LABOUR in power is sticking tenaciously to its claim that cutting £7 billion from disability benefits won’t increase the levels of poverty in this country.

In fact, ministers claim that their killer cuts will actually help large numbers of disabled people into work. It appears that Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and Liz Kendall seek to repeat the lie often enough so it becomes the truth. This is known among psychologists as the “illusion of truth effect.”

However, numerous research studies from Citizens Advice, which helps hundreds of thousands with benefits claims each year, to the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) and Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) expose the gaslighting claims made by Labour.

Labour’s pernicious propaganda on this issue is founded on a great deal of misinformation — a polite word for saying it is lying. Starmer, Kendall and Reeves, who are presiding over this vicious attack on the most vulnerable in our society, are basing their whole argument on a “misdiagnosis of economic inactivity.” British inactivity rates are lower than peer countries, and recent rises may reflect poor data quality, as noted by the JRF and CPAG, which states: “The UK has a low rate of economic inactivity compared to other countries … Resolution Foundation analysis … found that inactivity may be overestimated.”

As the JRF noted in a recent report, the government lacks any evidence to back up its claims that cutting billions from vulnerable people, already on low incomes, will somehow help them into the world of work: “A key part of the government’s rationale for these cuts is that they will support more disabled people into work. However, the government did not provide the OBR [Office for Budget Responsibility] with enough information or analysis to enable it to estimate the employment impacts of the package. This seriously undermines the government’s case that its proposals are about helping people into work.”

The CPAG in May provided its own analysis of the government’s claims that forcing people deeper into poverty will magically lead to them into obtaining work. It points out that the benefit cuts will have minimal impact on employment. It notes that the much-hyped employment support funding is both inadequate and will be largely ineffective. CPAG estimates that Labour’s £1 billion investment in employment support is projected to help 15,000 disabled people into work.

“At this rate of effectiveness, we could expect fewer than 15,000 additional disabled people to move into work … At best, it is likely to get tens of thousands of people into work.”

It notes a recent historical precedent for this assertion. A £3bn expansion of similar schemes in 2023 by the Tories yielded only 40,000 jobs. CPAG observes: “The gross cost of these schemes was £3 billion, and the OBR estimated [it] would get 40,000 people into work.”

We should remember that back in 2023 the OBR did estimate the employment impact of proposals by the previous Tory government to cut benefits for disabled people by tightening eligibility for the universal credit health element via changes to the work capability assessment criteria.

The JRF notes: “Despite cutting benefit income by around £5,000 each for 424,000 disabled people (alongside increased conditionality), this was projected to increase employment by just 13,900 (3 per cent).”

The JRF provides a slightly more generous estimate of the number of disabled people whom Labour will drive into jobs. It states: “…new analysis of employment support outcomes by Learning and Work Institute (funded by JRF) finds the extra investment could help 45,000-95,000 more disabled people into work. That is between 1 and 3 per cent of the people having their benefits cut. This finding is echoed by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) who conclude we might expect increases in employment in the tens of thousands.”

You don’t need an economics PhD from the London School of Economics to know that cutting benefits to force disabled people into work is economically flawed. All the evidence suggests that reducing benefits to pressure people into work has a negligible effect.

As CPAG notes: “Economic research finds the impact of this channel is very small … Reducing the adequacy … does not change [work] barriers for most people.”

The barriers disabled people face getting a job include institutional discrimination. Department for Work and Pensions work coaches lack any kind of training in the medical conditions, preventing many disabled people from working, and often display little empathy for the many structural problems facing disabled people looking for work.

The Cambridge Journal of Economics in 2018 noted that work coach discretion fails: vulnerable people were being wrongly subjected to work requirements causing great harm in many cases. CPAG observes: “Work coach discretion can lead to people with a severe incapacity… having mandatory work search requirements.”

Labour’s approach to forcing disabled people into looking for jobs is not trauma-informed and totally fails to acknowledge the complex medical issues preventing large numbers of disabled people from ever working. Structural barriers disabled people face also include care duties, employer discrimination, poor housing, poverty and childcare responsibilities.

CPAG has observed that slashing people’s living standards will not suddenly lead to them getting into work or working more hours to make up for the loss of income. This inhumane claim is not founded in reality: “They do not work or work more because they cannot do so … [Cuts] just mean lower living standards and higher poverty.”

Its analysis of the cuts package leads it to estimate that Labour will drive over 150,000 children into poverty and millions of adults deeper into hardship. This is truly shocking in a country estimated to be the fifth-richest on the planet.

Labour’s plans to force the disabled into work obviously ignores developments in the global economy. The International Monetary Fund, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and World Trade Organisation have all issued forecasts this year pointing to the rapid slowdown of the global economy which is being made much worse by Trump’s trade war with the rest of the world.

The interaction of restrictive monetary policy — ie austerity cuts — in major economies such as the US, Britain and Japan, together with weakening global trade, manufacturing contraction, persistently high core inflation accentuated now by Trump’s universal tariffs and the growing crisis in global bond markets, are compelling evidence that the global economy is experiencing a significant slowdown. Against this backdrop, the neoliberal ideologues in control of our government expect hundreds of thousands of disabled people to make up for huge cuts in their income by getting jobs.

This is of course absolute nonsense of the most inhumane kind. CPAG concludes its analysis of Labour’s proposed cuts to disability benefits by stating: “The proposed changes … will lead to an increase in child poverty and a fall in living standards for millions … [They] will not have the desired effect of getting many more people into work. Instead, it will push some of those families who face the biggest barriers to employment into deeper poverty.”

Dr Dylan Murphy is a member of Unite Community and Disabled People Against Cuts.