The Budget Gave Disabled People £100 and a Promise to Wait
Paul Cooke
28 October 2026
The Chancellor stood up today and offered disabled people a £100 energy payment and a rise in benefits. Then he told us to wait.
Wait for the Timms Review, which reports next month. Wait for the government’s response, which will come by the end of the year. Wait for legislation, which will follow in 2027.
Wait, in other words, while the cost of being disabled in Britain continues to rise.
What was actually announced
Let me be fair to the government, because the Budget did contain things that will help.
Working-age benefits — including Personal Independence Payment and Child Benefit — will rise by 3.5 per cent in April. The standard allowance for a single person over 25 on Universal Credit will rise by 4.3 per cent to £102.28 a week, and by £6.63 to £160.55 for couples. The maximum PIP rate will climb to around £778 every four weeks.
The Carers’ Allowance cliff edge — the scandal where unpaid carers lose their entire benefit for earning a few pence over the limit — will be replaced by a taper, reducing by £1 for every additional pound earned. That is a genuine victory for carers who have been campaigning on this for years.
And twenty million households in England in council tax bands A to D will receive a £100 energy payment this winter, with the VAT exemption on electricity bills extended to July and standing charges removed from gas bills.
These are not nothing. For a carer who has been terrified of a payslip, the taper matters. For a household choosing between heating and eating, £100 matters.
But let us be clear about what this Budget did not do.
The cuts are still coming
In April 2026, the health element of Universal Credit was cut almost in half for new claimants — from £423.27 a month to £217.26. That cut remains in place. It has not been reversed. It has not been paused. It is frozen until 2029/30, falling further in real terms every year.
That created a two-tier system. A disabled person who became too ill to work in March 2026 receives £423.27 a month. A disabled person with the same condition who became too ill to work in April receives £217.26. The only difference between them is a calendar date.
The government knows this. The Work and Pensions Committee has described the cuts as potentially discriminatory. The Disability Poverty Campaign Group wrote to the Chancellor on 22 October warning that disabled people’s incomes, support and services would “yet again” be among the “difficult choices”. They asked him to reverse the UC health element cut, protect PIP as a non-means-tested benefit, introduce an energy social tariff, and end the bedroom tax.
He did none of those things.
Kicking the difficult decisions into next year
The bigger reforms — the ones that could reshape disability support for a generation — have been deferred.
The Timms Review into PIP will publish its final report next month. The government will respond by the end of the year in a White Paper. Legislation will follow in 2027. The Milburn Review into youth unemployment will report in November.
This is not a pause for thought. It is a political calculation.
The Resolution Foundation has estimated that 16 per cent of PIP claimants — around one in six — do not report facing additional costs, and could have their payments cut or lowered, saving £4.4 billion. The think tank has suggested replacing ongoing payments with one-off grants for specific costs, and changing the assessment to ask claimants directly about their expenses.
Reports suggest the government is considering removing the UC health element entirely for under-25s, and limiting PIP eligibility on mental health grounds. The Timms Review’s interim report described the benefit as “no longer fit for purpose”.
None of this has been announced. All of it is being prepared. And disabled people are expected to wait — again — while the reviews report and the legislation is drafted and the White Paper is written.
The £100 is not a strategy
I do not want to sound ungrateful for £100. For a disabled person on a fixed income, £100 is a week’s food. It is a heating bill. It is a bus fare to a hospital appointment.
But £100 is not a strategy for ending disability poverty. It is a sticking plaster on a wound that this government has chosen not to close.
The Disability Poverty Campaign Group warned before the Budget that cuts do not save money — they shift harm from one system to another. Greater poverty “will drive costs and increase spending on public services including social care, crisis support, housing assistance, and local authorities”. Cuts to disability support do not disappear. They reappear as NHS admissions, as homelessness, as social care crises, as local authority overspends.
The government knows this. It has the evidence. It has the reviews. It has the recommendations.
What it does not have is the political will to reverse the cuts it has already made.
What happens now
The Timms Review reports next month. The government responds by the end of the year. Legislation follows in 2027.
Between now and then, disabled people will continue to live with the two-tier system. New claimants will receive half the support of their neighbours. Carers will navigate the new taper. Households will receive their £100 and wonder how far it will stretch.
And the government will continue to describe this as “fiscal discipline”.
We are not asking politely. We are not going away.
Sources: BBC News, Budget 2026 live, 28 October 2026; The Guardian, Budget 2026 live, 28 October 2026; Yahoo Finance, Winners and losers from Labour’s autumn Budget, 28 October 2026; Manchester Evening News, Major update in Budget 2026 on PIP reforms, 28 October 2026; Daily Mail, Healey kicks tough decisions down the road, 28 October 2026; Disability Rights UK, DPCG letter to Chancellor, 22 October 2026; Resolution Foundation, PIP reform analysis, 14 October 2026; House of Commons Library, Benefits Uprating 2026/27, 7 August 2026; Which?, Budget cost of living support, 28 October 2026; Carers UK, Carer’s Allowance taper announcement, 27 October 2026.