A senior cabinet minister has said the number of people signing on to personal independent payments (Pip) is growing at the equivalent of a city the size of Leicester every year as he defended plans to cut the disability benefit in the face of a growing rebellion among Labour MPs.
Pat McFadden, the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the government would “keep talking to people” after more than 100 Labour MPs signed up to a Commons bid to stop reforms to Pip.
Pip was introduced by the coalition government in 2013 and is designed to help working-age people 16 and over with the extra costs of living with a health condition or a disability. It is available in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Labour government wants to tighten the eligibility for Pip as part of a wider package of changes aimed at saving £5bn a year.
An amendment put forward to the government’s welfare bill that declines to pass the government’s welfare changes and calls for a pause has been signed by more than 100 Labour MPs.
McFadden told the Today programme: “We will keep talking to people between now and the vote, but there is no escaping the need for reform of the welfare system.”
He went on: “We’re in the middle of a decade which is set to see the number of people on long-term sickness and disability benefits double over the course of the decade.
“A thousand people a day go on to Pip (personal independence payment) – that’s a city the size of, for example, Leicester – year after year after year.
“Welfare reform is not an easy issue, and to govern is sometimes to have to grasp issues that aren’t easy.”
Rebel MPs aim to pass a so-called reasoned amendment, which halts the passage of a bill. It means the welfare bill would not pass its second reading, and says that provisions “have not been subject to a formal consultation with disabled people, or co-produced with them, or their carers”.
The amendment would need to be selected by the speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, and gain the support of opposition parties to pass, and there is no guarantee of either. But the symbolism of so many MPs signing the amendment would make taking the bill forward problematic for Keir Starmer.
Ministers have argued that dropping, or even watering down, the welfare plans could leave a multibillion-pound black hole in Rachel Reeves’s attempts to balance the country’s books.