Cabinet minister Pat McFadden was speaking to BBC Breakfast earlier ahead of the upcoming announcement on welfare system changes.

Watch below as he outlines how the government is concerned about the human and financial cost of people being on long-term sickness benefits:

Image source, Supplied

Steve from South London tells Your Voice, Your BBC News he had to stop working after a car accident left him with chronic cervical spondylosis, which affects the health of bones and skin on the neck, and brain damage.

He misses working but says taking away his benefits wouldn't mean he was able to take up a job.

"In my situation, I get a lot of ignorant comments... Why don't I jump on a moped on Uber Eats? Everything you do normally...it hurts. If I stand up too long it hurts," he says.

"What am I supposed to do? Float?"

Steve receives universal credit, as well as incapacity benefits including Pip, but says it is hard to meet his energy bills and pay for food with the income he is on.

"My life is already at below minimal quality - that will reduce further and health will suffer first," he says.

Encouraging people on benefits to go back to work can feel like bullying, he says.

"When the government say 'encourage', the reality is 'threaten'," he says. "You're being threatened back to work."

Why is the welfare bill growing?published at 10:21 Greenwich Mean Time

10:21 GMT

By Ben Chu

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) cited rising numbers of people coming on to incapacity and disability benefits as driving its latest forecasts.

The forecaster is essentially assuming, external the trend of rising benefits claims in recent years will continue.

In the five years after 2009-2010, more people were coming off incapacity benefits than on.

But in recent years - and especially since the 2020-21 Covid pandemic - more people have been coming on to benefits than off them.

And the OBR forecast the share of the working-age population in receipt of an incapacity benefit would rise from 7% in 2024 to a record high of 7.9% in 2029.

The reasons for this are not totally clear.

• BBC Verify explores the possible reasons in more detail

Labour MP Rachael Maskell says any changes made to the welfare system has to be a "policy which supports people, not harms people".

"We need to ensure that people are getting the support that they need in order to be safe and independent, but also where we can help people into work that's absolutely the right thing to do," she tells the BBC's 5 Live.

But she adds it has to be "more about carrots than sticks", and warns previous reforms have had a "huge" negative impact on mental health.

Changing the eligibility criteria and making it "even more difficult" could mean those people who do need more support "could well lose out", she says.

She says she recognisees the UK is operating in an environment of economic volatility, but adds: "Building resilience in the economy is important, but we don't do that by taking money out of the poorest people in our communities."

Douglas Fraser
Scotland business & economy editor

If there's change to universal credit, it will be the same as in the rest of Britain. If there's change to Pips, Personal Independence Payments, it's more complicated.

That benefit is to help pay for the extra costs of living with disabilities or health-related conditions.

It has been devolved to Holyrood, and the migration of cases from Pip to a different benefit in Scotland, called Adult Disability Payment, is taking place.

The rules and payments are similar. The relatively fast rise in the number of Scots on that benefit seems to be because fewer people come off it when their cases are reviewed.

If there is a cut in the budget for Pips, a proportionate figure will be cut from the Treasury block grant to Holyrood.

So Scottish ministers would have the choice of applying a similar scale of cuts, or of finding funds from other spending, or from higher income tax, to fill that gap.

Image source, Supplied

Alison, 56, who lives with her brother in a council property in Southampton, has been in touch via Your Voice, Your BBC News and says she feels "sick" at the prospect of cuts.

She has been diagnosed with depression, anxiety and PTSD brought on by childhood traumas. She also suffers panic attacks and night terrors. Since Covid she is afraid of leaving the house due to "fear of germs".

Alison hasn't worked since she lost her job with Southampton City Council in 1997, and claims both Pip, the main disability benefit, and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) totalling around £1,700 per month.

She says she would find it difficult to cope with the pressure of a job.

"It's not a case of not wanting to [work]," she says. "I think about it all the time.

"Being on benefits doesn't make me feel happy."

Alison has been told her benefit entitlement will last until 2027, but she says the prospect of it being cut after that is "extremely upsetting".

More now from Labour's Pat McFadden, who has been speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

He avoids being drawn on details of what will be announced later today.

McFadden says the government will not "sit back and relax and pretend it's a progressive thing to watch, two million, then three million, then four million people go onto these benefits, many of them never working, not all of them".

He's asked what he says to criticism that the poorest in society are paying the cost of these changes.

There are always going to be people who say the money can be found elsewhere, McFadden says, adding the UK has a progressive tax system and the top 1% pay almost a third of income tax.

"I don't think you can, in the end, tax and borrow your way out of the need to reform the state," he says.

When asked about Labour backbenchers who might not support the welfare overhaul, he says the party was elected on a platform of change.

"We have a duty to make those changes. It was the word on our manifesto."

We've just spotted Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall arriving in Downing Street for a cabinet meeting with Keir Starmer and senior ministers.

It's a big day for her - she will be outlining the government's plans to reform welfare in the Commons this afternoon.

Image source, PA Media

Liz Kendall's announcement is expected to focus on a change in eligibility for Personal Independence Payments (Pip) - but what are they?

Pip is the main disability benefit in England and Wales, with more than 3.6 million current claimants.

A person can claim Pip payments if they find it difficult to do everyday tasks or get around because of disability or a long-term physical or mental health condition.

There are two elements to Pip - a daily living component and a mobility component. Claimants may be eligible for one or both.

To claim Pip, recipients first undergo an assessment - it is expected that ministers will announce the tightening of criteria to qualify for the payments.

• What are Pip disability payments and why could they change?

Kendall to use carrot and stick as details of benefits shake-up emergepublished at 08:14 Greenwich Mean Time

08:14 GMT

Henry Zeffman
Chief political correspondent

We have known for some time the broad contours of the package Liz Kendall will unveil today.

One strand will be about incentivising more universal credit claimants to work. The other strand is reform of the Personal Independence Payment (Pip), the main disability benefit, which is unrelated to work. The eligibility criteria is set to be tightened significantly.

Beyond what is now familiar from weeks of briefings, we have a couple of new details this morning on each of those strands.

When it comes to universal credit: at the centre of that system is the work capability assessment - which essentially determines to what extent the state believes someone is or isn’t capable of work.

I’m told that this process is set to be scrapped and replaced by something new which, the government hopes, will do more to incentivise those they believe can work, to work.

On Pip, we are reporting this morning that - though the government wants more frequent reassessments of those claiming the benefit - when it comes to the most disabled, they will no longer face any reassessments.

In general today, expect Liz Kendall to try to sound more upbeat - carrot as well as stick. She’s won a tussle to get £1bn of the money that’s being saved in this package reinvested into schemes to encourage people into work, and I’d expect her to spend time using that to reassure anxious Labour MPs.

"We are the party of work, we always want to see people in work," Pat McFadden tells BBC Breakfast.

"We're not comfortable with a situation where we've got 1,000 people a day applying for one of these benefits."

He was responding to a question about whether Labour should have been more transparent in its manifesto about its plans to reform welfare.

Pushed again, he says: "The system that we're bringing forward today is in line with what we've always wanted to do - to have a welfare state that's there for people who need support but also to get the maximum support available for people to get into work."

He says he doesn't believe anyone can be comfortable with the trends in welfare spending in recent years, and says it's the government's job to face up to big challenges facing the country.

It's put to McFadden that the government's plans to make changes to the welfare system are less about reform and more about the need to save money.

"Money is part of it. The bill is growing hugely," he says, "but it's also about people too".

He asks if the UK is comfortable seeing more and more people on long-term benefits, some of whom he says are not working or being reassessed for many years.

"I don't think we should be comfortable about that," he says.

"Support for getting into work will be a really important part of what we announce later today."

Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden is speaking to BBC Breakfast now on the government's plan to overhaul the welfare system.

He says the UK has 9.3 million people of working age who are not working, 2.8 million of whom are on long-term sickness or related benefits, and that number is expected to grow to more than four million if the government doesn't take action.

The UK is an "outlier in this" in terms of the G7, he says.

"We're concerned about the human cost of that in terms of people on long-term sickness benefits, and we're also concerned about the financial cost," he says.

"We want to reform the system to make sure help is there for those who need it, and also support is there for people who could do some work with a bit of extra support," he adds.

Labour peer Baroness Shami Chakrabarti told BBC Newsnight last night that she believes cutting benefits from disabled people or those with illnesses is wrong in principle.

Such a move "is not a Labour thing to do", she said.

"It’s not even a human thing to do. It’s not a Tory thing to do, it’s not a Labour thing to do – to cut from people who are in trouble," she added.

She said she would read the government's proposals when they are officially released, but criticised "this little Westminster game of leaking and briefing".

“Shame on those people playing politics, those spin doctors and special advisers who’ve been playing this game at the expense of people’s mental health," she said.

Chakrabarti also said she was hoping "the cuts won't be as they have been suggested".

As the benefits system announcement approaches, the government faces criticism from some MPs within the Labour Party, as well as from the opposition and charities.

Yesterday Labour MP Dianne Abbot called for a 2% wealth tax on people with assets over £10m, instead of welfare cuts.

Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham said he recognised the need for reform of the system, but urged "caution" on benefit changes.

In the opposition, Shadow Education Secretary Laura Trott accused the government of being "all over the place and divided".

And the SNP urged the prime minister to scrap the "cuts to disabled people", claiming the government had “boxed itself in with its Tory austerity rules” on public spending.

Outside Parliament, the chief executive of charity Citizen's Advice said the government was "pulling the quick and easy lever" by taking "money out of the system".

How big is the welfare budget?published at 07:14 Greenwich Mean Time

07:14 GMT

By Ben Chu

Before looking at where the welfare budget might be cut, it is necessary to understand the size of the budget and how it has grown.

At the time of the October 2024 Budget, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecast, external that total spending on health and disability benefits would rise from £64.7bn in 2023-24 to £100.7bn in 2029-30.

And the OBR projected that the biggest contributor to this increase would be from welfare spending on working-age adults, defined as those aged between 16 and 64.

The OBR projected spending on this sector would rise from £48.5bn in 2023-24 to £75.7bn in 2029-30.

Image source, Getty Images

Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall is expected to make an announcement in the Commons after midday, after pledging that her plans to overhaul the benefits system will be fair.

Some current recipients of the Personal Independence Payment (Pip) are likely to lose out under the plans, which are expected to tighten eligibility criteria for people with less severe conditions.

It is expected that unemployed people in receipt of universal credit, and who are actively looking for work, will see their benefit levels rise - though this is likely to be by a relatively modest amount.

It is also expected that people with disabilities who try out a job will not lose their existing benefit entitlement if it goes wrong.

The Times reports, external that sick and disabled benefit claimants will face more frequent reassessments under the reforms, but that people with "permanent or degenerative conditions" may never have to be reassessed.

But the government is still facing resistance from within its own party, as well as charities. We'll bring you more on that shortly.

Good morning and welcome back to our live coverage ahead of an announcement on expected cuts to welfare benefits.

Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall will set out how the government intends to reform the system this afternoon, in a move aimed at cutting the growing welfare bill.

Her package of reforms is expected to include more help and support for finding work, and the protection of payments to the most vulnerable.

But the move has faced opposition from within Labour ranks over concern for the potential impact on vulnerable claimants.

Initial reports had suggested that Personal Independence Payment (Pip) - the main disability benefit in England and Wales - would be frozen for a year. But reforms are now expected to focus on eligibility for the benefit instead after pushback from Labour MPs.

On Monday, Kendall insisted her planned changes would be fair, and ministers have said they would protect the most vulnerable.

However, the eligibility criteria is set to be tightened for those with less severe conditions, meaning some current recipients will inevitably lose out.

We'll bring you live updates and analysis throughout the day, so stay with us.

Hafsa Khalil
Live reporter

Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall vowed the government's upcoming welfare reforms will ensure "fairness", as she faced a series of questions in the House of Commons.

The proposal has already sparked some backlash within the Labour Party, as the BBC's economics editor Faisal Islam says.

Amongst the critics is Diane Abbott who has called for a wealth tax as an alternative to the cuts - we have more on her counter-proposal.

A Downing Street spokesman earlier said that the government has a moral "duty to fix" the welfare system.

Kendall reassured the Commons that "proposals will soon become clear".

And that's true, on Tuesday she'll be making an announcement on the welfare reforms - we'll be providing live updates and analysis of that right here, so be sure to join us.

For now, we're pausing our coverage. You can keep up to date with the latest in our news story. Thanks for joining us.

• Does cutting benefits work? BBC Verify takes a look
• Faisal Islam: The major question thrown up by Labour's benefits plans
• Chris Mason: Trade offs for ministers over towering benefits bill
• What are PIP disability payments and why could they change?

With the government set to outline its plans for welfare reform on Tuesday, Westminster watchers are keeping a close eye on how Labour is both managing and reacting to possible changes.

Here's a look at some of the rhetoric we've heard today:

What has the government said?

Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendallhas vowed to "get the welfare bill on a sustainable footing", as she urged colleagues to be "patient" ahead of the reforms. She added that "treating people with dignity and respect is at the heart of this government’s plans".

The prime minister's spokesperson denied the notion that reforms are being introduced because of the UK's fiscal backdrop, instead saying the government has "a duty to fix the broken system that is letting millions of people in this country down".

Backlash from some Labour MPs

Welfare reform proposals have sparked an internal backlash within the Labour Party, writes the BBC's Faisal Islam. We've taken a look at what some of them have been saying:

Today, the BBC heard from veteran Labour MP Diane Abbott, who urged the government should introduce a 2% wealth tax on people with assets worth more than £10 million, rather than make welfare cuts.

Labour MP for Clapham and Brixton Hill, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, warned that cutting support or reducing eligibility "won’t push more people into work, it will only push more people into poverty".