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Labour ’s new Work and Pensions Secretary has confirmed our fears – sick and disabled people in the UK are to face another wave of hostile welfare cuts – dressed up as “help”.

Speaking to the BBC just two weeks after taking up his new post, Pat McFadden insisted that welfare reform “must happen” and refused to rule out measures that would hit the most vulnerable.

That’s despite overwhelming evidence — much of which I laid out in an open letter to ministers back in April — that the last time such policies were rolled out, they led directly to poverty, destitution, and death.

What McFadden said

In a BBC interview, McFadden insisted that the benefits system was “unhealthy” and needed fundamental change.

He told the BBC:

• “Welfare reform is really important. At the moment this system is unhealthy for people and in the long run is pushing up the benefits bill because we’re not getting the help to people who could work.”

• He would not rule out tightening up eligibility for Universal Credit, including removing entitlement to health-related payments from people under the age of 22.

• He said the system created a “binary divide” between those declared fit for work and those not fit for work, calling it “unhealthy”.

• He claimed thousands of people on sickness benefits had been “signed off, paid benefits and untouched for years” — which he described as “wrong”.

• He announced that 1,000 new “Pathways to Work” coaches were being placed in Job Centres to encourage people back into employment.

If this all sounds familiar, it should. Every single talking point is recycled straight from the Conservative governments of the 14 years up to July 2024.

The script is the same: paint the system as broken, suggest claimants have been “written off” when they could be working, promise “help” that is really harassment, and leave the door open for tightening eligibility and cutting payments.

What he did not say

What McFadden conspicuously failed to mention was the evidence that demolishes his claims.

In April, I published an open letter to ministers setting out the facts. These are not opinions — they come from coroners, parliamentary inquiries, United Nations investigators, peer-reviewed medical studies, and even the Department for Work and Pensions’ own data. They show that:

• More than 100,000 sick and disabled people died within six months of being declared “fit for work” between 2011 and 2019.

• At least 590 additional suicides were directly linked to welfare reforms, according to an academic study published in The Lancet.

• The fraud rate for disability benefits is negligible. Personal Independence Payment (PIP) was literally fraud-free before Conservative changes. Even now, the official rate is only 0.4 per cent. Out of £9.7 billion lost to fraud and error in 2023–24, just £190 million came from disability benefits — a mere 2.35 per cent.

• The Resolution Foundation has calculated that the cuts that  were planned by Labour earlier this year would have pushed 250,000 more people into poverty and would have stripped as much as £10,300 a year from disabled households.

• Previous “help into work” schemes caused a measurable rise in mental health problems, antidepressant prescribing, emergency NHS demand — and hundreds of suicides.

None of this was addressed by McFadden.

None of it was even acknowledged.

The repetition of Tory cruelty

We’ve been here before.

Under Tory ministers like Iain Duncan Smith and Esther McVey, the Department for Work and Pensions defended sanctions, reassessments, and hostile rules that pushed people deeper into illness, despair and poverty.

Those policies were condemned by the United Nations as “grave and systematic violations” of disabled people’s rights.

Coroners repeatedly warned ministers that DWP practices were driving claimants to suicide.

But the rhetoric rolled on: claimants were “written off”, the system was “unfair”, “support” would be restructured to “help people into work”.

Now McFadden is dusting off the same script.

The names have changed, but the message is the same: blame disabled people for the cost of living crisis, frame them as a burden on the Treasury, and hold them responsible for a problem they did not cause.

It is no coincidence that this rhetoric comes just weeks before Chancellor Rachel Reeves must present a Budget that meets her self-imposed borrowing rules.

Analysts say she needs to find between £20 billion and £30 billion through tax rises or spending cuts.

The ground is being prepared to once again make disabled people pay that bill.

The fake narrative of “help”

McFadden tried to sweeten the message by meeting with four women on sickness benefits, who described traumatic experiences — domestic violence, surgery, marital collapse — that had left them too ill to work.

They praised individual work coaches who had helped them feel more confident.

But here is the catch: these women had engaged voluntarily.

McFadden’s entire framing suggested that such support should become the norm — and those who did not engage could see their benefits targeted.

This is exactly how previous Conservative policies worked. They started with promises of “voluntary” support, then shifted into compulsory reassessments, threats of sanctions, and punishments.

The claim that people have been “signed off and untouched for years” is simply false.

Disabled claimants undergo constant reassessment — often intrusive, humiliating, and medically inaccurate.

The DWP itself has been caught ignoring medical evidence, losing paperwork, and misclassifying people with severe conditions.

McFadden is not talking about genuine help.

He is laying the groundwork for renewed oppression.

The deadly consequences

We do not have to speculate about what happens when these policies are implemented. We have lived through them already.

• Mark Wood starved to death after being declared fit for work.

• Michael O’Sullivan died by suicide after his ESA was cut; the coroner blamed the DWP directly.

• Jodey Whiting killed herself after she was sanctioned for missing a work capability assessment due to ill health.

• Errol Graham starved to death after his ESA was cut off. The DWP never checked on him.

These are not isolated tragedies. They are part of a documented pattern of harm created by the policies Labour is now reviving.

He cannot say he was not told

McFadden, Reeves, Starmer and the rest of Labour’s leadership cannot plead ignorance. The evidence is public, overwhelming, and undeniable.

• UN investigators called it a human rights violation.

• Peer-reviewed research linked welfare reforms directly to hundreds of suicides.

• DWP mortality data showed tens of thousands of deaths linked to “fit for work” decisions.

• Disability charities, doctors, coroners, and even some MPs have sounded the alarm repeatedly.

The facts are there.

But Labour ministers choose to ignore them, preferring instead to parrot the same old lies about “reform”, “fairness”, and “help”.

What needs to happen

If this government is serious about protecting lives, it must:

• Halt all plans to cut health- and disability-related benefits.
• Publish all mortality statistics on claimants from 2011 to today.
• Establish a public inquiry into deaths linked to welfare reform.
• Commit to working with disabled people’s organisations before making changes.

Anything less is not reform — it is cruelty.

A warning to readers

Pat McFadden has signalled the beginning of another assault on sick and disabled people, using the same fake narratives we heard under the Tories.

We know where this leads.

We have seen the bodies.

We have read the coroners’ reports.

We have listened to the UN investigators.

This is not just a policy debate.

It is a matter of life and death.

The Labour Party cannot say it has not been told.

It has been told, over and over again.

It is being told again now.

In the days of the former Conservative government, Labour MPs did the telling.

If the now-Labour government presses ahead regardless, then the responsibility for the suffering and deaths that follow will lie with Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, Pat McFadden, and every Labour MP who refuses to stop them.

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