Labour has recently proposed a slate of new cuts to the benefits system, which, after over a decade of austerity so brutal towards disabled people that it was condemned by the UN and has since been linked to 330,000 excess deaths, is clearly far too generous. Under these plans, there will be a slight increase to the standard rate of Universal Credit, but additional support for disabled people will be frozen for existing claimants, cut in half for new claimants, and denied outright to people under the age of 22. The Personal Independence Payment (PIP), which provides disabled people with support in going about their daily lives, will be frozen so that it no longer rises with inflation – which amounts to a real-terms cut. The eligibility criteria for PIP will also be tightened, meaning hundreds of thousands fewer people will receive it, and even those who already have an entitlement may be affected when it comes to being reassessed.

There’s still some hope that the government will U-turn on these proposals: a lot of Labour MPs are pissed off – and not just the usual suspects from the left of the party – and there has been a wave of grassroots mobilisation. Crips Against Cuts – an activist group led by disabled people – organised a day of action on March 22 which saw rallies held in cities across Britain. But if Labour presses ahead, these cuts will rival anything the Tories ever did in terms of callous disregard for the lives and wellbeing of disabled people. On the other hand, we really do need to save up the money in order to be able to invade Russia, or something.

The effects of these policies go beyond any one sector, but many disabled artists and cultural workers – who already face high levels of poverty and exclusion – rely on PIP to be able to work. We spoke to some of the people who now face an uncertain future.

“I do find PIP really helpful,” Abi Palmer, an artist, writer and filmmaker and the author of Slugs: A Manifesto, tells Dazed. “I wish there were more of it, but it is the difference between me being able to have a working life at all, or me just being completely dependent on everyone around me and having a very miserable and unwell life.” Abi uses PIP to pay for regular physiotherapy, which the NHS doesn’t provide. As someone with an ongoing physical disability, this makes it easier for her to recover from the demands of working, including sitting up straight – an activity which causes her pain. “It’s not a miracle cure, but it does take some of the pressure off my body,” she says. She also puts the money towards compression garments, mobility aids, and her considerable travel costs – the lift at her nearest tube station has been broken for a year, which means she can’t get to work if she doesn’t take a taxi. It allows her to afford an accessible studio with ground-level access, although this is only accessible up to a point: with no heating or hot water, she’s unable to use it for four months out of the year. “If I didn’t have PIP, it would be too expensive for me to do my job,” she says.

According to Palmer, the eligibility criteria around PIP is already too strict. She considers herself lucky never to have had any problems accessing it herself, but she knows people with comparable symptoms who have been rejected outright or – in some cases – offered a sum of money so paltry they may as well have been. “Just the other week one of my friends – someone with a pretty severe illness – went through the whole process and ended up with £28. What can you buy with that? How will that help you? She still has to work and I can see how sick it’s making her, and it just feels so unfair.”

Daisy LaFarge, a poet and novelist based in Glasgow, receives a Scottish version of PIP called Adult Disability Payment (ADP), which she describes as the only reason she’s not in bed full-time and unable to work altogether. This benefit is not immediately under threat – welfare is a devolved power, meaning it’s under the control of the Scottish government – but any budget cuts imposed by Westminster risk having a knock-on effect.

LaFarge puts the money from PIP towards treatments her body needs in order to maintain baseline functioning: specialised physical therapy, mobility equipment, compression clothing, and taxis when she’s unable to walk. It took her two “very long, scary and painful” years to navigate the system and finally receive the support she needed, during which time she had to support herself through freelance work. “Most of that application process was done lying on the floor of my living room, because I was in such a bad way that my spine couldn’t support my head enough even to sit up in bed,” she says. “ADP was truly lifesaving, enabling me to invest in intensive rehab that means I can now sit at my desk for a few hours most days without injuring myself.”

Just the other week one of my friends – someone with a pretty severe illness – went through the whole process and ended up with £28. What can you buy with that? How will that help you?

LaFarge is terrified by the idea of this support being ripped away from so many people like her. “It feels useless to point out the holes in Starmer’s murderous void of a position, but even if we take his aim seriously, these cuts completely disregard the fact that many disabled people already do work, have to work, and it’s benefits that enable us to keep us working in the first place,” she says. “Combined with a gutted NHS these cuts will leave thousands of us more disabled, less fit for work, more reliant on other forms of benefits and pushed further into poverty.”

Gabrielle de la Puente, one half of The White Pube and co-author of Poor Artists, a non-fiction book about the art world, shares these concerns about the likely impact. “It’s impossible for some sick people to keep up with the pace of traditional work, with deadlines, meetings, and non-disabled colleagues,” she tells Dazed. “We can’t put work demands before the demands of our bodies without getting increasingly, dangerously sicker. It’s for those reasons many chronically ill people turn to creative work, because it’s the only work we can do. It’s on our own terms, and it’s done when we are well enough to do it. But the cultural sector is highly competitive and underpaid, and PIP is highly competitive and underpaid, too, so without one subsidising the other, artists are going to have to work their bodies into the ground. A lot of people are about to get a lot sicker.”

Labour’s stated aim with these cuts is to get people back into employment, but it’s clear that for many people they will have the exact opposite effect (never mind that it’s based on a flawed premise: it’s simply not true that there are significant numbers of people who could be working but are choosing not to). “In our own work, we see daily that without the right support, skills and talent go to waste,” a spokesperson from Shape Arts, a non-profit which supports disabled artists, tells Dazed. “If the intention of these cuts is to compel recipients to seek work, policy makers need only speak with disabled people to understand the flaw in their logic. The true experts – disabled people themselves – know that without the support required to seek and stay in employment, they face debilitating barriers that push them toward poverty, exclusion, and worsening health.” They point out that even the threat, never mind the reality, of cutting benefits can cause fear and despair: “It is debilitating, and can restrict everything a person might do, or wish to.”

The art world is already deeply exclusionary towards disabled artists, who make on average £3,750 a year – just 10 per cent of the annual average income of full-time workers. If Labour’s cuts go ahead, a bad situation is going to get even worse. Palmer, who has been disabled since the 2000s, has lived through the gradual erosion of support, benefits and opportunities. “The care has gone from ‘we're going to help you participate in social situations’ to ‘we’re going to try to stop you getting bed sores’ – and that’s if you’re lucky,” she says. When she first started out as an artist, she received an Arts Council grant which allowed her to travel to a sanatorium in Budapest, to create an installation which ended up in the Tate and to write a proposal for a book which was published the following year. She also enjoyed a close relationship with a project manager at Arts Council, who offered advice and encouragement as she began her career. “There were so many options available. Now they no longer exist,” she says.

When the pool of people who are allowed to participate in culture gets smaller and smaller, everyone loses out. “Disability and inequality are so entwined, and I fear these cuts will be something of a nail in the coffin, shutting out a whole generation of artists and writers who are just too exhausted by trying to survive,” LaFarge says. “I grew up in a world where certain gains – like disabled access to public transport – had already been made, and I only learned relatively recently that this happened just a few years before I was born thanks to disabled people taking to the streets, chaining their wheelchairs to buses. These basic rights had to be fought for. And now, after a mass-disabling pandemic. We need able-bodied people to be fighting too – even if only for the point Johanna Hedva makes: we will all be disabled, sooner or later, and it’s only a matter of when, not if. This is about everyone.”

If you would like to make your voice heard, you can fill out the government’s public response form; write to your MP, asking them to vote against the bill; sign this petition from disability charity SCOPE, or attend one of the many protests taking place across the country – the Crips Against Cuts Instagram page is a good source of information about what is happening and when.