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After a cutting question from Richard Burgon, Keir Starmer’s callousness was just on full display

At Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs), Labour MP Richard Burgon challenged Keir Starmer on the cuts to disabled people’s support:

Burgon: ‘drop the cuts’

The MP for Leeds East said:

Mr Speaker… no Labour government should ever try to balance the books on the backs of disabled people. Yet in just a few weeks time that is what the prime minister
will ask this House to do. Many of us will not be able to go along with that, because it will mean that people who need assistance to cut up their food, to wash themselves, to dress themselves and to go to the toilet will lose the PIP they currently get – that’s vital support. This week the prime minister changed direction on winter fuel payment, will he do the same in relation to this and now drop these disability benefit cuts.
On 9 June, the Labour government confirmed a welcome U-turn on the winter fuel allowance for pensioners. Now any pensioner on £35,000 or less will receive the payment. This will stop thousands of low income pensioners from being pushed into poverty.
But it raises the question of why Labour is going ahead with the disability benefit cuts. Particularly when the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) has itself admitted that the cuts will push 670,000 families that are already in poverty into even deeper financial strain.
This is the continuation of extracting money from the least well off and transferring it to the rich through a rigged system of real estate, privatised utilities, tax breaks, bloated salaries and monopolies.
There are various wealth taxes that could rebalance the economy in a progressive way – by tens of billions per year, far exceeding the amount the government may take from disabled people via DWP cuts. For one, the Labour government could bring in a wealth tax of 1-2% on assets worth over £10m. This would rebalance society by £22bn per year.

In the October 2024 budget, chancellor Rachel Reeves did raise capital gains tax. But equalising the tax on the passive income of capital gains with the tax charged on working people’s income would rebalance society by a further £12.7bn. Research from Oxford University shows that this measure has the support of 62% of the public.

Cruel Starmer

At PMQs, Starmer responded:

Mr speaker, it’s very important we make the changes to our welfare system. It’s not working, it needs reform. I think everybody agrees with that. It doesn’t
work for anyone. We will do so on a principled basis that those who can work should work, those that want to work should be supported to do so and that we must protect those with the most severe disabilities who will never be able to work

Starmer is totally wrong here and he knows it. There is a consensus on welfare and it’s the opposite to what he says  – that it simply isn’t enough. In fact, a whopping 91 charities have united to demand that the Labour government introduces an Essentials Guarantee to alleviate poverty in a country where 4.5 million children fall bellow the line.

Burgon is spot on to hold Starmer’s feet to the fire at PMQs.
Featured image via the Canary

By James Wright

This post was originally published on Canary.