Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall finally published her "Pathways to Work" Green Paper on Tuesday. It proposes across-the-board cuts in disability and incapacity benefits. She says this will save £5bn per year over the next 5 years. First to come under attack are under-22s. They'll no longer have the right to claim incapacity benefit and will have to pass more stringent tests to qualify for PIP (Personal Independence Payments}, the additional allowance covering the cost of equipment like wheelchairs.

    She says these unprecedented cuts are justified because "the government's number one mission is to grow the economy and drive up living standards right across the country". But how on earth can impoverishing the young {and old!} who have health issues - if not permanent disabilities - achieve anything of the sort? Does she want to drive the vulnerable poor into total destitution? Already mentally ill homeless are sleeping in the streets.

    And where are the jobs which deprived youngsters are supposed to go into? Which employers have agreed to take on workers (and pay them living wages) who suffer with disabilities, especially mental disorders?

    Kendall says sickness benefits cost £65bn last year - a 25% increase since 2019, i.e., since the pandemic, due to PIP claimants increasing by 1.5m. The reason is surely a no-brainer: underfunding, understaffing and under-equipping of every aspect of health and social care needs for decades - which the pandemic aggravated (apparently Kendall hasn't heard of "long Covid"). But investing in the NHS, preventive care, elderly social care and proper centres of excellence to treat the mentally ill is not on the "growth" agenda!

    Kendall had to admit the collapsed NHS is a factor in the increase in those on sickness benefit, but she thinks NHS cuts will fix this! Like the abolition of NHS England! Will its 10,000 redundant staff be redeployed elsewhere in the NHS (where there are 120,000 vacancies), or are they meant to increase the ranks of benefit claimants?

    Kendall's policies have nothing to do with fixing a "broken welfare system". She gave herself away when she claimed that youth on disability benefit were "taking the mickey". Indeed, she's playing to an imaginary gallery of the misinformed to justify her choice: that is, to make the working class - and its most vulnerable members - pay for the mess the government finds itself in. The working class cannot allow her to get away with this.