Labour’s Silence, Scotland’s Burden
The SNP has condemned the Labour Government for continuing to inflict Westminster’s austerity agenda on Scottish families.
It comes as new figures reveal the Scottish Government was forced to spend £90.5 million last year mitigating harmful Labour welfare policies, including the widely hated Bedroom Tax and Benefit Cap.
The figures have shown that between April 2024 and March 2025, 141,985 Discretionary Housing Payment awards were made across Scotland, helping households avoid rent arrears, eviction, and homelessness – all caused or exacerbated by Labour’s policies.
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar promised voters: “Read my lips – no austerity under Labour” After the election, Labour announced billions of pounds of cuts, “short-term pain”, and promised “things will get worse”.In other words, austerity under Labour. pic.twitter.com/eWD5N5QHnC
— The SNP (@theSNP) May 24, 2025
Despite a full year in power, Keir Starmer’s UK Government has refused to scrap the Bedroom Tax, a Tory era measure which cuts housing support for those with a ‘spare’ bedroom, or reverse the Benefit Cap, which penalises larger families and vulnerable people.
To protect Scottish households from these cuts, the SNP Scottish Government allocated:
- £74.8 million to mitigate the Bedroom Tax in full
- £7.8 million to offset the damaging effects of the Benefit Cap
- £7.9 million for other housing related hardship payments
At the same time, the Labour Government has doubled down on austerity with its changes to disability benefits. The Scottish Government’s Social Justice Secretary, Shirley-Anne Somerville, has now written to the UK Work & Pensions Secretary calling for an urgent rethink of the UK Government’s “immoral and reckless” social security reforms.
We are mitigating the impacts of the bedroom tax and the benefit cap for around 94,000 households, with £89.3 million investment in Discretionary Housing Payments in 2024-25.
— Scot Gov Fairer (@ScotGovFairer) May 27, 2025
Social Justice Secretary @S_A_Somerville has also called on the UK government to end its welfare cuts. pic.twitter.com/uTHHmXtKfu
In the Chancellor’s Spring Statement in March, it was announced that £4.8 billion would be cut from the welfare budget – the largest cut of its kind since 2015. According to the UK Government’s own analysis, this will result in an extra 250,000 people living in relative poverty by 2029-30, including 50,000 children.
Ms Somerville welcomed the suggestion by Prime Minister Keir Starmer that cuts to winter fuel payment could be eased, but said this was not enough.
In her letter, she said:
I was pleased to hear the Prime Minister announce plans to ease the Winter Fuel Payment cuts in Parliament last week. I am also aware of various media reports suggesting that a change in the UK Government’s two-child limit may be announced shortly. I welcome these developments and recognise that it is a step in the right direction to delivering a more robust Social Security system.
SOCIAL JUSTICE SECRETARY, SHIRLEY-ANNE SOMERVILLE
However, deep concerns remain around the UK government’s damaging social security reforms, including those announced in the ‘Pathways to Work’ Green Paper.
Given the speculation on the reversal or partial reversal of policies on Winter Fuel Payment and Two Child Cap, I call on you to urgently scrap these immoral proposals on disabled benefits.
These plans will only push more into poverty. It is therefore reckless and totally unacceptable for the UK Government to press ahead, not least due to the expected severity of the impact they will have on all our efforts to end child poverty – completely undermining the work of the UK Child Poverty Taskforce.
The SNP has also revealed that neither Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar nor Labour frontbench spokesperson Paul O’Kane have raised the £5 billion of planned welfare cuts with the Chancellor since they were announced.
When asked via a Freedom of Information request about correspondence to the Chancellor from Mr Sarwar and Mr O’Kane regarding these cuts, the response back was that the Treasury “does not hold information within the scope of your request”.
