TAX the rich instead of cutting welfare benefits, Sir Keir Starmer was told in the Commons today amid reports that the government will be slashing support for the most vulnerable. 

Left Labour MP Richard Burgon challenged the Prime Minister to shift priorities as the crisis around the government’s planned assault on welfare grew.

Labour MPs are being summoned in groups to Downing Street for the premier to plead with them to back his plans, which may be opposed by as many as 80 of his backbenchers.

Mr Burgon told Sir Keir: “Disabled people in my constituency are frightened. And they are frightened because they are again hearing the language of ‘tough choices.’

“And they know from bitter experience that when politicians talk about tough choices, it means the easy option of making the poor and vulnerable pay.

“So instead of cutting benefits for disabled people, wouldn’t the moral thing to do, the courageous thing to do, be to make a real tough choice and introduce a wealth tax on the very wealthiest people in our society.”

Sir Keir dismissed the idea of a wealth tax, telling MPs that the rich had already suffered enough with the tax changes affecting “non-doms” and a new tax on private jets.

Sticking to the Treasury script he asserted there was no “bottomless pit” and that the priority was restoring economic growth, which apparently would be damaged by asking more of the rich.

He also avoided answering a question from Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey, who wanted to know if “disability benefit would be cut” in the package of measures expected to be announced by Welfare Secretary Liz Kendall next month.

The government was further challenged by TUC general secretary Paul Nowak who told Sir Keir not to repeat Tory mistakes.

“A major lesson from the Tory years is that austerity damaged the nation’s health. We must not make the same mistake again,” he said.

“Pushing disabled people into hardship with cuts to support will only make the current challenges worse and will not win public support.

“Trade unions share the government’s ambitions to improve the nation’s health and to help more people into good quality work,” Mr Nowak added, warning that cutting personal independence payment “is not the solution — not least because it enables many disabled people to access work so that they do not have to rely on out-of-work benefits.”

He did, however, agree that the payment system needed reforming.

Labour appears to be digging in behind its plans regardless. 

Sir Keir told MPs that the present welfare system was “indefensible, economically and morally, and we must and we will reform it.”

He added that getting people back into work was a “moral imperative,” with “one in eight young people not in education, work or trained. That is a lost generation.”

The Prime Minister claimed that the forthcoming reforms would “have clear principles.

“We will protect those who need protecting,” he said.

“We will also support those who can work back to work. Labour is the party of work. We are also the party of equality and fairness.”

Downing Street is also under pressure over planned huge cuts to the Civil Service headcount, which some supporters have dubbed the “chainsaw” plan in apparent honour of the similar efforts of US billionaire Elon Musk and Argentinian President Javier Milei.

A Labour spokesman dubbed the phrase “juvenile” while a Downing Street spokesman said that the government’s plan was to make “the state more agile in a way that delivers for working people.

“Part of that will obviously mean that the state must be delivering value for money,” he added.