18 March – 1 April 2025
Last week, as highlighted in our calendar of racism and resistance, the government announced plans to cut at least £5 billion from disability benefits. Under such plans, over 370,000 people will lose their Personal Independence Payments (PIP), 3.2 million households will be worse off, 150,000 people will lose access to their carer’s allowance, and 250,000 people, including 50,000 children, will be pushed into poverty, according to the DWP’s own impact assessment.
As disabled people’s organisations have long highlighted, further cuts will deepen hardship, increase destitution and ultimately create unliveable conditions for many and lead to further deaths. Minority communities will likely be disproportionately impacted by these cuts, with people of colour already experiencing greater difficulties accessing PIP. See IRR’s statistics page for further information on the racialised impact of welfare cuts and the cost-of-living crisis.
Rather than tackling the root causes of inequality, in the run up to the Spring Statement, the government has focused on framing those who claim benefits as ‘fraudulent’ (despite DWP’s statistics showing that fraud by PIP claimants was 0.0 per cent in 2023-4) and presenting disability and mental health conditions as a choice, with stigmatising moral panics around ‘worklessness’ posited as a threat to ‘working people’ (mentioned thirteen times in the statement). Underlying such harmful rhetoric is the devaluing of certain lives depending on their contribution to the economy, which is used to justify welfare retrenchment.
Not lost on activists and campaigners was the announcement of a £2.2 billion increase in military spending alongside welfare cuts, with disabled people and their supporters protesting across the country against cuts to disability benefits and calling for ‘Welfare not Warfare’.
In the face of inhumane cuts, it’s clear that we need an intersectional response that recognises the connections between struggles, on a local and global level. The prioritisation of military spending alongside cuts to foreign aid; the securitisation of borders and the mainstreaming of anti-migrant racism; and the dismantling of social protections for all must be viewed in tandem. In order to build wider solidarity, the Disability and Migration Network, which IRR is a member of, is co-organising a conference with Disabled People Against the Cuts (DPAC) on disability and migrant justice to be held in London in June, with further information to be announced in the coming weeks.