PIP Changes: Impact on Carer’s Allowance

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Thursday 27th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling) on bringing this important matter before the House. In government, my party supported carers: we increased carer’s allowance by £1,500 and, with the support of the Liberal Democrats, introduced carer’s leave. We are united again today in dismay at what this Government are doing.

The Government had 14 years to prepare their welfare reforms. We had nothing for eight months, and then everything in a rush, because the Chancellor crashed the economy. With growth this year cut in half, inflation rising further, unemployment up, productivity down, debt interest soaring, a record tax burden and 200,000 people being pushed into absolute poverty by the measures taken by this Government, they have had an emergency Budget containing cuts to benefits for disabled people. Perhaps if they were not in such a rush, they would have realised that these crude reforms also impact carers. Some 150,000 people who gave up income to look after a loved one, and who rely on carer’s allowance to make ends meet, are now going to lose it.

The Government are balancing the books on the backs of the people least able to take the weight. That is Labour: making other people pay for the fiasco of their Budget. First they came for the farmers, then for the pensioners, and now it is the carers—the most important people in our society, doing the most important job a human being can do, not for the money but for the love. The least the Government can do is to give them our support. That is what we did in government, so why will they not?

Can the Minister confirm whether carer’s allowance was a deliberate target of the Government’s reforms, or did they not realise the impact of what they were doing to PIP because of the rush they were in? Do they think that taking £500 million from carers while giving above-inflation pay awards to the trade unions is the right priority, and does the Minister share the Chief Secretary to the Treasury’s view that cutting support for carers and disabled people is like taking pocket money from children? Is that what he believes carer’s allowance is—pocket money?

[Sir Stephen Timms]

I suppose the hon. Gentleman has no choice but to attempt to defend his party’s record in government. As I have referred to already, the Conservative party’s plan was to convert PIP into vouchers—that really frightened people who were dependent on that system—and they also wanted to make some big cuts to the work capability assessment, which were ruled out by the courts as unlawful. We announced in the Green Paper that we are going to abandon those cuts. For example, the Conservatives were proposing to remove the mobility descriptor from the work capability assessment on the grounds that people can now work from home, but it is clearly ludicrous to claim that a mobility impairment does not affect a person’s ability to work. I remind the hon. Gentleman that in responding to the Green Paper on behalf of the Opposition, his hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) demanded further cuts, so the outrage he has expressed is a bit inappropriate.

We have a proper plan, set out in the Green Paper. It has been well thought through—as the hon. Gentleman will find if he reads it properly—including a reference to unpaid carers on its very last page. We are well aware of the impact it will have, which is why we are consulting on the transitional arrangements.