LABOUR’S assault on disabled and long-term sick people is a declaration of war on human rights and humanity in Britain — one that is self-defeating and costs more than it saves before it even starts, and one that wilfully ignores the massive and cumulative impacts of the stresses caused by years of austerity, benefit sanctions, inequity and injustice on the physical and mental health of our nation.

Worse still, it has been known for years to be self-defeating and costly, yet Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and Liz Kendall are not only continuing the Tories’ ideological war on those unable to work but escalating it, accompanied by rhetoric that risks a slide into fascist ideas of “useless eaters” — the proposition that those who cannot work are unworthy of life — by continually pushing the narrative that sickness and disability benefits are somehow “unsustainable,” that word so beloved of the Tories and all to whom “reform” means demanding more for less and delivering less for more.

And in practical terms, the DWP has said it plans to take up to £5,000 a year from people claiming long-term incapacity benefits by introducing conditionality to those benefits, effectively sanctioning them for not working or spending a full working week looking for work — alongside making it harder for people with mental health conditions to qualify for benefits. This change would hit the almost 1.2 million working-age people in Britain who are currently considered too disabled or ill to be required to look for work, as well as around another 4 million people who claim sickness-related benefits who could become regarded as not sufficiently active. Even before the announcement of the £5,000 cut, a DWP whistleblower said Labour’s plans would push almost half a million into poverty; what that figure will be now is terrifying to think about.

This is surrounded by claims that the incapacity benefit Bill is “unsustainable,” that word so loved by Tory governments as an excuse for austerity, or a mushrooming burden that Britain “can’t afford” — and by accusations that people on incapacity benefit are “taking the mickey” — DWP Secretary Kendall’s own words — but in reality the benefits Bill has remained broadly stable compared to population and GDP for the past 20 years.

With the Tories and Labour in lockstep in regarding sick and disabled people as an “unsustainable” burden to be cut, there is little sign of parliamentary resistance to this thinking, pointing to a grim future for the millions in Britain.

But it’s clear that the entire basis for this inhumane thinking is faulty. First, it takes no account of the impact of the austerity already inflicted on the health of British people. Austerity has been linked to more than 300,000 excess deaths since 2010, so clearly it is hitting physical and mental health.

A 2017 study, “Austerity and health: the impact in Britain and Europe” by Stuckler et al, looked at all the impacts of austerity on health and health systems and concluded that the right response to ill health is to strengthen social protections and that those countries which did so escaped the worst of even the 2007 global economic crash and the health crises that followed it.

The British Medical Association (BMA) published a report last year concluding that austerity is having a dramatic impact on the health of the country, especially on children and families — so much so that the BMA titled its report “Cutting away at our children’s futures.” A 2022 study by the University of Glasgow described the impact of austerity on physical and mental health as “devastating” and grossly unjust, hitting the poorest far harder than the wealthy.

Food insecurity, poor living conditions, homelessness and all the other consequences of cuts inevitably make people sicker. The stress and fear that accompany conditionality hit both mental and physical health.

These impacts have long been severe on the disabled and ill: suicide attempts among disability claimants more than doubled in the decade from the introduction of the hated Work Capability Assessment in 2007, from an already shocking 21 per cent to 43 per cent of incapacity benefit claimants, described by clinicians as a “damning indictment” of this kind of conditionality.

Yet, just like the Tories, the Labour government under Starmer plans to do more of what is killing people as a supposed “cure,” no doubt a reason why Kendall’s DWP, as it did under her Tory predecessor Therese Coffey, is keeping the death toll of Tory-led austerity hidden, with Kendall even fighting in court to avoid disclosing them.

Add to the impacts of austerity the stress of watching Britain engage in or support illegal wars, and now a genocide, and the demonisation of the poor and of refugees for political purposes and to justify cuts, and we are in a perfect storm in which ill health is made the excuse for more cuts, which drive more ill health, in a vicious circle of cruelty and decline.

Secondly, it’s well known that cutting benefits, like austerity in general, is economically counterproductive. Back to Stuckler on Britain’s “regressive” policies: “There is now a growing consensus that austerity slowed, [and] in some cases, prevented economic recovery.” Disability and sickness benefits cost far less than they contribute to the economy — £42bn a year of economic benefit, according to a report last month by Pro Bono Economics, compared to £28bn cost. This mirrors the situation with Labour’s continued imposition of the two-child benefit cap that pushes more than a million British children into poverty. According to the Child Poverty Action Group, keeping the cap costs around £38bn more than the £3.5bn it “saves.”

And there’s no question that the course taken by successive Tory governments and now by Labour is unlawful under international law. The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) found that the Tory government’s cuts to benefits were a “grave and systematic violation” of disabled people’s human rights. The situation did not improve: in his 2018 report after his visit to Britain, the UN’s then special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Philip Alston concluded that British benefits policies were a “cruel and inhuman” breach of Britain’s human rights obligations.

Four years later, things had only gone in the wrong direction. In March last year, Britain was forced, after refusing to attend seven months earlier, to answer to the UNCRPD. The UN’s investigators “consistently expressed that evidence shows violations of the UNCRPD, including a regression of disabled people’s rights” and described British incapacity benefits policy as “a pervasive framework and rhetoric that devalues disabled people’s lives[,] tells disabled people that they’re undeserving citizens [and] makes [them] feel like criminals.”

The situation was this appalling under the Tories; Labour is now determined to go further for the sake of “savings” that will actually cost Britain many tens of billions of pounds. If the Tories were consciously cruel, then Labour is intentionally inhumane and using language that unforgivably mirrors and promotes fascist rhetoric about disabled and sick people — and not just for no gain, but at a huge financial cost. In effect, Starmer’s party is spending money in order to make the most vulnerable suffer. In the absence of meaningful parliamentary opposition, he must be resisted by every means possible.

Claudia Webbe is the former member of Parliament for Leicester East (2019-24). You can follow her at www.facebook.com/claudiaforLE and twitter.com/ClaudiaWebbe.