I will be voting against the government’s plans to cut disability benefits. These are the actions I have taken so far on behalf of constituents:

On hearing initial reports of the government’s plans, I urgently intervened in a debate on March 17 in Parliament to ask whether they had considered the voices of disabled people whilst formulating them. 

The next week, on the day of the Chancellor’s Spring Statement (March 26) I spoke on camera strongly criticising the direction the government was taking and warned of the severe consequences for disabled people.  

Having consulted with disabled constituents, like-minded colleagues, groups representing disabled people, and government whips, I made the decision to vote against the plans. 

I announced this on May 6, calling for the government to drop the cuts. I appeared on the BBC Wales evening news to make my position public and spoke to local press to explain my decision to constituents. 

My comments were widely published, including on the BBC News website, Wales Online (and in the Western Mail), the i Paper, Daily Mail, Wrexham.com, The Leader, County Times, Cambrian News, MyWelshpool and MyNewtown. 

I then spoke in a Westminster Hall Debate on May 7, again calling on the government to drop the cuts, and advocating for wealth taxes as a means of properly funding public services. 

On May 8, I co-signed a letter alongside 41 other MPs calling the plans impossible to support and demanding a change in direction.

Please read below my feelings on the policy in more detail:

This was originally published in the Cambrian News, 7 May 2025, and can be found here.

In recent weeks, I have received correspondence from hundreds of constituents who are deeply alarmed by the government’s plans to cut disability benefits.

In March, the Department for Work and Pensions published a Green Paper outlining these plans.

There are some welcome changes in the Green Paper, including abolishing three-yearly assessments for the most severely disabled, proposals on Unemployment Insurance, a billion pounds for helping people get work, no freeze in PIP, the ruling out of the voucher system the Tories desired and a ‘Right to Try’, allowing disabled people to see how they cope with work without losing their support.

The big picture, however, is that these changes will pull the rug out from under many of my disabled constituents at a time when the poorest and sickest in society face awful pressure on their living standards.

Through changing the points scoring system, there will be a significant cut in the number of people eligible for Personal Independence Payments (PIP). Many who already qualify for PIP will stop receiving it.

I was a secondary school teacher for 20 years and an elected trade union rep since the age of 28. I know that honest work is a source of dignity and pride.

This is true for disabled people as much as anyone else. It is also true that the benefits system helps those who can’t work go about their lives with dignity too.

We do have a responsibility to encourage people back into work when ever-increasing numbers of people drop out of the workforce due to ill health. Mental health problems are the single biggest driver of this rise and represent the largest contingent of PIP recipients too.

Around a quarter of working age people are no longer in work. This needs to be addressed. But the way to address is it not by further penalising the people who need the most help.

There are 275,000 PIP recipients in Wales. That is around one in seven working age people, a higher proportion per head than in England. 7,367 of these are within Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr. Again, we face the sharp end of austerity.

When the richest 10% of people own 57% of the wealth in the UK, further penalising the vulnerable seems patently unjust and fundamentally incompatible with Labour values. As such, I will be voting against these cuts.

There are alternatives available for the government to meet its fiscal rules, not least taxes on extreme wealth, without which we will simply see the yawning gap between the ultra-rich and everybody else continue to widen.

Without taking steps to address this we will be having the same debates in five, ten, fifteen years’ time, as wealth continues to flow away from the state and from ordinary people.

I did not stand to be the MP for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr to make my disabled constituent’s lives harder. That is why I will be voting against the government over these plans.