Benefit cuts key to fighting Reform in Red Wall, claims Kendall
Labour's benefits overhaul is the right strategy to fight off Reform UK in the Red Wall, Liz Kendall has said.
The Work and Pensions Secretary said that 'a future dependent on benefits alone is not good enough for people in Blackpool, Birkenhead or Blaenau Gwent' in defence of her controversial plans for reform.
She declared that, in pushing through the benefits cuts and overhauling the system, Labour would win over voters who think 'politics doesn't matter and that politicians are all the same'.
Her words come amid a growing rebellion within Labour against Ms Kendall's plans, with more than 100 MPs demanding that the Government should change course or risk a defeat in the Commons.
The proposals will mean the most disabled adults could claim personal independence payments (PIP) and under-22s would become ineligible for Universal Credit.
The Disability Poverty Campaign Group has circulated analysis among Labour MPs that showed that for over 200 of them, their majorities are smaller than the number of PIP claimants in their constituency.
Sir Keir Starmer has been forced to U-turn on the winter fuel payment, saying at Prime Minister's Questions that more pensioners would become eligible for the payment.
The move will be seen as a concession to backbench critics who opposed the widely unpopular policy and blamed it for the poor results at this month's local elections.
In a speech in central London on Wednesday, Ms Kendall said: 'The villages, towns and cities, especially in parts of the Midlands and the North whose economies have still not recovered from the 1980s and 1990s are where economic demand remains weakest.
'Places that are full of talent and ambition, but which need the investment – in jobs, infrastructure, skills, and public services – to build a better life for themselves and their communities.
'People in this country rightly demand change. But populist politics, the politics of division and easy but empty solutions, won't deliver the change people are crying out for, because a future dependent on benefits alone is not good enough for people in Blackpool, Birkenhead or Blaenau Gwent. I am confident we will deliver.'
PIP recipients accounted for 10 per cent of adults in Red Wall seats at the beginning of this year, compared to 7 per cent across the country as a whole.
All MPs in Blackpool, Birkenhead and Blaenau Gwent are from Labour, but signs have emerged that Reform is gaining in those areas.
Lancashire county council, which covers Blackpool, is now controlled by Reform, and Labour lost 187 councillors at the local elections.
Reform also came second in the general election in Blackpool South, whose MP Chris Webb declared that Ms Kendall's reforms were 'devastating' and 'not what any of us stood on in the manifesto'. In Blackpool South, almost a third of the population is on Universal Credit, and over 14 per cent receive PIP.
In Birkenhead, Merseyside, 27 per cent of working age adults are on Universal Credit and almost 15 per cent on PIP. An even greater proportion of adults in Blaenau Gwent receive PIP, at 16 per cent.
Nigel Farage, the Reform leader, has made an effort to target voters in Wales ahead of the Senedd elections next year.
Labour won all but one of 32 Red Wall seats, which broadly overlapped with those lost in the 2019 election, according to categorisation from Redfield and Wilton. But its vote share was not convincing, gaining just 42 per cent of the vote as a whole, whilst Reform gained 23 per cent.
Ms Kendall said: 'They need real hope built on real solutions. That is what this Labour Government is doing – tackling problems that have been ducked or ignored for too long, because the failure to do so is precisely why people think politics doesn't matter and that politicians are all the same.'
Mr Farage pledged at the general election to lift the threshold at which income tax is charged to £20,000 a year from the current £12,571.
His broader proposals for welfare are unclear, but he drew criticism earlier this month after he said that there was an overdiagnosis of 'mental illness problems and those with other general behavioural disabilities'.
But Unison, Britain's biggest union, came out against Ms Kendall and said that the benefit cuts were 'unpalatable'.
Christina McAnea, the general secretary, said: 'Ministers now need to look again at their unpalatable welfare cuts. The wrongs of previous Conservative administrations won't be righted by going after the most vulnerable in society.
'Employment support might get some people back into jobs, but it's not enough to justify the severity of cuts faced by the many disabled people who need that support to work.'
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