by consensus of the Disability Activism Society

written by Ali Wilkin

edited by John Urquhart

Rachel Reeves and Labour have tried to dismiss claims that this is Austerity 2.0 - yet disabled people across the country understood perfectly the messaging no matter the attempt at spin. Same old Labour, same old attempt to spin: but look closely and you’ll see that spin was a reaction to disabled people’s organisations rallying, indeed, building from nothing this past fortnight.

We have been amongst that - our members in the midst - and have witnessed the legitimate and genuine fear that this budget has provoked. This is Austerity 2.0, and if you voted Labour to “get the Tories out” - we’re sorry, but you didn’t succeed.

After all this hostile environment intended to prevent disabled people from existing, one way or another, is very much kin to the hostile environment intended to make life harsh and difficult for immigrants in order to appease racist bigotry. And Labour is taking steps to deepen that hostile environment as well as the one being intensified for disabled people: boasting about sending refugees back to the places they spent such energy and such valour escaping in the first place. There are no illegal humans; disabled or foreign, we all belong just where we want to be.

Upon the release of the Green Paper red flags were raised immediately by disabled people’s organisations. It was apparent quickly that these proposals would impact already stretched local authority social care budgets, likely to breaking point. This, of course, leaves them vulnerable to privatisation. And who can help but feel uneasy about that with the NHS under the control of a Secretary of Health who fired 9,000 NHS staff after taking £53,000 from a private healthcare recruiter.

Using the testing system for a non-means tested benefit that does not measure ability for work but the impact of disability. Increasing the impact of existing impairments, as these cuts will do (not least by harming the availability of social care by stretching local services even further beyond breaking point) has a terrible likelihood of being deeply exclusionary. 

And a more exclusionary system, in contradiction of both nationally and internationally established rights is nothing short of frightening. 

Making these changes by Acts of Parliament is a fascistic overreach of the State.

As observed in the British Medical Journal, the health outcomes of increased poverty will be deleterious. These choices are unlikely to increase so-called economic activity. After all, the myriad failings of the previous 14 years of Conservative Austerity is strong evidence that Labour’s sequel will not be effective.

“Policies justified on the grounds of austerity - including real term reductions in the value of benefits, stricter eligibility requirements, and harsher sanctions - have harmed health and pushed millions of people into poverty. The cost of living has risen sharply in recent years, leaving prices far higher than they were just five years ago. The combined result is that, ever since 2010, more people in Britain are experiencing destitution and many more people in full time work live in poverty.”

Source: BMJ 2025;388:r613

The government makes much of the rise in numbers of chronically ill and disabled people claiming benefits. Yet viruses are known to be disabling, and we just underwent a major global pandemic - and thus a major global disabling event. Every disabled advocate for the last five years has been excruciatingly clear about this risk.

Tere are more than 16.1 million disabled people in this country and of those, just 3.9 million claim benefits. Many of them should be claiming benefits: the fact they are not is costing this country more in the long run. People can thrive - if they are given the support they need. Sometimes they can even thrive - just less so - on a fraction of what is needed, as so many disabled people are right achieving right now.

Our fragmenting healthcare service, caused by years of deliberating gutting proper funding for a full and functioning NHS (in order to privatise healthcare), is not disabled people’s choice, or even our responsibility. The inability of social care to meet the growing need - again because of the deliberate gutting to funding in order to privatise the system) is not disabled people’s choice or responsibility.

These things are the collective responsibility of all of us; that they have not been maintained is a national shame, and we must be clear and honest with one another about this. The fact is that these things have decayed to the state they are now in as a result of choices - and many have stood by and watched and said nothing.

But cutting the funding doesn’t eradicate the need - and sooner or later, the piper must be paid.

The case of David*, recently brought to light by the Disability News Service, and on whose death we have spoken, is one of many that demonstrates the reality of the impact of Austerity on disabled people. 

There is a falsehood being practiced by successive governments: that you can starve disabled and sick people into employment. It leverages a societal prejudice about being able to fake a claim for disability benefits, when the rate of fraud within the welfare system hasn’t changed since before that idea became fodder for tabloid journalism in 2008. It is zero for PIP, and negligible for ESA and the disability portion of UC. 

And even if it were any more than that, it would not justify the sanctions, the impoverishment, the abuse and the literal murder of so many of us - David, Jodey Whiting, Pippa Day and Errol Graham to name but a few; and the constant threats that disabled people have endured, first under the Conservatives, and now under Labour. 

We will not be treated like a family member to be kept hidden until they die; so often nobody will speak for us while we live. Our hard fought for, hard won rights will not be given away to anyone. Most especially we refuse, as loudly as we must, to be used as the fear stick for the working class - as a divisive instrument intended to prevent people from speaking up for themselves. Workers deserve good conditions and good pay, and disabled people deserve to work if they so wish to - because work, ultimately, should be a choice. It should not be mandatory.

One of the greatest lies of our era is that work is mandatory. 

We should not be forced to work on pain of death - and disabled people should not be killed to frighten the rest into obedience.

You can read our prior statement on the cuts here.

* David's name has been changed to preserve anonymity following the lead of Disability News Service.