PIP changes have NOT been scrapped: The Welfare Bill will still kill disabled people

The Labour government’s Welfare Reform Bill has passed its first major hurdle in Parliament, but not with honour, not with unity, and certainly not with clarity. What we witnessed in the House of Commons on Tuesday evening was not policymaking. It was a panicked, last-ditch scramble to avoid a public mutiny, cobbled together through late-night emails, contradictory statements, and backroom deals.

The bill passed by 335 votes to 260, following two emergency U-turns in less than two hours. Labour ministers, clearly fearing a humiliating defeat, gutted the most controversial sections of the legislation moments before the final vote.

Gone (for now) are the draconian changes to Personal Independence Payments (PIP). Gone are the harsher eligibility rules that would have cast countless disabled people into a bureaucratic limbo. And gone too, it seems, is any remaining illusion of coherence or moral leadership in Keir Starmer’s government.

Cuts by Any Other Name

Let’s be clear: this is still a welfare cuts bill, dressed in the language of reform.

For months, disabled people’s organisations, charities, MPs and campaigners warned that the bill would push thousands into poverty, remove vital support, and return us to a punitive, Victorian-style system of conditional welfare.

Starmer’s response? Delay. Denial. Then deception.

Only after over 120 Labour MPs threatened to revolt did ministers agree to delay the changes to PIP until after an ongoing review concludes. Even then, it took a second U-turn to confirm they’d remove the new rules from the bill entirely, and even that promise remains suspiciously vague.

The government’s excuse? “We need to get people back into work.”

But let’s tell the truth, they won’t: this was never about helping people into work, it was about cutting £5 billion from the benefits bill.

And with those savings now in question, Chancellor Rachel Reeves is under pressure. The Institute for Fiscal Studies is already warning tax rises may be next, while casting doubt on the government’s entire fiscal strategy.

A Shambolic Spectacle of Power Over Principle

The bill’s journey has been defined not by principle but by panic. Labour MPs were left voting on a bill they no longer understood. Paula Barker called it “the most unedifying spectacle I’ve ever seen.” Another MP joked they had popped out for a banana and returned to find the whole thing changed again.

This isn’t governance. This is a government making it up as it goes along, so long as it doesn’t look weak, even when the weakness is plain for all to see.

Labour MP Mary Kelly Foy summed up the confusion: “I’m even more unclear on what I’m voting on.”

After the vote had taken place, Labour’s Ian Lavery told the BBC: “This is an absolute shambles. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Sir Stephen Timms told MPs: “Others across the House during this debate have raised concerns that the changes to Pip are coming ahead of the conclusions of the review of the assessment that I will be leading.

Both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives criticised the process and said the bill should be pulled entirely.

And that confusion suits the leadership just fine.

When policies are half-scrapped, rewritten in the margins, and voted on in a state of chaos, accountability dies in the fog.

How did your MP vote on Labour’s welfare bill?

Backbench Resistance: A Party at War With Itself

Despite the frantic climbdowns, 44 Labour MPs still voted for an amendment to block the bill entirely, standing firm against what Richard Burgon rightly described as “Dickensian cuts.”

And the rebellion may not be over.

Even those who reluctantly backed the bill warned that trust in the leadership is threadbare. “If the government doesn’t deliver on its promises on PIP and Universal Credit, this bill could still be defeated,” Burgon warned. “A week is a long time in politics.”

Indeed. But even one day living under poverty cuts is too long for those who rely on this system to survive.

Starmer’s Authority in Tatters

For a man obsessed with “discipline,” Keir Starmer now finds himself presiding over a parliamentary group that no longer trusts him, no longer fears him, and no longer believes in the project.

The same goes for Liz Kendall, the Work and Pensions Secretary, whose clumsy rollout of the bill has damaged her credibility beyond repair. Her remarks after the vote, “I wish we had got to this point in a different way”, are as hollow as the bill she tried to push through.

Even her line about “really important reforms” rings false when those “reforms” have just been ripped from the bill like infected teeth.

Authoritarianism in a Neat Blue Tie

What this bill shows, more than anything, is how authoritarianism can be wrapped in civility, cloaked in policy language, and sold as tough compassion.

But the deeper truth is even darker.

It is convenient for those in power, for Starmer, for Kendall, for Reeves, to silence those who speak out, to discredit dissent, and to destroy heroes before they can rise.

After all, in modern politics, there are no heroes anymore, and we will not be allowed heroes to rise.

Instead, we are handed managers. Technocrats. Enforcers of austerity with softer accents. The same cruelty, just without the shouting.

But working-class people don’t need more managers. We need fighters.

This Is Not Over

Let no one mistake these late-night concessions for a change of heart. They are a change of tactic, nothing more.

The machinery that once drove disabled people to despair under Conservative rule hasn’t been dismantled; it’s been inherited, polished, and accelerated by Starmer’s Labour Party…

The same agenda remains: squeeze the poor, punish the sick, slash welfare under the banner of responsibility.

This bill still stinks.
This process still reeks.
And the Labour leadership, slick, centralised, and spineless, has shown its true face.

It may not have lost the vote, but it has lost the trust of those who put them there to serve.

Paul Knaggs