No Pride in Welfare Cuts

The Welfare Reform Bill has passed.

Concessions were made, but the outcome is the same, if not worse.

Thousands of disabled people are now being told to wait. Their support, their security, their futures have been put on hold until the Prime Minister decides he is ready to look at the evidence.

This did not come from the Tories. This came from a Labour UK government.

I grew up in a Wales where that would have felt unthinkable. Labour was never perfect, but it was meant to stand for protecting people. It was meant to offer some kind of safety. A belief that no matter how hard things got, there would be a basic sense of fairness, of standing up for those that needed it. This could not be further from that.

What makes it even more painful is the timing. This decision was pushed through on the first day of Disability Pride Month. A day meant to celebrate disabled people. Their strength, their joy, their contributions. Instead they were handed more uncertainty and more delay. Told to wait their turn.

I was trying to explain all this to my partner. Since moving here, he’d only ever lived under a Conservative Uk government until last year. I found it hard to put into words what a Labour Uk government was supposed to mean. What we once believed it could be. And let’s face it, we’re not exactly seeing that in the current Welsh Labour government either.

The truth is it felt like trying to describe a feeling that used to live deep in your bones but has become hard to hold on to.

That feeling has a name in Welsh. Hiraeth. A painful longing for something that may never return. I think we are going to see that longing expressed in next year’s Senedd elections. Some of it might bring much-needed change. Some of it could take us down more dangerous paths. That will depend on what we do with it now.

Because we cannot afford to wait. And we cannot afford to stay quiet.

I am not disabled. I am not directly affected by this bill. But too many people I care about are. And far too often the people most affected are already those pushed to the edges. Disabled people who are also LGBTQ+. People already facing barriers that most others do not even see. This bill adds another one, and decisions will now be made about them, without them.

This government has hit pause. But we do not have to.

We have power. We have community. We have ways of speaking, organising, caring and challenging. We can stand with people rather than waiting for someone else to act. We can build the kind of Wales we actually want to live in. Not one that treats dignity as something that can be delayed.

This is not just about policy. It is about who we are. And who we refuse to leave behind.