Rachel Reeves’ benefits cuts will push an estimated quarter of a million people, including 50,000 children, into poverty by the end of this decade, according to the government’s own impact assessment.
Ministers finally published the document alongside the spring statement, a week after they first outlined moves to slash £5 billion from the welfare bill.
It also reveals that 3.2 million families will lose out, on average by £1,720 a year.
The impact assessment warned the cuts, that will see more than 1 million disabled people lose their benefits, will result in “an additional 250,000 people (including 50,000 children) in relative poverty after housing costs in 2029/30 as a result of modelled changes to social security”.
In response, suspended Labour MP Zarah Sultana, who now sits as an independent, challenged the chancellor, who she said she was earning more than £150,000 and recently took “freebie tickets to see Sabrina Carpenter”, whether the cuts were the change people had voted for last summer.
Ms Reeves insisted that the figures did not take into account the impact of the government’s ‘back to work’ policy, which was expected to “mitigate the poverty impact”.
The figures risk reigniting a Labour rebellion over the proposed welfare changes.
The chancellor was forced to announce a swathe of further cuts to benefits after the OBR disputed her initial trance of reforms would save the required £5bn.
As part of the extra cuts, the universal credit health element will be cut by 50 per cent and frozen for new claimants.
Ms Reeves insisted that the government had “inherited a broken” welfare system in which one in eight young people are not in employment, education or training.
Ms Reeves says Labour will put record investment in getting people back to work, pledging “guaranteed, personalised and targeted support”.
Welfare claimants will also be given a “right to try” work, without risk of losing their benefits as part of Labour’s overall overhaul of the system.
But she faced a backlash within her own party.
Labour MP Debbie Abrahams, the chair of the Commons Work and Pensions Committee, told MPs: “All the evidence is pointing to the fact that the cuts to health and disability benefits will lead to increased poverty, including severe poverty, and worsened health conditions as well.
“How will making people sicker and poorer help in terms of driving our economy up and people into jobs?”
Labour MP Richard Burgon, a former shadow Treasury minister, said: “Making cuts instead of taxing wealth is a political choice, and taking away the personal independence payments from so many disabled people is an especially cruel choice.
“A disabled person who can’t cut up their own food without assistance, and can’t go to the toilet without assistance, and can’t wash themselves without assistance will lose their personal independence payment.
“So hasn’t the Government on this taken the easy option of cutting support for disabled people rather than the braver option which would be to tax the wealthiest through a wealth tax?”
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