Open Letter: Disability Benefits Cuts Are Creating a Public Health Emergency

Date: June 2025

To: Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Liz Kendall, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, and Members of Parliament,


As frontline clinicians, we issue an urgent public warning: the Government’s proposed £4.5 billion in cuts to disability benefits, outlined in the Pathways to Work Green Paper, will not only plunge hundreds of thousands into poverty — they are already devastating lives in our clinics, emergency rooms, and communities. We urge immediate national attention to this crisis.


The figures are damning. Your own impact assessment shows that 3.2 million families will lose an average of £1,720 annually. PIP claimants face an average reduction of £4,500 per year, and 50,000 children are projected to be plunged into poverty. The most vulnerable households — those receiving combinations of PIP, Universal Credit health elements, and Carer’s Allowance — face staggering losses of over £12,000 each year.


These are not individuals with mild or moderate health conditions. PIP and UC assessments already require extensive documentation and rigorous medical scrutiny. Freedom of Information requests reveal that PIP cuts will not only strip benefits from 46% of current claimants (2,891,000 people), but also from 13% (1,608,000 people) of those assessed by health professionals as having the most severe disabilities.


Poverty is poisonous for health. Life already costs significantly more for disabled people - Scope estimates an extra £1,010 in monthly outgoings due to disability-related expenses. At the same time, 30% of disabled people are living in poverty, and 69% of those referred to food banks are disabled. These benefits are not luxuries — they prevent cold homes, missed meals, and untreated illness.


We are already witnessing the severe mental health consequences of these proposals. Since the Green Paper's announcement, patients with serious mental illness — including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and complex trauma — have presented with heightened anxiety, symptom escalation, and increases in both self-harm and suicidal ideation.


One claimant, who lives with unstable borderline personality disorder and bipolar disorder, told Benefits & Work: “I struggle understanding the world and understanding what people mean... I tried volunteering and it sent me off the deep end. After being unable to volunteer and hearing about the PIP changes, I tried to kill myself with tablets. Now I've got permanent stomach damage.”


Another, diagnosed with schizophrenia, said: “This will be catastrophic for me. I will lose all sense of independence. My mum is my only carer, and as she gets older, I’m aware that once she is gone I will be all alone... I feel suicidal at the prospect of these changes, and my symptoms are worsening.”


These are not isolated accounts, nor is the risk limited to those with mental health conditions. Stress is not a side effect — it is a known accelerator of physical and mental deterioration across nearly all disabilities. These testimonies are early warning signs of a broader humanitarian emergency.


Meanwhile, carers — the unsung backbone of our healthcare system — are being pushed to breaking point. Already disproportionately affected by mental health challenges, hundreds of thousands now face losing Carer’s Allowance if the person they support no longer qualifies for PIP. One woman told Benefits & Work: “If I lose my disability benefits, my mother loses her Carer’s Allowance. Then she’ll have to place me in a nursing home.”


We are hearing increasing reports of carers skipping meals, medications, and their own healthcare in order to provide essential support. Stripping support simultaneously from disabled people and their carers is not just morally indefensible — it is economically reckless. Carers save the UK taxpayer an estimated £162 billion annually by reducing the need for formal care. More generally, every £1 spent on disability benefits returns £1.48 in reduced hospital admissions, decreased social care needs, and other cost savings — none of which have been factored into the Office for Budget Responsibility’s models. These cuts are short-sighted, dangerous, and built on flawed economics.


We further reject the claim that these cuts will “incentivise work” or produce “behavioural change.” Some people are too disabled to work — either permanently or temporarily. Even the government's own figures show that 13% of those currently on enhanced PIP for severe disability would be left with no support at all. Decades of research tells us poverty does not motivate — it crushes hope and erodes both physical and mental health. And many of the 1 in 6 PIP claimants who are in work won’t be able to do so deprived of what is quite literally a personal independence payment, trapping people into impoverished lives.


Healthcare professionals, disabled people, and carers should have been consulted. Instead, sweeping reforms affecting some of the most vulnerable people in the UK were announced without transparency, safeguarding, or democratic accountability. The most dangerous elements of the Green Paper — including the proposed rule requiring claimants to score four or more points in a single PIP activity — have been excluded from the consultation and left to be decided behind closed doors.


We are deeply alarmed that safeguarding guidance will not be published until autumn — after the expected vote in Parliament. This makes meaningful scrutiny impossible. It is also entirely incompatible with basic safeguarding principles. Changes to LCWRA criteria and the absence of exemptions for severe and enduring conditions are ethically indefensible.


We are already seeing the consequences: clinicians are reporting increased safeguarding concerns, worsening health outcomes, and growing despair among claimants. This is not a theoretical risk — it is unfolding now.


We are therefore taking the unprecedented step of issuing this open letter. We warn you now: if enacted, these changes will trigger a wave of preventable health crises, family breakdowns, and avoidable deaths.


We all want a benefits system that is effective, transparent, and empowering. We share your goal of enabling disabled people to live full and meaningful lives, including through work where appropriate. But these proposals will achieve the opposite. They will deepen health inequalities, institutionalise despair, and leave a legacy that no government should want to bear.


This will be your legacy — or your turning point.


We urge you to withdraw disability benefits cuts immediately, and to ensure that any future reforms are co-designed with disabled people, carers, and clinicians — rooted not in austerity, but in dignity. The disabled community is already in the later stages of a 'Commission on Social Security'.

Fiscal gains must follow humanity — not drive it off a cliff. The wellbeing of millions depends on your response.

Respectfully,

This open letter has been signed by over 1500 initial signatories across the United Kingdom in its first few days, including healthcare professionals, disabled people, carers, academics, and grassroots organisers standing together. These initial signatories represent the broad consensus that the proposed cuts represent a serious public health concern. Additional signatures continue to be collected - everyone counts. Please sign at the bottom of the form or here. 

Healthcare Professionals

Disabled People, Advocates and Carers

Additional Supporters

Thank you to everyone who has signed and shared this letter so far. Together, our voices can make a difference.

To get further involved in #DisabilityBenefits cuts activism by searching #WelfareNotWarfare on any of your socials.