‘Labour has made me feel like a scrounger’: disabled people urge welfare cuts rethink | Welfare

Ministers are facing a backlash over planned disability welfare changes, but Rachel Reeves on Thursday resisted calls to abandon the cuts.

After ruling out a U-turn, pressure is building on the UK chancellor to tweak qualification rules to protect many disabled people from being stripped of their benefits. On Thursday, she said the government was “reviewing the criteria”, but ministers are yet to release details.

This week, the Guardian revealed that ministers were to offer mutinous Labour MPs an olive branch to help avert a major rebellion over the plans.

Under the Pip plans, which will introduce a “four-point rule”, claimants would not qualify unless they score a minimum of four points on a single daily living activity. Assessments score the difficulty from 0 to 12 that people…