-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/07\/01\/labours-failed-its-pip-test\/","title":{"rendered":"Labour&#8217;s failed its PIP test"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Labour is cutting disability benefits to balance Rachel Reeves\u2019 budget, while handing billions in tax breaks to the rich. I explain why this is morally bankrupt, and why Labour\u2019s 70 MPs who backed down have failed the poorest.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Eg6cT4YNzoo?si=eVsUbJ0kab6DnQij\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This is the audio version:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none; min-width: min(100%, 430px); height: 150px;\" title=\"Why is Labour punishing disabled people but rewarding the wealthy?\" src=\"https:\/\/www.podbean.com\/player-v2\/?i=h97tf-18f0bfb-pb&amp;from=pb6admin&amp;share=1&amp;download=1&amp;rtl=0&amp;fonts=Arial&amp;skin=f6f6f6&amp;font-color=auto&amp;logo_link=episode_page&amp;btn-skin=c73a3a\" width=\"100%\" height=\"150\" scrolling=\"no\" data-name=\"pb-iframe-player\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This is the transcript:<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Labour is revising its plans for disability benefits, and it's about time it did.<\/p>\n<p>120 or more of its own MPs objected to the plans that Keir Starmer and Liz Kendall had to cut personal independence payments \u200a for some of the most vulnerable people in the UK, and I was angry about that, but I'm as angry, that up to 70 of those MPs who previously objected are now accepting the revised package that Starmer, Reeves, and Kendall are putting forward. Let's talk about this.<\/p>\n<p>Personal Independence Payments are a benefit paid to people who need support with the extra cost of living that having a disability creates for them. For example, they might need an adapted car so that they can literally move around.<\/p>\n<p>They might need help with such basic things as personal hygiene and washing, which nobody else can do for them unless they can hire somebody to come in and help them with such tasks.<\/p>\n<p>These things are fundamental, not just to personal dignity, but to the ability of these people to integrate into society. And yet Labour's plans are to change the way in which PIP works so that whilst those who've currently got PIP payments will keep them, anybody who falls out of the current Personal Independence Payment regime, because, for example, they move off this scheme for any reason, and \u200aall of those who come into it in the future, will face many more hurdles to claiming this benefit.<\/p>\n<p>Labour's aim is still to cut billions. Precisely how many billions we don't know, \u200abut up to \u00a33 billion is thought to be likely, out of the payments being made to people with disabilities, some of the most vulnerable people in our society. \u200a And the only reason for having this objective is to make sure that Rachel Reeves' budget balances. There is literally no other purpose. These people are being sacrificed, and I use the word carefully, to the demands of the Treasury, that budgets are balanced.<\/p>\n<p>As a consequence, in the future, very large numbers of disabled people are going to struggle.<\/p>\n<p>Those young people who are now at school, but who might need personal independence payments when they become adults, are very likely going to be denied them.<\/p>\n<p>There's an obvious bias in the new system against people who have depression and anxiety, and a lot of young people do, for very good reasons.<\/p>\n<p>There is going to be bias against people who have non-consistent disabilities, i.e., they're good one day and they're not good on the second day. Those people are going to find it harder to claim.<\/p>\n<p>And those people who have slow degenerative conditions like Parkinson's disease, for example, will find it very much harder to make claims in the future.<\/p>\n<p>This is callous.<\/p>\n<p>This is unnecessary.<\/p>\n<p>This is delayed austerity.<\/p>\n<p>Neil Kinnock once said \u200abefore he was even the leader of the Labour Party, \" \u200aDon't be young, don't be old, don't get sick.\" He said that about the Tories because \u200ahe thought there was a threat from that party, but now he should be saying it about Labour because those people are now under threat from Labour.<\/p>\n<p>And at the same time, I'm really angry because nobody in Labour is asking relevant questions.<\/p>\n<p>Not one of them is asking, \" \u200aWhy do we need to penalise some of the most vulnerable people in the UK when the wealthiest are still getting vast quantities of state benefits a year?\"<\/p>\n<p>The total cost of pension tax reliefs in the UK is each year \u00a370 billion of tax foregone. In other words, because people put money aside into their pension schemes, they get in combination through income tax reliefs, national insurance reliefs, corporation tax reliefs for their employers, and the tax relief that is available within a pension fund, reliefs totalling \u00a370 billion a year.<\/p>\n<p>40% of those reliefs, or roughly \u00a328 billion, go to the wealthiest people in the UK, the 10% of wealthiest households. And another 20% of the reliefs go to the next 20%. So \u200amore than 60% of those reliefs, or more than \u00a340 billion in total, go to our best-off households.<\/p>\n<p>And \u200aon top of that, those households are the main beneficiaries of \u00a39 billion of tax relief given a year for non-taxable income generated from individual savings accounts.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, we're giving away \u00a380 billion a year in these reliefs, and nearly \u00a350 billion of that is going to our wealthiest households. Just cut out the higher rate relief on pensions, and I reckon you could save \u200aup to \u00a314 billion a year, more than enough to easily cover all the payments of benefits that would be necessary to meet the needs of all the people who are currently being prejudiced, harmed, and actually abused by the benefits system while they're trying to get personal independence payments.<\/p>\n<p>But why is no Labour MP asking about why this is the case?<\/p>\n<p>Why aren't they asking why the wealthy are benefiting when the poor are being penalised?<\/p>\n<p>There is no justice in this.<\/p>\n<p>This is just a system that perpetuates injustice. That's what it's about.<\/p>\n<p>The system has a deliberate bias against the poor in it, and Labour aren't questioning that, and I believe they should be.<\/p>\n<p>They're scrutinising every penny they're paying to help the sick and the disabled, but they aren't looking in any way at the money that is literally being bunged towards the wealthy who are already secure in their wealth, and that is wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Those 70 Labour MPs who backed down have sold out. There's no other way to describe them. And I hope their constituents remember that. They're selling out on their ethics for a basic political calculation about saving their skin, and that to me is utterly unacceptable.<\/p>\n<p>Ethics are paramount to me.<\/p>\n<p>Doing and delivering justice is what I'm interested in.<\/p>\n<p>A decent society has a bias to the poor. That's the real test of moral leadership that anybody should be judged against, and on this criterion, Labour is not delivering moral leadership. We are seeing them deliver leadership that focuses only on their needs for survival and not on the needs of the people in this country, whom they should be in office to support.<\/p>\n<p>So, why are we giving tax breaks to the wealthy?<\/p>\n<p>Why are we penalising the poorest?<\/p>\n<p>Why have we got our political priorities wrong?<\/p>\n<p>Isn't it time we put them right.<\/p>\n<p>And isn't it time that we had politicians who actually knew the difference between right and wrong and did the right thing?<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><b>Taking further action<\/b><\/p>\n<p>If you want to write a letter to your MP on the issues raised in this blog post, there is a ChatGPT prompt to assist you in doing so, with full instructions,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/06\/20\/chatgpt-prompt-for-a-letter-to-your-mp\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Labour is cutting disability benefits to balance Rachel Reeves\u2019 budget, while handing billions in tax breaks to the rich. I explain why this is morally<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/07\/01\/labours-failed-its-pip-test\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148,204,35,16,147,118,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-benefits","category-economic-justice","category-economics","category-ethics","category-inequality","category-labour","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83583"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83591,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83583\/revisions\/83591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}