‘The rhetoric’s turned people’s stomachs’: MPs demand lessons learned as Kendall set to unveil welfare reforms today

Labour MPs have expressed their dismay at the government’s welfare reform plans, as ministers prepare to finally unveil the details today.

The backbench backlash has focused particularly on the suggestion of a real-terms cut to personal independence payments for disabled people – sparking fears that the government would face its largest rebellion in the Commons since taking office as it seemed likely to require a vote.

That measure appears to have been dropped in a significant climbdown over the weekend, but further contentious changes remain – and Number 10 has not said whether any of the other reforms being unveiled by Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall this afternoon will require a vote in Parliament.

While some MPs are broadly in favour of welfare reform given the rising costs to the Treasury of health-related benefits, many drew a line at cutting benefits for those unable to work – and even some sympathetic to reforms have despaired at the party’s  messaging.

Liz Kendall is expected to address the House of Commons to unveil the government’s welfare reforms at around 12.30pm, with the government said to be aiming to save £5bn by making it harder to claim PIP and a freeze of incapacity benefits next year. One cabinet member said the cabinet was “united” over reducing the welfare bill.

‘Trashing of a fundamental part of Labour’s compassionate brand appeal’

One Labour MP told LabourList that their colleagues were “aghast at the appalling political management of this”.

“There was a perfectly progressive way to drive this reform, but banging it while we’re trying to fix a Budget problem and turning into a macho test of ‘toughness’ has truly turned peoples’ stomachs.

“We’ve turned a perfectly reasonable public policy problem into a trashing of a fundamental part of Labour’s compassionate brand appeal.”

Another told LabourList that there had been “concern all round” and expressed hopes that ministers have listened, but that the party “need to learn from this”.

“We lost the narrative early and the look isn’t a good one,” the MP added.

READ MORE: ‘The public doesn’t think welfare works – but they are more compassionate than sometimes believed’

LabourList has heard that in at least one of Number 10’s meetings with Labour MPs, there were “serious, well informed and deep concerns” from all corners of the Parliamentary Labour Party.

Meanwhile, one critic of Liz Kendall is said to have privately compared her to a “crap council cabinet member who just accepts all the cuts council officers have wanted to make for years, irrespective of whether they meet our ideological position or get us hammered with the public”. One ally called the comments “pathetic, weird and embarrassing for them”, however.

‘We’ve got to give people dignity’

Another MP who spoke to LabourList highlighted the difference between the values of the Conservatives and Labour and stressed that any reform of the welfare system should “give people dignity” and grant support to those who cannot work.

“The Tories presiding over an ever-increasing number of people on out of work benefits was not out of compassion, but because they lacked ambition for people.

“Behind these numbers are real people who miss out on the benefits that a good job brings.

“Our values drive this work. We’ve got to give people dignity. For those that can’t (and will never be able to) work, let’s give them support and stop putting them through unnecessary and stressful tests. For those that with the right support can work, we owe them a different system.”

‘Labour making the wrong choices’

Meanwhile, trade union leaders have also been critical of the government’s moves on welfare reform, with Unison general secretary Christina McAnea warning: “Hitting those least able to speak up for themselves is never acceptable.

While she said bad decisions by the Tories had left the new Labour government “in a corner financially”, she added that it was “no excuse for ministers to go after the most vulnerable and contemplate freezing personal independence payments”.

Starmer critic and Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said Labour was “making the wrong choices” over welfare reform in an op-ed for The Mirror. “Some of the decisions that have been made, if you closed your eyes, you would not think it was a Labour government making them.”

But Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden told Times Radio today: “The cabinet is united behind taking on the issue of the growing benefits bill, the fact that we currently have almost three million people on long-term sickness benefits and that’s projected to grow to over four million at a steady state.

“That demand for these benefits is outstripping the disability rates by a factor of double and by the fact that if we don’t do anything about it we’ll be spending 70 billion pounds a year on this by the end of the decade. The current system leaves too many people in a permanent state of dependence on benefits without the opportunity of work.

“We used to have on some of these indices a few thousand applications a month, now it’s a thousand a day going on to personal independence payments for example or who are applying for it.”

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