Welfare U-turn: is Keir in control?
Coffee House Shots
The Spectator
4.4 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 27 June 2025
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Keir Starmer has performed a screeching about-turn on his flagship welfare reforms, all in the hope of quelling the rebellion from more than 120 MPs who have been promised ‘massive concessions’ over concerns about disability benefits.
These include moderating the bill to make it easier for people with multiple impairments to claim disability benefits, and offering to protect Personal Independence Payments (PIP) for all existing claimants for ever – to ensure there would be no detriment from the reforms for existing claimants, a key concern of the welfare rebels. But new claimants will be affected, as ministers desperately try to stop ever-spiralling disability and sickness welfare spending climbing to £100 billion by 2030. It means another big U-turn for Starmer – and another hole in the Treasury’s finances. Early estimates suggest that the welfare bill climbdown could cost £2 billion: money which Rachel Reeves will now have to find elsewhere. Can Starmer recover?
Oscar Edmondson speaks to James Heale and Luke Tryl, director of More in Common.
Produced by Oscar Edmondson.
Transcript
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| 0:41.2 | Hello. all to discuss your situation. And remember, investment involves risk. Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. I'm Oskedvinson, |
| 0:46.8 | and I'm joined today by James Heel and Luke Trill. Now, Kier-Starmer has performed a screeching |
| 0:51.8 | about turn on his flagship welfare reforms, all in the |
| 0:55.6 | hope of calling the rebellion of over 120 MPs who've been promised massive concessions over their |
| 1:01.4 | concerns about disability benefits. James, to start with, what do we know about these concessions? |
| 1:07.6 | Well, the first point to make is, you know, I tend to despise the phrase inevitable, |
| 1:11.8 | inevitabilities in politics, but this really was inevitable. This was coming from Monday night when, |
| 1:16.0 | you know, with all the successful plomb of a guerrilla vicarbon operation, the soft left of the |
| 1:20.7 | Labour Party, got 108 names on the amendment, which then went up to 126 over the course of the |
| 1:24.7 | week. And yes, inevitably yesterday, Kirstam, bowed to the inevitable, the course of the week. And yes, inevitably yesterday Kirstama bowed to the inevitable. |
| 1:29.1 | The knees leaked out around 8 o'clock in the evening. And what we know thus far is that there's |
| 1:34.2 | going to be concessions on terms of who can claim benefits already. So personal independence payments. |
| 1:39.6 | Those who claim these disability payments already will be exempt from the changes that are brought in. |
| 1:43.6 | But those who are going to future come on the benefits down the line are going to be, |
| 1:48.1 | have it cut supply to them. And the whole point of this is to deter the rising costs of the |
| 1:52.8 | welfare bill with $100 billion in disability and sickness benefits expected by 2030. So that's |
| 1:59.1 | the key point. The key thing, of course, is going to be immediately, |
| 2:01.7 | how does Rachel Reeves make those savings? With $1.5 billion of winter fuel already, |
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