Alan Milburn’s year-long review lands on Tuesday with a simple plan: take under-25s off the health element of universal credit and personal independence payment (PIP). Ministers want to move young disabled people onto a basic universal credit allowance, with some possibly eligible for a new “additional cost allowance.” The exact amounts won’t be clear until early next year, when the government publishes legislation. Milburn says the plans won’t be “pain-free” and will hit existing and new claimants.
Let’s be clear about what this is. A 24-year-old with the same disability as a 25-year-old doesn’t need less care, less mobility support or less help with extra costs. The age cutoff isn’t medical. It’s a budget line. Ministers use it to cut spending and to split disabled workers by age. Of the four million people claiming PIP in England and Wales, around 430,000 are aged 16 to 24. Milburn’s own interim report found that 19 percent of young people claiming disability or health benefits were in work. The state isn’t dealing with a bunch of scroungers. It’s cutting the social wage for a section of the working class which largely works when it’s able.
Welfare benefits are part of what workers have won through struggle, a social wage that keeps people alive when employers won’t pay enough, when illness hits, when disability makes work impossible or precarious. When ministers cut PIP for under-25s, they don’t make extra costs disappear. They shift those costs onto disabled young people and their families. That’s a transfer of wealth from the working class to the capitalists. Employers get a bigger pool of desperate workers willing to take low pay. The rich get lower taxes or more state spending elsewhere. Disabled workers get the bill.
Milburn also wants billions pumped into employment support for young people — work placements, job subsidies, one-to-one advisers. Those with more severe disabilities and unable to work would get a new benefit paid at a higher rate. Fine. But you don’t get a disabled young person into work by taking away the money that helps them get into work. Bell Ribeiro-Addy, one of the Labour backbenchers who revolted against Sir Keir Starmer’s welfare reforms last year, said she was “not sure” she could vote to cut the benefit entitlement of existing claimants. She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I don’t think you get a disabled young person into work by taking away the money that helps them get into work.”
Milburn acknowledged that changing the rules for existing claimants would be “difficult politically” but stressed it was necessary. Of course it’s difficult politically. That’s why the ruling class does this piecemeal. Governments cut welfare in stages because a frontal assault on all claimants would unite too many people. Milburn starts with under-25s. Then existing claimants. Then the next group. Each cut looks small. Together they dismantle the system. Labour uses a former health secretary to sell it, so the Tories and Reform UK can’t claim a monopoly on welfare cuts. Prime Minister Andy Burnham is likely to back the recommendations. The same Labour Party that posed as a defender of the welfare state under Starmer now prepares to implement cuts under Burnham.
Milburn told the Times: “Candidly, it could mean that some people will get less financial support at the beginning of their benefit claim than under the current system. But actually, for young people, there’s a different debate that we’ve got to resolve, which is whether the priority is their longer-term life chances or just their immediate shorter-term finances. I think what the current system does [is] it prioritises the latter over the former. I believe that’s the wrong choice and it needs to be the other way around.” That’s a fancy way of saying: young disabled people should accept poverty now so employers can get cheap labour later.
Disability groups have welcomed extra employment support, but they’re worried. James Taylor from the charity Scope said PIP was a “lifeline” for young disabled people and restricting access to it “won’t make young disabled people’s extra costs disappear.” Harriet Edwards from Sense said changes were “long overdue,” but without additional details families were “deeply anxious” about what they could mean for them. A government spokesperson said: “We will always ensure there is a safety net for the most vulnerable and those who are unable to work.” That’s the same safety net ministers are cutting holes in.
And why now? Because there’s heavy political pressure for the UK to find money to spend more on defence. Both the Conservatives and Reform UK have argued for significant cuts to welfare, including to fund a boost to defence. That’s imperialism in plain sight. British capitalism wants more missiles, more wars and more profits for arms firms. Ministers pay for that imperialist rivalry by taking from disabled workers. The Tories and Reform say it loudly. Labour says it with a review, a former health secretary and a “contract.”
Skills Minister Jacqui Smith told the BBC that young people had a “responsibility” to take up employment support. “It is a contract. People need the chance, and they need to take that chance,” she added. But a contract between a disabled young person and the state isn’t a bargain between equals. The state writes the terms. The claimant signs or starves. Milburn’s new system would have “carrot and stick”—young people could lose some benefits if they don’t engage with the extra work support options. That’s not a contract. That’s coercion.
The savings could take almost a decade, and Milburn says the new system “will need significant investment” and would involve “rebuilding the system from scratch.” A separate review co-chaired by disabilities minister Sir Stephen Timms is expected this month. The whole apparatus is grinding into gear.
This is a class issue. The ruling class is dismantling the welfare state piece by piece to make workers pay for capitalism’s crises. Disabled young people are the first target because they’re easier to isolate. But the logic doesn’t stop at 25. The fight over PIP and universal credit is a fight over who pays. Disabled workers and the wider working class have every reason to insist it’s the capitalist class.
