What are the government's welfare proposals that have split MPs?
Labour MPs are divided over the government's controversial plans to cut welfare spending, as a growing backbench rebellion threatens to halt the measures.
More than 120 Labour MPs have signed a 'reasoned amendment' to the bill which would deliver the measures. If passed, this would effectively stop it in its tracks for the time being.
The plans have received fierce backlash from charities and campaign groups since their introduction in March, when Rachel Reeves announced: 'The Labour Party is the party of work. We believe that if you can work, you should work. But if you can't work, you should be properly supported.'
Ministers have revealed more details about their plans for welfare spending since this, but of those only two key measures are up for a vote on Tuesday.
Entitled the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill, this legislation comprises changes those two benefits exclusively. Here's what you need to know:
Cutting back PIP eligibility
Currently claimed by 3.7 million people, PIP is designed to help with extra costs incurred by living with an illness or disability.
The plans see the 'daily living' element of the benefit effectively become harder to claim as the eligibility criteria is tightened. Applicants are currently assessed based on how limited their ability is across ten activities, and awarded points between zero and eight for each based on severity.
Under current rules, an applicant needs to be scored at least eight points in any combination to be awarded the lowest rate of PIP. Following the changes, they would need this and to have scored four of these points in a single activity.
The planned changes would form the bulk of savings from Labour's welfare reforms, at an estimated £4.1 billion. Under these rules, around 1.5 million current claimants would be found ineligible, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) says.
However, the spending watchdog also estimates that this number is closer to 800,000 when accounting for a 'behavioural response,' but acknowledges this is a 'highly uncertain judgement'.
Changing Universal Credit rates
The other key change in the bill sees the rates of Universal Credit rebalanced, with the standard rate rising while the health-related rate is cut back.
Labour said it will 'rebalance payment levels' in Universal Credit to 'promote work and address perverse incentives' in the system, beginning in April 2026.
The plans would bring in an across-the-board increase to the standard Universal Credit allowance for new and existing claims from April 2026. This will be a boost of £7 a week, to £106.
At the same time, the payment rate for the health-related element of Universal Credit will be frozen. Those already receiving it, will still get £105 a week until 2029/30. Meanwhile, new claimants for this element will get just £54 a week – almost half.
These claimants will continue to receive the standard Universal Credit allowance alongside this entitlement, and be eligible from the uplift to that as with any other claimant.
Around 2.7 million families are forecast to be in receipt of the health element when the changes come into effect, the OBR says, with all of them affected.
What issues have the Labour rebels raised?
Several issues are listed in the amendment, with the text highlighting the Office for Budget Responsibility's (OBR) stark analysis that the plans would push 250,000 into poverty, including 50,000 children.
Another concern listed is that the government's decision not to conduct a formal consultation with disabled people regarding the two crucial reforms the bill entails.
The amendment also notes that members are set to vote on the bill months before the OBR is due to publish its crucial employment impact assessment in autumn 2025, which would detail how many people the reforms are expected to help into work.
It also raises the concern is that the additional employment support which has been pledged by the government alongside the reforms is not due until the end of the decade, up to four years after these measures come into effect. Alongside these, no assessment has been published on the impact the changes could have on health or care needs.
Despite these issues, the amendment's text also acknowledges "the need for the reform of the social security system" and expresses agreement with "the government's principles for providing support to people into work and protecting people who cannot work."
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BBC News
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What are the government's planned welfare changes?
A significant number of Labour MPs are threatening to vote against the government's working-age welfare reform plan when it comes before the House of Commons next reforms are designed to reduce the overall working-age welfare bill by about £5bn a year by the end of the rebel MPs have signed an amendment to the legislation that makes a series of objections, including a lack of official consultation and impact Verify explains the detail of the reforms and their possible impact. Which benefits would be cut? The government wants to save money by:making it harder for people to access Personal Independence Payments (Pip)cutting the rate of incapacity benefitIncapacity benefit - which is mainly paid through the health element of Universal Credit - goes to those deemed to be unable to work for health benefit is set to be reduced by 50% in cash terms for new claimants from April 2026. For existing claimants, it is due to be held flat in cash terms until 2029-30 - meaning payments will not rise in line with inflation. The government estimates these two changes will save £3bn a year by the end of the is paid to people with a long-term physical or mental health condition or a disability and who need support. Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall has acknowledged that almost 20% of recipients are in work. The government plans to make it more difficult for people to claim the "daily living" element of Pip from 2026-27. Under the current assessment system, claimants are scored on a zero to 12 scale by a health professional on everyday tasks such as washing, getting dressed and preparing are the Pip and universal credit changes and who is affected?Under the proposed change, people would need to score at least four on one task, ruling out people with lower scores who would previously have qualified for the benefit. The government estimates this will save an additional £4.5bn a year from the welfare bill by the end of the decade. Why is the government trying to cut welfare spending? It is concerned about the rise in the number of people claiming working-age benefits in recent years and the implications of this trend for the public Autumn, the government projected that the numbers of working-age claimants of Pip in England, Scotland and Wales would rise from 2.7 million in 2023-24 to 4.3 million in 2029-30, an increase of 1.6 that time, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the government's official forecaster, projected that the overall cost of the working-age benefit system would rise from £48.5bn in 2024 to £75.7bn by would have represented an increase from 1.7% of the size of the UK economy to 2.2%, roughly the size of current spending on defence. Ministers argue that this rising bill needs to be brought under control and that changes to the welfare system are part of that is worth noting though that - even after factoring in the planned cuts - the OBR still projected this bill to continue to rise in cash terms to £72.3bn by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) still projected the total number of working-age Pip recipients to rise by 1.2 million between 2023-24 and 2029-30 - after the cuts. In this sense, the main effect of the Pip cuts would be to reduce the increase in claimants that would otherwise have occurred. What would the impact of the reforms be? 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What about the impact on employment? The government has claimed that its reforms are not just about saving money, but helping people into Rachel Reeves told Sky News in March 2025 that: "I am absolutely certain that our reforms, instead of pushing people into poverty, are going to get people into work. And we know that if you move from welfare into work, you are much less likely to be in poverty."To this end, the government is gradually increasing the standard allowance in Universal Credit - the basic sum paid to cover recipients' living costs - by £5 a week by is projected to be a net benefit to 3.8 million households and the government argues it will also increase the incentives for people to work rather than claim incapacity government is also investing an extra £1bn a year by 2029-30 in additional support to get people out of inactivity and into employment. What are the rebels' objections? The rebel MPs say disabled people have not been consulted on the proposed also say there has been no evaluation of the overall employment impacts by the is true that the government has not consulted disabled people on the specific cuts to Pip and incapacity benefits, though it is now consulting on the broader reform is also the case that the OBR has not yet done a full employment impact assessment, though the forecaster says it will do one before the Autumn the Resolution Foundation has done its own estimate of the employment impact of the overall reform estimates the total increase in employment could be between 60,000 and 105,000, although it stressed that these figures are highly positive employment figure contrasts with the 800,000 people who are projected to lose part of their Pip payments by 2029-30 and the 3 million people families who will see a cut in their incapacity benefits. What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?
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