Benefit cuts to hurt disabled as much 'as austerity drive'
29 May 2025, 23:23 | Updated: 29 May 2025, 23:31
Labour’s £4.8 billion of welfare savings would have a worse effect on vulnerable people than the cost of living crisis, according to a think tank.
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Cuts to sickness benefits will worsen the health of disabled people as much as the cost of living crisis, The Health Foundation think tank has reported.
Independent researchers have found that Labour’s £4.8 billion welfare cuts are likely to damage the health of vulnerable people more than any measures since George Osborne’s £12 billion of savings in 2015, at the height of austerity.
The cuts would make it harder to claim disability benefits and cut rates of incapacity benefits, reducing the income of more than three million people.
According to The Times, experts have urged ministers to pay more attention to the health effects of the reforms.
Read more: NHS plans to cut frontline jobs and axe services ‘to balance the books’
Sir Keir Starmer has already been challenged by more than 170 backbenchers about cuts to benefits and winter fuel payments, with the MPs demanding official assessments of the impact before a vote expected next month.
Ministers have resisted publishing internal estimates.
However, analysts at the Health Foundation think tank used a methodology developed by government officials to conclude that the cuts would have “a really significant impact” on the health of disabled people.
“The government must learn the lessons from the cost-of-living crisis, which had a disproportionate impact on people living with disabilities, with typical incomes for disabled people falling by 11 per cent in real terms,” said Dave Finch, who led the research.
He continued: “By October 2023, over a half of disabled people reported worse mental health due to the financial impact, and a third couldn’t afford to eat adequately. The financial consequences of the planned cuts to disability and health benefits are of a similar scale, if not greater for some, which suggests a comparable effect on people’s health is likely.”
Sir Keir came under growing pressure to change course on the cuts decision on Monday night.
While ministers signalled a possible compromise on winter fuel payments, the prime minister stressed the need to press ahead with cuts to benefits, describing reform as a “Labour cause”.
About 800,000 disability benefit claimants face an average loss of £4,500 a year, The Times reported.
Finch said this would have a direct effect on their health because they would have less money to compensate for costs associated with their illness or disability and many would cut back on food and heating.
The fear of losing benefits has also been shown to worsen mental health, he added.
“It’s about being people unable to eat adequately, being unable to heat their homes and particularly disabled people being more at risk of the health consequences of that," he said.
"In the most severe cases that can lead to increases in severe mental health problems and in the worst instances is associated with suicide."
Although he said it was impossible to put an exact figure on the hit to health, it was likely to be four times bigger than under the reforms proposed by Rishi Sunak before the election last year and on a similar scale to the 2015 cuts which split the Conservative cabinet.
