With the Labour Party government’s Spring Statement imminent, chancellor Rachel Reeves is doubling down with a raft of spending cuts proposals. Among these will be billions in cuts to Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) welfare. In particular, it has plans in the pipeline to target disability and health-related benefits, that it has long threatened.
DWP boss Liz Kendall will be announcing its plans to ‘reform’ these within the next month. Amidst all this, one Labour minister made a rather revealing comment on these plans. And crucially, it epitomised the attitude in which the new Labour government is approaching its benefit-cut agenda.
Mahmood: Labour the party of work – not of the DWP
On Wednesday 5 March, the Treasury put forward its forthcoming spending plans to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).
It will set out how the government will meet chancellor Reeves’ commitment to bring down government debt and hit the targets she set out in October’s Autumn Budget. This was an austerity-fueled suite of plans that largely put the burden of its cost-cutting on the shoulders of those least able to afford it.
However, since putting it forward, the costs of government borrowing have gone up.
As the BBC reported:
The spending cuts drafted by the Treasury will help plug the gap that has emerged in recent months, ahead of the OBR publishing its forecast and Reeves giving a statement on 26 March.
The Treasury has blamed several global factors, including trade tariffs and the war in Ukraine for pushing up government borrowing costs.
Predictably then, the chancellor is using this as the impetus to slash spending in the public sector. For months, the government has held up the “black hole” in its finances as justification for welfare cuts in particular.
Part of this will be Labour’s plans to follow through on the Conservative’s £3bn in DWP welfare cuts. The BBC noted that:
Insiders expect “politically painful” new welfare cuts that are designed to reduce the huge growth in health-related benefits, which will be outlined in a forthcoming speech from Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall.
Enter justice secretary Shabana Mahmood to defend the government’s plans.
‘The clue is in the name’
In an interview for the Today programme, she echoed government’s recent DWP back-to-work rhetoric arguing there is:
a moral case here for making sure that people who can work are able to work.
However, there was statement in particular that was especially telling. Notably, she told the show that:
This is the Labour party. The clue is in the name. We believe in work.
Of course, her response reflected the Labour government’s overarching narrative on DWP welfare. Largely, it has been to orientate its welfare ‘reforms’ around the rates of people ‘economically inactive’. This is the government’s term for those not in work, and not looking for work.
Around 2.8 million are out of work due to long-term sickness. And it’s with these figures that the government has been targeting chronically ill and disabled people in recent months. In particular, it is all to lay the groundwork for its forthcoming Green Paper on disability benefits.
In short, what Mahmood was saying was little more than the well-worn Party line. The prime minister and his cabinet have repeatedly pitched themselves as the party for workers on numerous occasions, both on the campaign trail, and since election. Mahmood’s statement is another manifestation of its mission to drive a wedge between “hard-working taxpayers” and people unable to work: chronically ill and disabled people.
As the Canary has underscored consistently, it’s a false dichotomy. People not working and claiming DWP benefits still spend to live, and ergo, are ‘active’ citizens economically.
Not the first time… not the last
Invariably though, Mahmood is hardly the first on the Labour right to use this framing. A poster on X pointed out how now chancellor Rachel Reeves had used this same line about DWP claimants almost exactly – in 2014:
Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood pushing Benefit Cuts by saying “This is he Labour Party, the Clue is in the name” – she is using a Rachel Reeves line from 2014 -In 2021 Reeves got upset when reminded and said it was careless and wrong messaging , but here were are full circle https://t.co/sPp6zTXACx pic.twitter.com/LCEGGP5a1g
— Solomon Hughes (@SolHughesWriter) March 5, 2025
As the post noted, Reeves somewhat backtracked on this in 2021. In a interview with the New Statesman, she said:
One of the things that I said was, you know, ‘We’re the party of working people, the clue is in the name.’ And you know and then I got criticised: ‘Well, what about the unemployed and people who can’t work?’ Well, of course, the Labour Party is the party of them: people who are out of work, looking for work, people who can’t work because of illness or disability or caring responsibilities. They’re all part of that working class.
However, she had followed this up saying:
I was trying to make the point, however badly, that spending more on benefits wasn’t always a sign of success. And actually the benefits bill goes up when society fails. Maybe I didn’t always say it right. But that was the point I was trying to make.
Overall, Mahmood’s quip was hugely in step with the government’s recent attempts to malign DWP claimants. Last month, Kendall suggested that some benefit claimants are “taking the mickey” – with the implication that they should be in work. Labour has been attacking neurodivergent claimants and those receiving benefits for mental health conditions as part of this.
What’s clear from Mahmood vocalising this “believe in work” paradigm, is that Labour is no longer concerned with maintaining any pretence it cares for people who aren’t able to work. Once again then, this government is proving it’s quite ready to throw chronically ill and disabled people under the bus for some perceived savings – that will ultimately cost lives – and not actually benefit the public purse in the long-run anyway.
Featured image via the Canary
