Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall has announced changes to the welfare system – including merging some benefits and a plan to scrap the work capability assessment used to claim universal credit. Join our live Q&A on what it means for those who claim.
Tuesday 18 March 2025 16:05, UK
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Our political correspondent Liz Bates and social affairs correspondent Becky Johnson are live and ready to answer your questions.
Hundreds of you have got in touch over the course of the day, and over the next 20 minutes or so, we’re going to try to rattle through as many questions as we can.
They will address a range of topics, including:
Watch live in the stream at the top of this page, and at the link below. We’ll also bring you the answers right here in the Politics Hub.
With the government announcing changes to welfare and benefits today, we’re sure you have lots of questions about the changes and their impacts.
Our political correspondent Liz Bates and social affairs correspondent Becky Johnson will be answering any questions you have from 4pm.
You can submit a question in the box above, and they will get to as many as possible.
You’ll be able to watch in the stream at the top of the page – and our team of live reporters in Westminster will be writing up their answers too.
The softening of the government’s planned benefit cuts may have staved off outright fury on the Labour benches, but there are still grumblings of discontent.
The veteran Labour MP, Jon Trickett, has taken to social media this afternoon to say: “Cutting welfare payments to sick people is wrong morally, fiscally and economically, and it’s cruel.
“We are better than this as a country. I will vote against when the time comes.”
We’ve had some reaction from charities to the government’s welfare reforms – and it is not exactly positive.
Oxfam’s domestic poverty lead Silvia Galandini said in a statement that the plan to slash the welfare bill by £5bn is “another deplorable political choice”.
“It unnecessarily risks pushing more people into poverty and hardship while the ballooning bank balances of the UK’s super-rich once again escape scot-free,” she said.
“While it’s critical to break down barriers to employment for everyone – including people with disabilities and long-term health issues who can and want to be in paid work – this cannot be achieved by further restricting and cutting an already inadequate social security system.”
She called for a 2% tax on people with assets of over £10m, which she said would raise £24bn each year.
Meanwhile, executive director of strategy at disability charity Scope, James Taylor, said today’s announcement “should shame the government to its core”.
“They are choosing to penalise some of the poorest people in our society. Almost half of families in poverty include someone who is disabled,” he said, and went on to say that “life costs more if you are disabled”.
“Ripping £5bn out of the system by 2030 will be a catastrophe for disabled peoples’ living standards and independence,” he continued.
“The government will be picking up the pieces in other parts of the system with pressure on an already overwhelmed NHS and social care, as more disabled people are pushed into poverty.”
Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall has today announced a raft of welfare reforms that she says will save £5bn.
But we’ve not got anything from the government on where those big savings will be made – or which benefits claimants will be impacted.
We are not expecting the details to be published until next week at the spring statement.
So what’s going on?
Our political editor Beth Rigby says the usual order of announcements has been reversed.
Normally, the spring statement would be delivered outlining the expected savings. And then later on, the work and pensions secretary would announce the details of the changes.
Beth says it seems like the government wanted to get the cuts announcement out first before the spring statement.
And Sam Coates, our deputy political editor, hears some people in government know the optics are not great – and blame the Treasury.
This is something the Treasury would deny, he says.
The government’s proposed changes to the welfare system have not impressed the main opposition parties.
Conservative shadow work and pensions secretary Helen Whately MP said they were “too little too late” to bring down the benefits bill.
She said eight months of inaction since the election had cost taxpayers £7bn, though didn’t acknowledge the Tories had plenty of time in government for making the changes they thought necessary.
But she said the budget had made things worse for people’s chances of employment, given the tax rises imposed on businesses.
‘Misery will continue’
The Lib Dems’ work and pensions spokesperson Steve Darling MP said the reforms would achieve nothing while social care is unaddressed.
He criticised Labour’s “lack of urgency” to address the crisis in that sector, having kicked it into the long grass via a review not due to report back for another three years.
“Until that changes, no meaningful drop in the welfare bill will arrive, and the misery that people are suffering will continue,” he said.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has shared his stance on today’s benefits changes.
He says the system is “fundamentally broken” and needs fixing and does not work for businesses or people.
Starmer says that, while the government will “always protect the most vulnerable”, they were not prepared to let millions of people – “especially young people” – who had the potential to work stay “trapped out of work and abandoned by the system”.
Sky News political correspondent Liz Bates is in the central lobby of the Houses of Parliament.
She was listening to this afternoon’s statement on welfare reforms.
Liz says we’ve been expecting changes for “months” – but there’s been “a bit of softening around the edges” after a Labour backlash.
Whether personal independence payments would be frozen was a key test for many in the Labour Party – and was “causing a lot of tension” and even delayed the announcement.
Rather than freezing PIP, Kendall announced it will be harder to get – but Liz says the trouble is not over.
Votes on legislation will be required to enforce the changes announced today, and Liz notes: “We’ll be listening over the next few days and weeks to disability campaigners, to Labour MPs, to see how this lands.
“Could there be a big rebellion in the House of Commons?
“It really depends on how Labour MPs feel about the details of the announcement they’ve seen today.”
Labour’s former shadow chancellor John McDonnell says the changes announced will cause “immense suffering”.
He highlights the changes to personal independence payments, which will make fewer people eligible.
“There are decisions made in this House that stay with you for the rest of your life – this is one of them,” he says.
He asks the work and pensions secretary what independent monitoring will take place to ensure people are protected, and “what threshold of suffering will it take to take an alternative route?”.
Reforms will be ‘properly scrutinised’
Liz Kendall says she takes the changes she’s announced “very seriously”, and will ensure all proposals are “properly scrutinised”.
But she insists the government’s reforms will “improve the lives and life chances of sick and disabled people” – including those who can work, and those who can never work.
Clive Lewis is a Labour MP who is known for being independent of the government and often challenging ministers.
He asks Liz Kendall if she understands the “difficulty” the changes will cause many people.
“This £5bn cut is going to impact them more than I think her department is giving credit for,” he says.
He asks Kendall if her department is able to look his constituents “in the eye” and tell them this is going to work for them.
Kendall says: “I know that I can look my constituents in the eye and say to them, I know that getting more people into better paid jobs is the key to their future success.”
Dr Marie Tidball, who is a disabled Labour MP, says she welcomes the “proactive” approach being taken to help get disabled people back into work.
Kendall says the government will work with disabled people and the groups that represent them to develop pathways to work and employment support.
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