A TORY rebellion in the House of Commons yesterday saw the government defeated over plans to cut disability benefits.
Though it was a non-binding, symbolic vote, it puts pressure on the Department of Work and Pensions to postpone changes to Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and Universal Credit which are due to start in April.
ESA payments are due to be slashed by £29 a week to £73 for new claimants in the work-related activity group (wrag), those people assessed as being unable to work currently, but who could get a job if they took training.
Meanwhile, cuts to Universal Credit will reduce the amount people are able to earn before their benefits are withdrawn.
Five Tories joined SNP and Labour MPs to ask for a pause. Tory MPs stayed away from the debate, allowing the government to be defeated 127 to zero.
Twickenham Tory MP Tania Mathias slammed the government, saying promised help to those affected wouldn’t be ready in time: “For members of this House like myself, who supported the government changes to ESA in March, it was on the absolute understanding that there would be, in parallel, appropriate support for people getting into work.
“While the green paper is laudable, it won’t be implemented in time and therefore the ESA changes have to be delayed.”
South Cambridgeshire MP Heidi Allen said her Tory colleagues had voted on the understanding that a white paper would be published imminently outlining alternative support, and the promise of £100 million for funding.
The SNP’s Neil Gray, who forced the vote by securing the debate the debate in the Commons, said he hoped the DWP was listening: “It is not opposition politicians but government back benchers who are most influential in changing the minds of ministers.”
“This cut will create two tiers of disability support and create an arbitrary cut-off for people to receive a reduced support rate, purely by virtue of their application date. The Scottish Association for Mental Health agrees. It says that this cut could provide a perverse disincentive to work for people with mental health conditions, who make up 49 per cent of ESA wrag recipients."
He went on to say that new figures from the StepChange Debt Charity show that a third of ESA recipients were in debt, forced to spend more than they were taking in.
In a letter signed by 74 disability charities and other organisations, the government was warned the health of the disabled claimants would suffer by not pausing cuts to ESA until extra support was in place.
DWP minister Penny Mordaunt said there would be no delay in the changes, promising measures before new benefit claims are made in April.
“I have heard a lot this afternoon the word pause,” Mordaunt said.
“What I do not think we should pause is that support. I think we need to progress that and it will come on stream in April but we also need to progress and pick up the work of the green paper and pick up the pace because we need to deliver on those issues.”
Speaking after the debate, Gray said he hoped the government would “listen to its own backbench MPs who marched through the lobbies with us, asking that the Autumn Statement will be used to ensure that those who have been overlooked in the past will not continue to bear the brunt of austerity and Tory cuts.”
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