Labour’s autumn budget was another failure to make real change for disabled people

The biggest announcement in the budget was one our community had been expecting: more disabled and working-class people to have their benefits cut, with no real difference to our local public services, particularly social care.

It was supposedly a budget focused on work and growth, and despite the minimal uplift in spending to fund our crumbling public services, there was not enough of a silver lining to counter the massive cuts to the social security budget, to give disabled people the confidence that our lives will tangibly get better. 

During her speech, chancellor Rachel Reeves announced that the government would implement the same level of social security cuts over the next four years as proposed by the Conservatives.

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Reeves talked about a ‘Get Britain Working’ white paper to be published before Christmas along with £240m for trail blazer pilots were announced. These the government claim will support disabled people into work but throughout the speech the narrative of labelling disabled people unable to work as “economically inactive” remained unchanged.  

The budget was largely business as usual. Julia Modern, senior policy and campaigns manager at deaf and disabled people’s organisation Inclusion London, explained: “Conceptualising ‘reform’ of benefits as primarily an opportunity to drive savings threatens to force more disabled people into the punishment-focused work conditionality regime, which the DWP’s own research shows makes people less likely to find work.”

And Angie Airlie, chief executive of Stay Safe East, which supports disabled people in London impacted by domestic abuse, sexual violence, hate crime and other forms of crime, agreed.

“We know that the system is not functioning effectively, as there are huge waits for Access to Work assessments and support packages are commonly being downgraded, leaving Disabled people without the right help to support them to flourish in work,” she said.

This lack of support for disabled people was announced at a time when we have all gotten used to hearing about crises in local government.

From Birmingham to Croydon, Nottingham to Woking, there is less and less surprise when a fundamental part of millions of people’s lives is that their local authority has no money left to spend. Since 2018, ten local authorities have issued section 114 notices – which declare that the councils won’t take enough money in to run the services it has committed to in the next year. 

“Local authorities are in crisis. So much so that we have been accustomed to announcements that many are on the brink of – or already in – bankruptcy,” said Abi O’Connor, researcher of local economies and community economic power at the New Economics Foundation. 

Reeves said there would be “no return to austerity”, but will the £1bn for local councils announced in the budget really offset all the harm that disabled and non-disabled working-class people across the country have experienced?  

Of course, immediate support is welcome, and it will hopefully end more section 114 bankruptcy notices, but how much better will things get better with a 1.5% real terms uplift from this year in day-to-day spending? 

As O’Connor put it, “the detrimental impact local government financial crises have on all aspects of our lives, our communities, and our economy cannot be understated”.

We can’t forget that local authority services are often the most relied upon by the 16 million disabled people across the UK. From social care to education, we have felt the devastating effects of austerity, the pandemic, and now the seemingly never-ending cost of living crisis, which has decimated the local services we need. 

Julia Modern said the “modest increases in some budgets for essential services like the NHS and housing” are welcome, but “there is nothing in the budget to address the huge rates of poverty among disabled people. Instead, our social security is being eroded”.

The budget is not just a matter of statistics or graphs. It set out our community’s day-to-day reality. Our access to energy, food, and medication has been drastically cut over the last few years, and the budget will do little to address this.  

The government had a chance to lay out a new vision for our social security system. The changes to universal credit debt deductions are welcome, but not increasing local housing allowance, stopping planned changes to the work capability assessment and ploughing on with the reckless Fraud, Error and Debt bill will leave many disabled people worse off after the budget than before. 

The chancellor is chalking up gains from cutting the social security budget and giving us nothing for the social care system and less than a quarter of what we need to fill the SEND funding gap to give disabled children and young people the education they need to have the best chance of fulfilling lives in the future.

And they are pushing forward punitive and wide-ranging cuts to our social security system at a time where disabled households need an additional £1,010 a month to have the same standard of living as non-disabled households. 

Ultimately, the budget is yet another failure. A failure to make real change. A failure to recognise that disabled people and those with long-term health conditions should be treated as valued members of society whose lives are equal to all other citizens and who should not be viewed as burdens or cheats whose needs don’t deserve to be met. 

Mikey Erhardt is a campaigns and policy officer at Disability Rights UK.

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