Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill

Ayoub Khan Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Ayoub Khan (Birmingham Perry Barr) (Ind)]

This Government’s Bill is not just flawed, but morally indefensible. From the outset, we need to be honest about what this Bill represents. It is not a reform; it is a calculated assault on some of the most marginalised people in our society—people with disabilities, people with complex mental health conditions and people already struggling under the weight of austerity and neglect. This Bill continues a pattern we have seen too many times, with cuts dressed up as reform and cruelty wrapped in the language of efficiency. The Department’s own assessment confirms the truth: 150,000 people will be pushed into poverty, approximately 20,000 of them children, if the Bill passes. That is not a side effect but the outcome, and the Government know it.

This Bill targets those with fluctuating, invisible or mental health conditions—the very people who already face systemic injustice. It imposes narrow functional descriptors that do not reflect the real-world barriers people face. It punishes people not for being unwilling to work, but for not fitting neatly into bureaucratic tick boxes. Worse still, there has been no meaningful consultation with disabled people or carers, and no engagement with those who live this reality every single day. The Government are making policy about disabled people without disabled people. That is not just neglect; it is offensive. The evidence is clear: the Government are looking to make savings by depriving thousands of their means to live while telling them that the planned changes will empower them.

According to research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, one in five people in receipt of PIP are already in paid employment and working to the limits that their condition allows. Of those, 60% will lose their PIP. These people are already in work. What more do the Government want? Why are they punishing them? In my constituency of Birmingham Perry Barr, 9,000 people rely on this vital payment, but nearly 4,000 are set to lose out entirely, including 630 people currently in work. What do the Government say to my constituents who will lose the income required to live with their condition? What do they say to the millions of families who will have to tighten their purse strings so they can pay for the basic needs of loved ones?

[Deirdre Costigan]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Ayoub Khan]

Worse still, just a year ago, when this Labour Government came to power, the people were promised change. The Prime Minister said on the campaign trail that those with the broadest shoulders should pay their fair share, yet only one year in this Government are stripping income from those who are most in need by telling disabled people that they are not impaired enough to earn state support.

[Deirdre Costigan]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Ayoub Khan]

This is nothing short of shameful, and if the Bill passes, it will be a national disgrace. The welfare state was built on the principles of solidarity, dignity and security, and this Bill tramples on those values. It will strip away independence, force people into deeper hardship and leave many with no safety net at all.

[Deirdre Costigan]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. I just make the point to the hon. Member that the hon. Gentleman is clearly not going to give way, which is in his gift.

[Ayoub Khan]

I say to the Ministers and hon. Members who claim that these changes are needed to preserve the welfare state that the welfare state was built on the idea that everyone would receive state support for things that were out of their control, no matter what. Passing this Bill will not preserve the welfare state but dismantle it, and I urge every Member of this House to reject it. We can and must do better than this. The people we represent deserve far better.