Labour Eyes Expanding Disability Benefit Overhaul Beyond Under-25s, Risking Full-Scale Backbench Revolt

Downing Street is weighing whether to apply Milburn's "participation first" model — replacing disability benefits with work support — to all working-age adults, a move that could multiply both savings and political damage.

The UK government is actively considering whether to expand a radical overhaul of disability benefits, originally designed for under-25s, to cover all working-age adults. The Milburn review, due next week, proposes replacing Universal Credit's health element and Personal Independence Payment for young people with training, work support, and a local fund for short-term expenses. Cabinet ministers including Andy Burnham are now testing whether the same "participation first" logic should apply to everyone.

The political calculus is brutally simple. The under-25 cohort is small — young people including NEETs receive roughly 2.5% of the £333bn welfare budget, while pensioners take 55%. Expanding to over-25s captures a far larger population and promises bigger savings, but it also multiplies the constituency of opposition. Last year, Starmer faced a significant backbench rebellion over health and disability benefit changes, forcing a major U-turn. Doing it again, at larger scale, is a live grenade. Milburn's report will promise 440,000 employment and education opportunities by 2036 and a £2bn-plus increase in young people's net incomes. Some estimates put the upfront cost at around £6bn, though the final report will reportedly land below that figure. The funding will be drawn from existing Department of Health and Department for Education budgets, a detail that has already caused consternation within those departments — robbing Peter to employ Paul. The structural question is whether this is genuinely generative investment or a fiscal shell game. The government frames it as redirecting money from passive payments to active support. But the mechanism matters: PIP is replaced by a local fund for "specific short-term expenses and equipment" rather than ongoing payments, and Universal Credit's health element disappears entirely for eligible cohorts. For young people on UC, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation warns this could leave them on a basic rate of roughly £80 a week — below what anyone would call a platform for job-seeking. More than 40 leading charities have written to Milburn and McFadden warning that cutting support or imposing sanctions risks pushing vulnerable young people deeper into poverty and further from employment — the precise opposite of the stated goal. The government's own framing acknowledges the tension: ministers say any over-25 version would need to reflect families, caring responsibilities, and complex health needs. That caveat alone suggests the under-25 model cannot be copy-pasted without substantial redesign. Polling offers the government some cover — the public favours reducing the welfare bill but prefers tackling root causes of joblessness over benefit cuts. That is exactly the rhetorical space Milburn occupies. The risk is that implementation looks more like the latter than the former, especially if upfront investment falls short of the £6bn some projections suggest is needed. The Timms review into disability benefits, publishing alongside Milburn's, has already concluded that PIP is "no longer fit for purpose." Together, these reviews give No. 10 an intellectual framework for sweeping change. Whether the political will — and the Treasury funding — survives contact with Labour's own backbenches is the open question. Government sources are split: some believe expansion to over-25s is dead on arrival given internal opposition; others think Milburn has shifted the Overton window far enough to make it viable.