Toynbee Hall’s Response to the 2025 Autumn Statement
The government’s 2025 Autumn Statement offered a recognition of the ongoing cost-of-living crisis and included some positive steps to address it. Yet these sit alongside choices that continue to erode the foundations of a robust social security system capable of responding to that crisis.
One genuinely welcome step was the decision to scrap the harmful two-child limit. Toynbee Hall and its allies had campaigned long and hard to see the end of this irrational policy which has been a major force behind rising child poverty. Here in Tower Hamlets, where Toynbee Hall is based, 15,520 children are currently impacted. This is key as Tower Hamlets has the highest rates of child poverty in the country. Our own research found that the cost of living crisis has resulted in increased stress and fatigue amongst whole social support networks, creating a spin-off emotional support crisis for young people.
But it is important that different elements of the social security system work together rather than cancel each other out. In removing the two-child limit, the government should also have reviewed the benefit cap, since many of the families who stand to gain from the change will still find themselves capped. The benefit cap arbitrarily restricts the total support a household can receive—even when the government’s own eligibility rules indicate they need, and should receive, more.
The benefit cap is just one example of how the government continues to undermine the social security system by framing it as ‘too generous’. This narrative pits different groups against one another in a hierarchy of worthiness — children, Disabled people, pensioners — rather than recognising that everyone deserves security. It also fuels the damaging implication that people who claim benefits are potential fraudsters, an assumption reinforced by the government’s expanded powers to monitor claimants’ bank accounts and by the heavy emphasis on fraud in the Chanceller’s speech. Fraud is a red herring: the Department for Work and Pension’s own figures show that fraud and error combined account for only around 3.3% of benefit spending—meaning the vast majority goes to people who are fully entitled to it.
Benefits for Disabled people are a vital part of our social security system, yet the government is actively unravelling this support. Reforms to Personal Independence Payments have been delayed indefinitely, but cuts have already begun elsewhere. The health element of Universal Credit has already been cut in half for new applicants, and it is becoming clear that those under 22 could be the next to lose this support altogether.
This is where the Milburn inquiry becomes important. The government has asked Alan Milburn to examine why so many young people are outside education, training or work, but the inquiry also extends into the system of disability and health-related benefits that many of these young people rely on. In other words, it is not only about participation in education and work. It is also about the future of the benefits that Disabled young people need in order to live independently and to overcome barriers that prevent them from entering employment.
Given the potential for this inquiry to shape major reforms to disability benefits, it is striking that its terms of reference do not prioritise consultation or coproduction with young Disabled people or with the Disabled People’s Organisations that represent them. This represents a backward step from the political consensus around the Timms Review, when several Members of Parliament argued that Disabled people must be central to designing any changes.
At Toynbee Hall, we are currently facilitating a research project led by Disabled people who receive the health element of Universal Credit. The project examines the role these benefits play in their daily lives and the barriers to work that make this support essential. Their knowledge and experience should be guiding this national conversation, yet they risk being sidelined at the moment it matters most.
Another example of negative rhetoric about Disabled people supposedly gaming the system has appeared in the Chancellor’s framing of cuts to the Motability scheme. She has announced a one-billion-pound reduction over the next five years and justified it by focusing on “luxury vehicles”, creating the impression that Disabled people are exploiting public money.
In reality, the Motability scheme is essential for many Disabled people to access work, education, healthcare and community life. Vehicles with the adaptations people need often cost more because they require greater interior space, reinforced chassis, higher performance to support heavy equipment, or specialist features such as wheelchair lifts, ramps, hand-controls, swivel seats or extra headroom. These are practical necessities, not luxuries.
By presenting these essential adaptations as indulgences, the Chancellor reinforces a misleading narrative and obscures the real purpose of the scheme: enabling Disabled people to live independently and participate fully in society.
Measures such as reducing energy costs and freezing prescription charges are important steps in addressing the cost of living crisis. But they cannot stand in for a strong social security system that protects people from hardship in the first place. If the United Kingdom is to make real progress, the government needs to pair these welcome actions with a renewed commitment to the integrity of the social security system as a whole, rather than continue to weaken the very support that enables people to live with dignity and security.
Photo by Gavin Wilson on Unsplash
