Read the headline again: the Tories are planning to end benefits for disabled people.

They are launching a new consultation on proposed “reforms” to the Personal Independence Payment that provides disabled people with the extra cash they need in order to have a similar standard of living to able-bodied people.

The proposals seem to be a very clear attempt to cut payments in order to save money. Logically, this suggests more tax cuts in the run-up to the general election because Tories like victimising people who can’t attack them back in order to help those who can; their form of government is akin to watching victims of bullying trying to avoid getting spanked.

Details of what’s being planned are in a BBC article which is so badly written you have to work to piece it all together. They include:

• Stopping regular PIP payments – despite the fact that research from disability equality charity Scope suggests that households with at least one disabled adult or child face an estimated average extra cost of £975 a month to have the same standard of living as non-disabled households.
• Changing eligibility criteria to make it harder to claim the benefit, for example by ruling that current descriptors including the need for aids and appliances are not good indicators of extra living costs.
• Offering grants for projects like home adaptations instead of PIP, and reimbursing claimants who provide receipts for purchases of aids, appliances or services.

According to the article, the Tory government is saying the benefits bill is rising at an “unsustainable rate” because the number of people claiming for mental ill-health has soared.

But this is based on expectations only; spending on PIP was expected to grow by 52 per cent by 2027/28 (from 2023/24 levels) to £32.8 billion.

The number of monthly new claimants in England and Wales, where the main condition was anxiety and depression, has soared from an average of 2,200 a month in 2019 to 5,300 a month last year, according to the BBC article.

But this is because of situations created by the Tory government – and because the Tory government has cut the services that were available to support people with mental ill-health and get them back into the workplace in a sustainable way.

To listen to Tory Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride, you’d think the plan was to turn the UK into a land of milk and honey for people with disabilities, when the facts more accurately suggest that the Tories are planning to end benefits for disabled people:

Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said: “We’re making the biggest welfare reforms in a generation – protecting those most in need while supporting thousands into work as we modernise our benefit system to reflect the changing health landscape.”

What a shame it’s a pack of lies. The plan is to attack those most in need, with proposals that will most likely lead to their deaths if put into operation.

There is no support to get people back into work. The Tories are axing it from November.

And at the moment there seems to be no way of taking part in the consultation. At the time of writing, if you look it up on a search engine the suggested link to the government website takes you to a page where it isn’t mentioned at all.