Sam Morden, Newcastle Socialist Party
The government is reportedly planning to cut £3 billion from the welfare bill in the upcoming budget. This figure came from Tory proposals to tighten up the Limited Capacity for Work (LCW) and the Limited Capacity for Work and Work-Related Activity (LCWRA) sections of Universal Credit (UC). This is likely to expose more people with disabilities and long-term illnesses to the sanctions-based system that UC is built upon. Forcing people, under the threat of loss of benefits, into work at a massive cost to our health.
The original proposals released in 2023 by the then Conservative administration included the short-term tightening of the Work Capability Assessment (and its eventual scrapping); the aforementioned attacks on LCW and LCWRA; and replacing Employment and Support Allowance and LCWRA with a new health component of UC only available to those eligible for the draconian and bureaucratic Personal Independence Payment (PIP).
What reforms does Labour plan?
Liz Kendall, the Blairite Work and Pensions Secretary, spoke recently that trials of employment advisors giving CV and interview ‘advice’ in hospitals to those suffering mental health crises produced “dramatic results” (although anyone outside of the government has yet to see the evidence). As if sending work coaches into mental health hospital wards will help people suffering acute crises.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said it’s “not dystopian” for chronically obese people (who usually have a host of underlying conditions) on benefits to be offered the latest anti-obesity ‘wonderdrugs’ in order to get them back into work! Before the election, Labour hinted that they would, under the right conditions, stop the managed migration of the LCW and LCWRA groups then planned by the Tories. We didn’t trust Labour then, and we have no more reason to trust them now, especially after the callous decisions to keep the two-child benefit cap and cut winter fuel allowance for pensioners.
We need a fully funded, democratically organised social security system that works alongside health and social care to provide a good standard of living for all, regardless of capability for work. We need a party that will fight for all sections of the working class against a new era of austerity and capitalist instability – we need a new socialist mass workers’ party.
