Centre for Public Policy

Following announcements of proposed cuts to disability welfare in the UK, Dr Paul Pearson and Professor Jo Edson Ferrie examine the impact of this from a human rights perspective, writing 'by integrating human rights and equalities, we see both what is wrong with the world - inequalities - while also considering remedies to access justice'.

Blog by Professor Jo Edson Ferrie (University of Glasgow) and Dr Paul Pearson (The Poverty Alliance)

Published earlier this year, the Department of Work and Pension’s Green Paper (DWP, 2025) and the Chancellor’s Spring Statement signals cuts of around £5billion from spending in order to address national debt, with focused cuts to Personal Independence Payments, a critical welfare entitlement for many disabled people. A recent blog from Professors Charlotte Pearson and Nick Watson for the Centre for Public Policy outlines the implications of these changes.

On 9 March, political commentator Andrew Tickell published one of the first critiques against Labour’s planned benefit reforms, calling for recognition that cuts for disabled people undermine everyone’s life chances. Initially, Andrew recalls seeing disabled people as ‘other’. In his article, Andrew described how the course on Disability Rights, taken in fulfilment for his Masters degree, and lecturers including Jo (blog co-author), Nicola Burns, and Nick Watson, had challenged his worldview, reflecting that:

“If you are lucky, there are sometimes moments in your education when feel your perspective on the social world turn on its axis, all the more when the revelation ambushes you unexpectedly. This class felt like one of those turning points.”

In the degree that Andrew undertook, notably developed by Matthew Waites, equalities are situated alongside human rights. By integrating human rights and equalities, we see both what is wrong with the world - inequalities - while also considering remedies to access justice.

Human rights are a particularly useful framework to understand not only what change is required for a nation to be fair, but critically, who is accountable for this change. Duty bearers are any person, or leadership group that holds power over others, for example, the Labour Government. We are all rights holders by virtue of being human. This means that we all have the right to live above a threshold, and are entitled to political, economic, social and cultural freedoms.

Human rights are indivisible, which helps us see the consequences of failures in one area of State accountability. A person’s economic future is not only based on their right to education, but also their right to health. If hospital appointments are only available during working hours, and waiting lists are long, then people’s work is impacted. If people do not have an adequate standard of living with safe, dry and clean housing, then their capacity to work is also undermined. If the person does not have adequate access to affordable transport, then again, their access to work is under threat. As such, the relationship between disability and work is always complex.

Disability benefits recognise that being disabled costs money. The charity Scope estimated that in 2024, after taking entitlements into account, households that include at least one disabled person face additional costs of £975 per month. Before cuts to entitlements can be made, the onus, according to human rights, is for the Duty Bearer to evidence that it now costs less money to be disabled. However, the cost-of-living crisis means it costs more than ever to be disabled, from utility bills to transport costs, to accessible clothing, and so on. In turn, wages have fallen behind inflation, meaning that working disabled people have less surplus.

In January, Sir Keir Starmer told a UK tabloid that he was willing to be ‘ruthless with cuts’ to the benefits system. The rhetorical devices used here only work if we understand benefits claimants to be undeserving. Critically, this narrative is only effective for the Labour Party if they believe voters agree, or can be convinced, that benefits claimants are undeserving. This economic position is effectively the continuation of austerity as a model and relies on a prevalent narrative that disabled people are a burden to society, that they cost the nation, that they are a problem. The narrative behind the cuts includes reference to those few who fraudulently claim benefits (estimated at less than 1%, by the UK Government), a narrative that ignores that a far greater numbers of eligible claimants receive nothing.

Labour argues that more disabled people could work. It is important to note the education system, designed to equip people for the labour market is one marked by a continuing attainment gap, ensuring that many disabled people enter the labour market comparatively under-qualified and less able to compete for jobs. In turn, while the State characterises disabled people as the undeserving poor, it fails to recognise the impact that this portrayal has on societal attitudes, and its impact in areas such as employment. By their lack of accountability, the Government indicate to other duty bearers that disabled people, and reasonable adjustments required to level the playing field, are not their responsibility. The Labour Government cannot create policy that draws so directly on pernicious and cruel depictions of disabled people as underserving, and then expect that the communities in which they live will respond with kindness.

One argument that Andrew cited in his article, is that all people should have empathy for disabled people, seeing them as part of the same group, rather than an out-group, to resist the ‘othering’ at play. If non-disabled people are un-swayed by the argument that they themselves could be disabled one day, perhaps they could think twice about what the reforms signify.

Welfare and the National Health Service are the safety net that we have paid for through national insurance. The proposed benefits reforms represent a test case, challenging any assumptions that social security will be there for any person should they need it. The evidence from these cuts, is that it will not be, as disabled people are often workers too, paying into the system. If this test-case is ‘successful’, it is unlikely to end with disabled people.

The Labour Government can choose empathy over dehumanisation, beginning with the scrapping of these proposals. As disabled people, we join the call for resistance. The first step in our resistance is to state clearly, we are human, we are rights holders.

Authors

Jo Edson Ferrie is Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow who researches around human rights realisation in Scotland and works closely with the Scottish Human Rights Commission. She also teaches research methods transgressively enabling students to graduate with the skills to produce rigorous and robust evidence.

Dr Paul Pearson recently graduated with this PhD that examined the lived experience of people living with brain injury. His work used human rights as an analytical tool. He is currently working with the Poverty Alliance.

^{Preview image by Markus Spiske on Unsplash}

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First published: 2 May 2025