Disability benefit cuts: Model motion for Labour party branches / CLPs

No Cuts to Disability Benefits

This branch/CLP notes:

1. that the Labour government has announced plans to restrict eligibility for Personal Independence Payment (PIP).

2. ⁠that it also intends to remove the health component of Universal Credit from people under 22 years of age.

3. ⁠that the government’s own impact assessment shows that these measures will push a quarter of a million (250,000) people, including fifty thousand (50,000) children, into poverty.

4. ⁠reports that these cuts will particularly hit people with mental ill-health and neurodivergent people.

This CLP believes that:

1. disabled people are not responsible for the poor state of the national finances.

2. ⁠the government can address financial problems by taxing big business and the super-rich rather than taking away the support that disabled people need.

3. ⁠that these cuts detract from and outweigh the positive measures announced, such as ending repeated assessments of some people with lifelong conditions.

4. that these cuts are alienating Labour’s working-class support.

This branch/CLP calls on the Labour government to:

1. scrap these cuts, just as it scrapped its initial plan to freeze the level of PIP.

2. ⁠finance and improve services through a wealth tax.

3. ⁠retain and improve the Access to Work fund, so that it is fully-funded and does not keep people waiting for the payments they need.

3. ⁠work with Labour’s own disabled members’ representatives, disabled people’s user-led organisations, trade unions and civil society to draft any new reforms to social security.

This branch/CLP resolves to:

1. write to our local MP, the Secretary of State for Work & Pensions (Liz Kendall), and the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Rachel Reeves) to articulate our opposition to proposed cuts to disability benefits as soon as possible.

2. ⁠inform all our members of our stance on this issue.

3. ⁠support, attend and build for protests against these cuts.

4. ⁠submit this (or a similar) motion to our CLP / Regional Labour Conference / National Labour Conference.

Link: No Cuts to Disability Benefits