Published by The i paper (19th May, 2025)
Sir Keir Starmer is having a torrid time in Downing Street as he grapples with a nightmare president in the White House, grinding war in Europe and the dreadful legacy left by his predecessors. His popularity has crashed to a record low – and latest YouGov polling shows that these dismal ratings are being driven by dismayed Labour voters, with half holding an unfavourable view of their prime minister. This is unsurprising when he repeats the failed tactics of the Tories in trying to defeat Nigel Farage by embracing his crass populism. Yet in the background lurks a disturbing question: why is this government so hostile to people with disabilities, who should be among its most natural supporters as it seeks to salvage public services?
The first signs came with Labour’s decision to kick social care reform into the long grass, despite admitting in its election manifesto that the system was in crisis and not fit for purpose. It offered an ill-defined promise to “build a National Care Service” for the country’s millions of elderly, sick or disabled citizens in need of support to live their best lives. Instead, ministers launched another review into this Cinderella public service, which ignores children’s services and will not deliver its final report on long-term solutions until 2028. This was another shameless Westminster fudge to defer contentious decisions. We know all the issues and possible solutions after 25 white papers, green papers, select committee inquiries and state reviews of social care held in the 28 years since the last Labour leader won an election.
Earlier this month, a cross-party report from MPs warned that the failure to fix social care is costing the country heavily in financial and human terms. Although costs are rising – with taxpayers in England alone spending £32bn a year on a scandalously broken system and local authorities buckling under the strain – the Health and Social Care Committee found 3.5 million adults in the UK still have unmet needs. Behind this depressing statistic – which leads to spiralling demand, intense stress and great suffering – lies a hidden army of almost five million unpaid carers picking up the slack with their loved ones. I know from my own family – caring for my late daughter for more than three decades – the anguish, isolation and struggles involved in such situations, even after winning state support.
Yet, the care crisis was inflamed by the Government’s botched budget, which drove up the sector’s employment costs by an estimated £2.8bn with national insurance changes. Bear in mind it is already scarred by chronic low pay, sparking high staff turnover and 131,000 vacancies last year, according to official data. My own family saw how Brexit made staff recruitment so much harder and more stressful, driving away superb European carers plugging the gaps. Yet, who did the Government see as a soft target when spooked by Reform UK in local elections? Foreign carers. So ministers are closing down their recruitment from abroad to reduce immigration figures, while talking loftily about focusing on supposedly higher-skilled migration.
And guess which section of society was singled out when the Government sought to slash £5bn from the benefits budget? Yes, its core plan was tightening criteria for Personal Independence Payments (PIP), the main disability benefit. About one million people will lose support of up to £6,300 a year by the end of this decade, says the Resolution Foundation. So much for all that talk of social justice when even official estimates suggests this will push 250,000 more people into relative poverty and leave millions of families with less cash. Yet the ministers responsible try to mislead voters by claiming their move is linked to helping people with disabilities into work, although PIP is not an out-of-work benefit. Roll on the backbench revolt.
Next up is ominous talk of a “complete recalibration” of special educational needs provision to ease financial pressures for local authorities, despite so many families being failed by the existing system. Here is another flailing part of the public sector that has been allowed to fester for too long, leaving MPs besieged with letters from despairing parents waiting up to two years for children to obtain support in schools. Only half the essential education, health and care plans (EHCPs) – which stipulate support schools must legally provide – are issued within the statutory 20-week time frame. Many cases end up before a tribunal. Yet councils win fewer than one in 75 of the appeals, indicating the shocking extent of their blocking tactics to save cash.
Clearly this is a major issue. The number of EHCPs has soared from 294,758 five years ago to 434,354 in the most recent data in the wake of Covid, rising diagnosis of autism, more children living with disabilities, increasing speech and language issues, and flaws in the last round of reform. Yet, Dame Christine Lenahan, a top government adviser, has indicated they might restrict use of these plans to focus on education, stripping away vital health and care components – and also apply them only to children at special schools, despite their drive for more inclusion in mainstream education. This might delight cash-strapped councils. But it would be a highly regressive move that piles extra pressure on parents while fuelling corrosive societal issues that will ramp up costs later by letting down vulnerable children.
How sad to see this multi-pronged assault on disabled citizens coming from a Labour government. Yet it gets worse if you consider another toxic reform pushed by Downing Street: the legalisation of assisted suicide. The hasty debate on this difficult subject has been a disturbing spectacle as arrogant pro-euthanasia MPs – in tandem with a well-resourced lobby group – swept aside justified concerns over coercion and fears from people with disabilities inflamed by evidence from abroad.
Ultimately, we are being asked to trust a state that has proved such a failure – and by a set of politicians who show so little interest in ensuring that millions of our fellow citizens can live their fullest possible lives. Is this really the change we were promised?