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01st July 2025

bbc.co.uk/accessall

Access All – Welfare Reform

Presented by Emma Tracey

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EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Hello, I’m Emma Tracey, and this is another emergency episode of Access All. It was a really busy day in parliament today as the Personal Independence Payments and Universal Credit bill went to the House of Commons for its second reading. The bill was voted through but it was not straightforward. On Friday we told you about some concessions that the government had made to the bill after more than 120 Labour backbenchers rebelled against the bill in its current form. Well, halfway through the debate today another concession was brought in by disability minister, Stephen Timms. So, that sounds complicated. It is. We’ve got a few experts in to talk us through the day and what happened and what happens next.

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Here is how the afternoon unfolded: The debate started around lunchtime when the work and pensions secretary, Liz Kendall, set out the case for the bill:

LIZ-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I have to tell the House, unlike the previous administration, this government must not and will not duck the big challenges facing this country [jeering and cheering], because the people we are in politics to serve deserve so much better than this. We are taking action to put the social security system on a sustainable footing.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Then the leader of the opposition, Kemi Badenoch, said that the government was rushing their bill through to make their fiscal sums add up:

KEMI-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý A fundamental and serious programme to reform our welfare system is required, and this bill is not it. This bill is a fudge, and I feel sorry for the Right Honourable Lady, she looks as if she’s being tortured [laughter]; this is a rushed attempt to plug. We all know why this is happening, we all know why this is happening [interruption] – I’ll give way in a moment – we all know why this is happening, this is a rushed attempt to plug the Chancellor’s fiscal hole. It is driven not by principle but by panic. The changes will force through, not because they get more people into work, but because someone in 11 Downing Street made a mistake [cries of hear hear]. It is clear that these changes were not designed to introduce fundamental reforms.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý And then during the debate Labour MP, Marie Tidball, who is disabled herself and has spoken to Access All previously, gave this impassioned speech:

MARIE-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý It is with a heavy, broken heart that I will be voting against this bill today. As a matter of conscience I need my constituents to know I cannot support the proposed changes to PIP as currently drafted on the face of the bill before us today. Since April I have been engaging relentlessly with the government at the very highest level to change their proposals as set out in this bill, making it clear I could not support the proposals on PIP.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý The government won the vote, so their welfare proposals will be going forward. Here to explain what happened and what happens next is Politico Playbook journalist, Dan Bloom. Dan spends a lot of time in parliament, knows all about what goes on in the House of Commons. Thank you for joining me, Dan.

DAN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Thank you for having me on.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Now, Dan, what are the results of this evening’s vote?

DAN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well, after that last-minute climbdown the sort of gutted bill to bring forward these welfare cuts, these welfare changes, whatever you want to call them, has passed by a majority of 75, 335 votes to 260. Now, that’s kind of half of Labour’s majority in the House of Commons, and you had 49 Labour rebels voting against. So, that’s what a lot of people basically feared would be the baseline in government of the rebellion. It's the biggest rebellion of Keir Starmer’s leadership, and it comes despite them climbing down again for a second time over the detail.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yeah, because it is quite complicated, isn’t it? What exactly were they voting on today?

DAN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well, that changed midstream. So, after the kind of climbdown last week we were now in a position where for PIP at least the MPs were going to be voting on a set of changes that would come in from November 2026, including this four-point rule that could mean that new claimants, some of them who can’t wash below the waist unaided, would no longer qualified for PIP if they were a new claimant, that was going to be voted on. But there was also going to be a review by Stephen Timms, the welfare minister, that was going to kind of look at all these issues and whether that is the right approach. But the MPs were still voting on those cuts for the future with the review ongoing, which led a lot of people to say that actually this was pre-empting the review and that the review wasn’t going to be meaningful. And at the last minute Stephen Timms, the DWP minister, stood up and said, ‘We will only look at the descriptors, the points system for PIP at the end of this review, and we won’t make these changes as part of the bill yet’. So, that has come at the last minute, and has led to a big question about what is actually going to happen, and the fact that this bill is going through the process but this vote tonight was only the start of the process. So, they’re voting on the principle of it.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý So, what does happen next then?

DAN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well, next we have what’s called the committee stage where the rebel MPs were preparing to line up to bring amendments to the bill to try and clarify some of these issues. And the government’s sudden change tonight kind of brings in a whole load of new questions and it makes it very unclear exactly what’s going to happen at the committee stage, because the government will have to bring its own amendments to its own bill in order to make this happen. But you could also get some of these rebel MPs bringing in amendments to say different things. So, that is the coming weeks. They had intended, the government, to do this as like a clean hit, if you like; they did it specifically as the sort of bill that can be rushed through the House of Lords with not that much scrutiny. Now there are a lot of questions about what this is going to mean, both for the government, for disabled people, what the actual bill is going to look like. It’s basically been, as the Conservatives and some Labour MPs have said, sort of torn up in front of our eyes.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Sum up for me in terms of process what’s going to happen next with this bill?

DAN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well, I wouldn’t like to make any promises to you, to be honest, because we don’t really know for sure. But what was meant to happen is that next week on Wednesday 9th July this bill goes into what’s called Committee of the Whole House, where instead of doing it in a step-by-step process with lots of committee hearings with a small group of MPs in a small room they do the whole thing of amending the bill and doing any improvements on the floor of the House of Commons, and then put through all of the remaining stages in one day. Now, that is still the government business. I suspect there’s going to be an awful lot of pressure on the government to give that a little bit more time and to let MPs digest what’s actually going to happen and to do this sensibly. Because we’ve had two U-turns in five days, the bill has been completely changed, we don’t know how much it’s going to save or cost disabled people, depending on your view of it, we don’t know what the government’s going to do to fil that financial black hole, and there’s a huge number of unanswered questions here. So, a lot of rebels will say that’s very rushed.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý And can they change the plan? So, can they change the plan at this stage instead of being the Committee of the Whole House? Has that been done before? Is it possible?

DAN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Things have been changed in Committee of the Whole House before. It’s the same process but it’s just much more rushed and there’s much less scope for bringing things forward. But if MPs were to unite around a sort of rebel amendment that had a lot of support before the vote then that could potentially defeat the government. And I think probably what’s more likely is you’re going to get a to and fro and a tussle with the government bringing its own amendments here and then rebel MPs pushing for it to go further or pushing for more detail on those amendments. It’s quite an iterative thing; it’s not always about one big defeat in the House of Commons.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Because they weren’t voting tonight on the concessions, were they? They were voting on the original bill.

DAN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý That’s correct, yes. So, those concessions are going to have to be brought forward at a later date. And usually when you have made concessions of this scale you wouldn’t rush it through on one Wednesday afternoon in Committee of the Whole House; you’d do it in a slightly more relaxed timetable to give people time to look at the details.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Okay, Dan Bloom, thank you for joining me. Warren Kirwan from disability charity Scope, you join me now. I mean, the government have won, the bill has gone on to the third reading, have disabled people lost?

WARREN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý It doesn’t feel like that at this present moment in time. I mean, they have committed to consult on any changes to PIP before they make any sweeping changes. And I think that’s a testament to the kind of campaigning and noise that disabled people made about the impact that this would have on their lives. It also could be said that a lot of this could have been avoided in the first place, a lot of the anxiety, the fear, the uncertainty, talking to people who wouldn’t know how they can support themselves because they get 12 points on the daily living component but not four in any one category, and they were really sure would they have to go and live in a home or make themselves homeless because they wouldn’t be able to support themselves at home, or they wouldn’t be able to go to work because they didn’t physically have the energy to go to work and then do the stuff they need to do around the home. All of that pain uncertainty could have been avoided. So, I don’t think it feels like a win for anyone. And we’ve still got, under the changes that have gone through, I mean 700,000 future Universal Credit health claimants receive an average of £3,000 less support a year. So, it isn’t a great situation.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Bittersweet.

WARREN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Yes, that’s probably a very fair summing up.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Warren, there’s a lot of talk at the moment about the so-called Timms review, which is a review of the Personal Independence Payments assessments, which is due to come out in autumn next year. And a lot of talk and a lot of excitement around coproduction and that they’re going to bring in disabled people and disability groups to help shape this, right. I would have thought, and a lot of disabled people would have thought I think, that disability groups and disabled people were already in the conversation about cuts and proposed cuts and changes to disability benefits. Was that not the case?

WARREN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý With this bill and with a lot of the proposed cuts brought forward that wasn’t done in consultation with disabled people, not genuine consultation anyway, and it was without any assessment of the impact that would have on people’s health, their ability to live and employment outcomes as the rationale the government was putting forward. On coproduction more generally, if the government is going to do this and take it forward I think they really need to be open about what the outcome is. So, if the government is serious I think they need to recognise and remove any threat of this review being done in a kind of tight financial budget or constraint. Because otherwise you’re just guessing to what they wanted in the first place but by a different means.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Okay. So, do you think this is the end of this four points issue where someone has to get four points in the daily living if they’re a new claimant for Personal Independence Payments? Has that gone now, do you think?

WARREN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I think it remains to be seen. I think we’re going to have to see what the amendment comes down in the committee stage of the bill next, and then what goes through with coproduction. And it depends how determined the government is to make cuts. If they’re still really fully on the table then there is the potential that things would come back in a similar form. It might not be four points but it might be something else.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý All right, Warren Kirwan from Scope, thank you.

WARREN-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Thank you.

MUSIC-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý We’re not just a podcast. Find Access All on social media, and read our articles on the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ News website.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý And now we’ve got head of policy from disabled people’s organisation, Disability Rights UK, Fazilet Hadi. Fazilet, where does Disability Rights UK stand now that the vote has happened on the second reading of this bill?

FAZILET-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý It’s very fresh, isn’t it, the vote, and I feel really confused and mixed about what’s happened. I feel really proud of disabled people and disabled people’s organisations for the campaign that’s been mounted. I’m really proud of the 44 Labour MPs that continued to vote against the bill. But my regrets are that the bill is still going through and that new disabled people will be losing Universal Credit top-up from next year, next April. And I don’t think we’re necessarily out of the woods on Personal Independence Payment. I’m absolutely delighted that the government was forced to drop their ridiculous four-point rule. But on the other hand I have a bit of a lack of trust about where we’re going to end up with PIP.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Well, doesn’t Disability Rights UK have a say in how PIP ends up now? Because we’ve got the Timms review which the government says is going to be coproduced with disabled people and disability groups, it’s going to look at all elements of the Personal Independence Payments assessments. How do you feel about that? And have you been in the conversation already? Will you guys be getting right into that conversation with Stephen Timms over the next year and a half?

FAZILET-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I mean, we’ll certainly reflect on whether or not we get into the conversation. I also think when you start in such different starting places, like we actually think disabled people have minimal support and government thinks we have too much and we’re too expensive, it’s very hard to coproduce when there’s not a meeting of minds about the actual shape of what you’re discussing. So, don’t get me wrong, I think disabled people could have a valuable role to play in the review, but I would not call it coproduction. But I’m very happy to talk about what the review is and maybe government is prepared to work differently.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý You’re kind of between a rock and a hard place there though, Fazilet, because if you’re not at the table you can’t have any say, no matter what level of coproduction is it. But then at the same time Disability Rights UK and other disabled people’s organisations did think about not working with Stephen Timms in the future at all. So, I’d imagine disabled people will expect you to come to the table, won’t they?

FAZILET-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I think so because I think you always have to be at the table. We’re not the government, and the government is in charge of the policies on PIP and Universal Credit, and we want to put our views across and we want the best possible solutions for disabled people. But I think I’m just putting in a bit of caution about what kind of process it will be. And obviously we will work with Stephen Timms to try and make it a different process maybe to other processes that have happened in the past. It’s a tough one, but I think in the end disabled people will have to start the talks definitely.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Tell me about one of the other concessions that was made last week, it wasn’t talked about much today in the debate, but was the bringing forward of extra money for employment support. Do you think that kind of will help when disabled people, new claimants get less of a health top-up than old claimants, than current claimants even?

FAZILET-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Isn’t it amazing, last week feels so long ago. But you’re absolutely right to remind me that other concessions have been one. And the other one of course is that people currently on Personal Independence Payment and currently on the Universal Credit top-up will continue to get that. There are some wrinkles around that, people are wondering how it will affect people with fluctuating conditions etc. But nevertheless that was a victory, and I’m sure a lot of disabled people are sleeping a bit easier in their beds. I mean, on the employment money I would like to see some coproduction about how that is spent, because I think disabled people have a lot to offer in terms of what gets us into work, what helps us stay in work. I certainly hope that they do talk to us.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I mean, Disability Rights UK were at the House of Commons today with other campaigning organisations protesting. Have you heard from any of them since the vote what the feeling’s like?

FAZILET-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý I haven’t. I was there yesterday protesting in Parliament Square as well with disabled people against cuts, and lots of other disabled people’s organisations, and those protests carried on today outside parliament. But also we had drop-ins inside parliament. So, disabled people have been all over these changes and really trying to defend the rights of disabled people. I think people will be just wanting to reflect on the good news and some of the bad news, so I think we probably need a couple of days just to let the dust settle and work out what it means.

EMMA-ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý Fazilet Hadi from Disability Rights UK, thank you.

ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý That is it for this emergency episode of Access All. If you're still a bit confused, if you’ve got questions, please get in touch with us, I know it’s really complicated and we are going to stay across it. Email accessall@bbc.co.uk, or find us on social media, on X and Instagram @ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½AccessAll. We’ll have another episode in a couple of days. See you then. Goodbye.

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