Welfare reforms risk leaving stain on Labour, MP warns

Independent

09-07-2025

A Labour MP who led a rebellion against the Government's benefits plan has labelled it an 'omnishambles', which she warned could leave disabled people worse off.
Rachael Maskell said pressing ahead with the welfare reform Bill risked leaving 'such a stain' on her party, as she urged ministers to scrap a proposed change to the out-of-work element of universal credit.
Ministers have proposed increasing the universal credit standard allowance at least in line with inflation until 2029/30.
But the Government has proposed freezing the 'limited capability for work' (LCW) part of the benefit until 2030, and new claimants who sign up for the 'limited capability for work and work-related activity' payment will receive a lower rate than existing claimants after April 2026, unless they meet a set of severe conditions criteria or are terminally ill.
Commons Work and Pensions Committee chairwoman Debbie Abrahams urged the Government to push back its reforms until November 2026.
'This is to allow for the NHS capacity to ramp up and to ensure funding follows health need, so that people with newly required conditions or impairments can receive early treatment and a better aligned labour market that will enable them to return to work quickly,' the Labour MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth told the Commons.
'Without this, there is the risk that 45,000 more newly disabled people and their children will be pushed into poverty.'
Ms Abrahams described her pitch as a 'reasonable compromise', costing £141 million in lost savings.
Ms Maskell tried to block the Bill's progression at second reading last week using a reasoned amendment, which failed by 149 votes to 328, majority 179.
Around 90 minutes before that vote, social security minister Sir Stephen Timms promised in an intervention to halt a proposed reform to the separate personal independence payment (Pip) benefit, with any changes now only coming in after a review.
'The cart before the horse, the vote before the review, and this omnishambles of a Bill, these people with fluctuating conditions not knowing where they stand, and for that, nor where any of us stand by the end of today,' Ms Maskell said on Wednesday.
The York Central MP had earlier said: 'No matter what spin, to pass the Bill tonight, this will leave such a stain on our great party, founded on values of equality and justice.'
She urged MPs to gut the Bill of plans to roll out a lower rate of out-of-work benefit for new claimants from 2026 and freeze the LCW component.
'Their contention is my contention – sick and disabled people have not been consulted,' Ms Maskell added.
She has proposed that current out-of-work benefits claimants should not be put on the proposed lower rate of out-of-work benefit, if they slip out of and then back into the eligibility criteria either side of the changes.
'If someone has a fluctuating physical or mental health condition like multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia, cystic fibrosis, or other recurring muscular-skeletal condition, if following a period of remission and work then relapse and returning to universal credit, unless unequivocally stated, they will return onto the pittance of £50-a-week for their health element,' she said.
Sir Stephen intervened and asked her to acknowledge 'how the Bill protects people in exactly the situation that she describes', where claimants are prone to seasonal conditions such as chest infections over the winter.
If a pre-2026 claimant slips out of being eligible for universal credit but meets the eligibility criteria again within six months, the Bill would demand that they be considered 'continuously entitled to an award'.
It would mean that they could go 'straight back onto the position they are in at the start', the minister added.
Labour MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge Marie Tidball urged the Government to properly work with disabled people in the Pip review, known as the Timms review.
Ms Tidball, a disabled MP who tabled a cross-party amendment on the Timms review, said: 'While the minister will head up this review, the voices of disabled people must be front and centre.
'The measures in this new clause emphasise the need for disabled people and disabled people's organisations to make up the majority of the taskforce, and to have a significant role in the leadership of the review, and I believe carers could be a part of that.'
She said any recommendations must be debated in the Commons before implementation. She said: 'Output of this review must also be meaningful and not performative.'
Independent MP Zarah Sultana, who quit Labour last week, spoke in the Commons for the first time since her decision, where she hit out at the Government.
The MP for Coventry South MP said: 'The truth is this – Westminster is broken but the real crisis is deeper. This is a Government, not out of touch, but also morally bankrupt. It works for billionaires and big business while turning its back on disabled people.'