THE leader of Britain’s biggest Civil Service union announced plans today for a campaign to defeat Labour’s proposed welfare reforms.

Public and Commercial Services union general secretary Fran Heathcote’s intervention came a day after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer faced a back-bench rebellion over his government’s plans to cut disability benefits.

Sir Keir, in the private meeting, insisted on the need to go ahead with the plans to tighten the eligibility criteria for the main disability benefit in England, the personal independence payment (Pip), and cut the sickness-related element of universal credit.

Some 100 Labour MPs — more than a quarter of the party’s parliamentary numbers — are reported to have signed a letter urging ministers to scale back welfare cuts under consideration. 

In a separate, earlier letter, 42 MPs said the cuts were “impossible to support.”

Today, Ms Heathcote told a fringe meeting at PCS’s annual conference in Brighton: “In the next few weeks we will work together with Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), with other trade unions, with MPs and anybody else to defeat the proposals in this green paper.

“We have to remember that the green paper is not yet law, and is not inevitable. There are things we can do to challenge this.”

Saying she was reminded of the defeat of Tory chancellor George Osborne’s welfare cuts in 2016, she added: “Rachel Reeves and Liz Kendall can be defeated today if we stand united and we fight back.

“PCS is clear and the evidence is clear: we cannot cut your way to growth.

“If ministers cap the eligibility for PIP then they risk excluding more disabled people from work, and that is the exact opposite of what they say they want to achieve.

“As [left back-bench MP] Ian Byrne said: ‘This government is trying to balance the books on the backs of disabled people and the poor’ — and that is what is so wrong.”

PCS’s Department of Work and Pensions group president Angela Grant meanwhile said that violence at jobcentres has “escalated off the planet” due to a rise in far-right rhetoric by politicians.

She said that a member of staff had their car set on fire, others have been issued death threats and blades have been carried into jobcentres.