Congress motions

Motion

Motion title

Composite: Solidarity with disabled benefit claimants—welfare not warfare

Session

2024-2025

Meeting link

Annual Congress

Meeting date

26 May 2025

Status

Not taken - remitted to NEC

Motion

54

Motion text

Congress notes:
1. Government plans to remove disability benefits while shifting billions into
spending on war, announced in March 2025
2. At least one hundred disabled people have died as a direct result of being
refused disability benefits.
Congress believes the cuts are unacceptable because:
a. the Government seeks to comply with its fiscal targets by taking money from
those who are least able to pay;
b. disability benefit payments fall far below real additional costs of disability
c. these cuts will rob disabled people of their dignity, increase poverty and
disadvantage amongst our most vulnerable citizens, drive hundreds of
thousands into poverty and further endanger the lives of disabled people.
d. benefit cuts will not help disabled people into work. Many who will lose
benefit are working & the under employment of disabled people is not a
choice made by disabled people but rather caused by employer
discrimination and a lack of suitably resourced employment opportunities
e. disabled people working, or aspiring to work, in post-sixteen education will
experience additional barriers to employment.
Congress opposes the major cuts to social security support for disabled people
announced in the Chancellor’s spring statement in March 2025.
Congress calls on NEC to affiliate, resource and publicise protests by DPAC, Black
Triangle, other disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) and other trades unions,
and to use all means available to oppose these cuts together.

Proposing body

University of Kent, Southern regional committee

Amended

No

Allocated to

Equality committee

Notes