Reform’s proposed welfare benefit cuts would breach UK’s human rights commitments, Amnesty International warns

Amnesty International has warned that Reform’s plan to cut benefits for disabled people and ban foreign nationals, including EU citizens with settled status, from accessing most benefits would breach the UK’s human rights commitments.

Reform’s finance spokesperson, Robert Jenrick, set out the proposals in an article for the Telegraph yesterday.

Reform has said that if it won power it would scrap Personal Independence Payments (PIP) and the health element of Universal Credit, and replace it with a “health security allowance”, a single, regularly reviewed payment.

Jenrick also said that Reform will ban foreign-born households from claiming universal credit, housing benefit, pension credit, jobseeker’s allowance, child benefit, free childcare, free school meals or disability benefits.

Jenrick claimed paying benefits to non-British people was “plain immoral”, even though many would have paid into the tax system through working.

He also wrote in the Telegraph over the weekend that the amount spent on disability benefits was “not generosity … it is suicidal empathy”.

Amnesty said that it was “grotesque” to call providing disabled people with benefits “suicidal empathy”.

Reform has claimed that the cuts to PIP would save £21 billion a year, while barring foreign nationals from claiming benefits would save £20 billion a year. The party has said its wider package of cuts will save £50 billion.

Responding to Reform UK’s £50 billion proposed cuts to benefits, Jen Clark, Amnesty International UK’s Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Director, said: “Cutting support for people with disabilities and people out of work isn’t welfare reform – it’s a rollback of rights the UK has committed to protecting.

“Calling that ‘suicidal empathy’ is grotesque. Pip isn’t generosity, it’s what lets people eat, pay for the equipment they need to stay alive, live with dignity and take part in society – and taking it away doesn’t save money, it shifts the cost onto people’s health, sometimes their lives.

“The same goes for people permitted to make this country their home. The minority who claim social security do so on the same basis as other taxpayers. Stripping their benefits isn’t fairness, it’s scapegoating – and it’s built on the same premise: that some people’s rights matter less than others.

“That premise is wrong, and it’s not just wrong, it’s a breach of the UK’s human rights commitments. The right to an adequate standard of living isn’t a policy choice, it’s a legal obligation – and Reform’s plans would put the UK in breach of it.

“You don’t fix a welfare system by punishing the people who need it most.”

Pro-EU campaign group Best for Britain has told The Guardian that denying benefits to those with indefinite leave to remain would tear up Britain’s EU withdrawal agreement.

Jenrick has confirmed that Reform’s proposal would require renegotiating the UK’s Brexit deal with the EU, potentially meaning that British people living in the EU could lose equivalent rights.

Commenting on Reform’s plans, Mothin Ali, Green Party Deputy Leader, said: “Once again, the establishment parties are all trying 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.

“It is cowardly to take from the most defenceless when we should be taxing the super wealthy including those who are in the privileged position of accepting £5m donations.”

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward