At the Conservative party conference this week, the most vulnerable members of society found themselves firmly in the prime minister’s line of fire. Liz Truss still hasn’t ruled out plans to bring in a real-term benefits cut during the UK’s worst cost of living crisis in a generation. While the new prime minister used her conference speech to place an emphasis on “hard work and enterprise” and “doing things differently”, for disabled and low-income claimants, the apparent plan to starve benefits – ensuring they remain below the line of inflation – seems designed to strip people who claim benefits of their security and dignity.
When the Conservatives first took power with the coalition government in 2010, David Cameron’s earliest targets were those in receipt of disability and low-income support. As reported in the book The War on Disabled People, when the 2010 austerity plan was announced, disability and carers’ benefits had accounted for 40% of the non-pension welfare budget. Social care also made up 60% of local government spending. As a result, the earliest austerity cuts hit disabled people and their carers the hardest, economically and in terms of local services.
