Rachel Millington
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Rachel Millington
@rachmillington.bsky.social
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Comms & Engagement Director @contactfamilies.bsky.social
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Reposted by Rachel Millington
contactfamilies.bsky.social
Our response to the Spring statement: contact.org.uk/about-contac...
Contact responds to the government’s Spring Statement
The Chancellor Rachel Reeves set out further cuts to benefits today, as part of the government’s Spring Statement.
contact.org.uk
March 26, 2025 at 4:13 PM
Reposted by Rachel Millington
francesryan.bsky.social
Benefit cuts with a red rosette are in many ways no different than those stained in blue. Joints still throb when the heating has to be switched off in winter. Stomachs still pang with hunger when there is only a biscuit for tea. And yet cuts signed off by a Labour Chancellor are in a sense particularly brutal. They come with a tinge, not just of fear, but despair and betrayal. The feeling that if this is life under the “good guys”, there really is no hope that anything will get better. Politicians, it turns out, really are all the same. That is the sort of loss that can’t be measured by a Treasury spreadsheet. It is also one that - once lost - is deeply hard to get back.
March 26, 2025 at 2:57 PM
rachmillington.bsky.social
I cannot see the logic of these cuts. If an unpaid carer has to seek (paid) work, what is the cost to the state of providing that care instead?
katieschmuecker.bsky.social Katie Schmuecker @katieschmuecker.bsky.social · Mar 26
Some families with a disabled adult stand to lose over £12,000 per year by 2029/30 as a result of the Government's disability benefit cuts.

Hardship being deepened by rebuilding the nations finances on the backs of disabled people

And polling suggests the public know it.
Chart showing losses for a family where one person cares for another - monthly after housing costs income would be £1,036 per month less than the equivalent family now. That is 55% of their after housing costs income. In 2029/30 they would gain £12 from the higher basic rate of Universal Credit, but lose £472 from LCWRA change, lose £225 from the carers element change and lose £357 from PIP change.
March 26, 2025 at 11:15 AM
rachmillington.bsky.social
This is a great read: 'A person’s degree of disablement is socially constructed... The increased need for health and disability benefits is symptomatic of failures in the NHS, housing, food prices, wages, public transport and other infrastructure, among other things.'
lrb.co.uk London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · Mar 25
‘Tories will always make jibes across the House about Labour being fiscally irresponsible; you cannot immiserate a nation to stop someone from teasing you in a debating chamber.’

Arianne Shahvisi on the benefit cuts, from the blog: www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/ma...
Arianne Shahvisi | A Labour Thing to Do
The anthropologist Margaret Mead was just over five feet tall and had to stand on a suitcase to be seen above the...
www.lrb.co.uk
March 25, 2025 at 2:23 PM