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Vote for these benefit cuts and you deserve to lose your seat

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More than 22,000 people in Croydon claim PIP or the health element of Universal Credit. So why aren’t Croydon’s MPs opposing the government cuts?
ANDREW FISHER, right, looks at the storm gathering at Westminster for the Prime Minister

Politics is a grubby business, and little is more besmirched than the clandestine world of big votes in Parliament. In Blackadder III, Edmund Blackadder expounds his theory on the origin of the word “politics”: “Poly – meaning many. Tics – meaning blood-sucking parasites”.

House of horrors: Keir Starmer is trying to push through benefit cuts he once described as ‘unfair and unacceptable’

I first started working in Parliament in late 2003, not long after the Iraq War vote. There were still Labour MPs ruing the fact that they had been bullied, bribed and beaten down into voting for the still unfolding disaster.

In my many years working in the Palace of Westminster, by far the proudest moment I can recall was in 2016, when Labour defeated the then Conservative government’s proposals to cut £4.5billion from disabled people on Personal Independence Payments, or PIP.

Knowing you have played a small part in keeping money in the pockets of some of the poorest and often most vulnerable people is something to wear as a badge of honour. After years of austerity and cuts, the then Chancellor George Osborne was forced into an embarrassing U-turn and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, resigned claiming that even he had opposed the cuts which he had announced just a week before.

Why, nine years on, do I tell this story? Because today, a Labour government is proposing almost exactly the same cuts to the same group of people. And it has provoked a backlash among Labour MPs ahead of next Tuesday’s scheduled vote.

Those Tory cuts proposed in 2016 were condemned at the time as “unfair and unacceptable” – by Keir Starmer. So today, the Labour Prime Minister can hardly be surprised that most of his backbench MPs are also opposed to something for being “unfair and unacceptable”.

Broad opposition: the London Mayor has spoken up on behalf of Londoners

Labour MP for Lewisham, Vicky Foxcroft, has resigned as a government whip (those whose job it is to enforce how other MPs should vote), saying, “I know I will not be able to do the job that is required of me and whip – or indeed vote – for reforms which include cuts to disabled people’s finances.”

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has published analysis showing that Londoners would lose £820million as a result of the proposed changes to PIP and Universal Credit, with 360,000 in the capital affected,  mostly disabled people. Khan described the plans as “destroying the financial safety net for too many disabled Londoners”.

At the time of writing, 130 Labour MPs have signed an amendment to oppose the Bill – which is a pretty much unprecedented rebellion less than a year into a new government.

Despite this massive rebellion, not a single one of Croydon’s Labour MPs have signed the amendment. Streatham and Croydon North MP Steve Reed MP is a cabinet minister, while Croydon West’s Sarah Jones is a junior minister. They would lose their jobs if they dared sign the amendment. Croydon East MP Natasha Irons is a backbencher – one of the few so far to still be loyally backing a policy worse than that which made Iain Duncan Smith resign in protest.

Croydon MPs should be thinking of their constituents. Across our borough, more than 22,000 people claim PIP or the health element of Universal Credit – that’s 1-in-12 of the working age population. Nearly every Labour MP in nearby, south London constituencies have signed the amendment opposing the bill: Bell Ribeiro-Addy in Brixton, Flo Eshalomi in Vauxhall, Vicky Foxcroft in Lewisham, Helen Hayes in Dulwich.

Polling by More in Common shows that 58% of the public think the proposed cuts are a bad idea.

Supporters of every party in Westminster and non-voters are all united in opposing these cuts.

It is important to note – and especially important to counter the misleading statements of numerous Labour ministers – that PIP is not an “out-of-work benefit”. It is paid to disabled people to assist them with the additional costs of living with their disability or disabilities.

 

Therefore, all this talk of getting people off benefits and into work is misleading. Many disabled people are able to work precisely because they receive support from PIP. The barely-discussed risk is that by tightening the eligibility for PIP, the government could force disabled people out of work.

The second problem with this “back to work” mantra is that there simply aren’t the jobs available. There are already seven people looking for work for every vacancy in Britain – and that’s before you start classifying more disabled people as eligible for work.

A High Court challenge to the previous Conservative government’s plans – brought by my recent podcast interviewee, Ellen Clifford – revealed that, of the 457,000 people who would have their benefits cut, only 15,000 were expected to enter employment. And that was according to the Department for Work and Pensions’ own figures.

There is no evidence to suggest that cutting benefits will do anything but send disabled people into poverty. In many cases, into even deeper into poverty. The government’s own impact assessment suggests that 250,000 disabled people (and 50,000 more children) will be driven into poverty.

Ultimately, any MP that votes to do that deserves to lose their seat at the next election.

Andrew Fisher’s recent columns:

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