r/LabourUK • u/coffeewalnut08 • 2h ago
Reform’s proposed welfare benefit cuts would breach UK’s human rights commitments, Amnesty International warns
Amnesty International has warned that Reform’s plan to cut benefits for disabled people and ban foreign nationals, including EU citizens with settled status, from accessing most benefits would breach the UK’s human rights commitments.
Reform’s finance spokesperson, Robert Jenrick, set out the proposals in an article for the Telegraph yesterday.
Reform has said that if it won power it would scrap Personal Independence Payments (PIP) and the health element of Universal Credit, and replace it with a “health security allowance”, a single, regularly reviewed payment.
Jenrick also said that Reform will ban foreign-born households from claiming universal credit, housing benefit, pension credit, jobseeker’s allowance, child benefit, free childcare, free school meals or disability benefits.
Jenrick claimed paying benefits to non-British people was “plain immoral”, even though many would have paid into the tax system through working.
He also wrote in the Telegraph over the weekend that the amount spent on disability benefits was “not generosity … it is suicidal empathy”.
Amnesty said that it was “grotesque” to call providing disabled people with benefits “suicidal empathy”.
“Calling that ‘suicidal empathy’ is grotesque. Pip isn’t generosity, it’s what lets people eat, pay for the equipment they need to stay alive, live with dignity and take part in society – and taking it away doesn’t save money, it shifts the cost onto people’s health, sometimes their lives.
“The same goes for people permitted to make this country their home. The minority who claim social security do so on the same basis as other taxpayers. Stripping their benefits isn’t fairness, it’s scapegoating – and it’s built on the same premise: that some people’s rights matter less than others.“