A breast cancer patient challenged Reform UK’s London mayoral candidate Laila Cunningham over her party’s proposed welfare shake-up, billed as the biggest for a generation. The confrontation took place live on LBC Radio, where the patient, Elizabeth from Haringey, north London, questioned the impact of the cuts on her family.
Reform's £50 billion welfare overhaul
Nigel Farage and the party’s economic spokesman Robert Jenrick published a 52-page document outlining plans to slash Britain’s benefits bill by £50 billion. The proposals include replacing the Personal Independence Payments (Pip) system for working-age people, which would see 2.89 million people have their disability payments removed or altered.
Instead of Pip and the Universal Credit health element, a Health Security Allowance system would be introduced, with the most “severe, enduring and high-risk cases” continuing to receive cash support. People with lesser disabilities might get support through a new council-run scheme.
Patient's emotional plea
Elizabeth, who said she is a cancer patient working part time, described her situation: “I'm 57 years old. I've got a palliative care husband. 15 different disabilities. He worked for HMRC...kicked out 10 years ago. Get rid of his Pip. No trips to hospital. He's got liver failure. He's blind. He's epileptic. I can't even get a council property, despite having the over-alloted points.”
She asked why she was “supposed to vote for Reform,” adding: “What’s Reform going to do to for me. Nothing.”
Ms Cunningham, a mother of seven, responded: “Elizabeth, I hear you. and we generally care about the people in vulnerable positions like you. It's why we got into politics, and and it's not about cutting benefits from people who actually need it. It's about telling those who could work that they should work to protect exactly the benefits for the vulnerable that need it.”
Other proposed changes and political reaction
Reform also proposes reintroducing the two-child benefit cap, which Labour had lifted. To stop people turning to benefits or to get them back into work, an extra £1.85 billion a year would be spent on interventions such as cognitive behavioural therapy, physiotherapy, and employment support. Long-term benefits claimants would be made to clean up their local high street or parks, or face being stripped of their benefits.
Foreign nationals would be banned from claiming almost all types of benefits in the UK, including EU citizens, which could affect many people in London. Reform would also cut employers’ national insurance rates to support people on long-term sick leave being brought back into work. Employees would stay on their employer’s books in their first two years of being signed off as sick, with payments based on welfare rates, Mr Jenrick said.
Mr Jenrick, a former Cabinet minister who defected from the Tories, said: “There are 6.6 million working-age people in the UK claiming out of work benefits. Among their number are many who can work, who should work, but have chosen not to, and the system has allowed that to persist. These people are really taking advantage of their fellow citizens, their friends, their neighbours, their community.”
Labour slammed Reform’s plans as “fantasy economics” which would “strip support” from disabled people and push the costs of employing people with sickness or a disability onto companies. Shadow Chancellor Sir Mel Stride added: “Reform continue to flip flop like they did on the two-child benefit cap, and their fantasy numbers are simply not plausible.” Green party deputy leader Mothin Ali accused the other main parties of seeking to “outdo each other when it comes to who can be the most xenophobic, who can punch down the hardest to the most vulnerable in our country, and who can cut the most support from disabled people”.
