On the eve of a significant vote on the government's welfare reforms, our polling shows a lack of confidence in the government’s ability to make fair decisions about disability benefits. At the same time, weeks of high-profile disputes have cut through: Labour is now seen as the most divided party.
Following weeks of infighting within the Labour Party, the proportion of Britons who see the Labour Party as divided has increased by ten percentage points in less than a Month.
55 per cent of Britons see the Labour Party as divided, compared to only 21 per cent who say they seem united. At the beginning of June, 45 per cent said they seemed divided, while 22 per cent said they seemed united. This means Britons see Labour as more divided than Reform or the Conservatives.
Few think the government’s concessions will be enough to protect disabled people.
Despite the Government’s concessions that will protect the incomes of existing PIP recipients, the public is not convinced that this will be enough to protect disabled people.
Britons are more than twice as likely to say that it won’t be enough to protect disabled people (52 per cent) than to say that it will (24 per cent).
Even Labour’s own voters aren’t convinced: 46 per cent say the government’s concessions won’t be enough to protect disabled Britons, while 36 per cent say they will.
Once again, Reform and Green voters are the most pessimistic: 58 per cent of Reform voters and 62 per cent of Green voters say the concessions will not be enough to protect disabled people.
Less than three in ten Britons think the government’s proposed PIP policy is fair.
Asked about the new proposed system for PIP - which would see current claimants’ benefits protected but reduce eligibility for anyone applying after November 2026 - few support this policy.
Only 22 per cent say the government should stick with this new policy, while 37 per cent think the current eligibility should be extended to all claimants, including new ones. Meanwhile, 23 per cent think eligibility should be reduced for everyone, including current claimants.
42 per cent think that the new system proposed by the government would be unfair, compared to only 29 per cent who see it as fair.
Reform and Green Party voters are most likely to see the government’s approach as unfair: 47 per cent of those who voted Reform in 2024 say that the proposed system is unfair, along with a majority (54 per cent) of Green Party voters.
Nearly two-thirds of Britons say they don’t trust the government to make fair decisions about disability benefits.
Sixty-three per cent of the public say they have little or no trust in the government to make fair decisions about disability benefits, including a third (32 per cent) who say they don’t trust the government ‘at all’.
Only a quarter of Britons (25 per cent) say they trust the government to make fair decisions on this issue.
Even among Labour’s own voters, a significant minority (41 per cent) say they don’t trust the government to be fair on disability benefits. 2024 Reform voters are the least trusting: three quarters (75 per cent) say that they don’t trust the government to make fair decisions.
Forty-five per cent of Britons think the U-turn makes the government look weaker.
By a margin of 45 per cent to 19 per cent, Britons tend to think the reversal on PIP makes the government look weaker, rather than stronger.
2024 Conservative (61 per cent) and Reform (59 per cent) voters are the most likely to say the reversal makes the government look weak.
While Labour voters are more sympathetic to the government, they are split down the middle: 34 per cent say it makes them look weaker, while 35 per cent say they look stronger.
In focus groups, it's clear that this sense of weakness does not stem from a sense that the government is too soft on welfare: More in Common polling from March shows that Britons are far more likely to see their approach as too harsh than too soft. But for many, PIP contributes to a wider pattern of reversals that makes the government seem divided and indecisive.