MISERY for millions but not for the military was the message from Chancellor Rachel Reeves as she unveiled an intensified attack on the disabled.

Launching her spring spending statement, the Chancellor doubled down on the cuts to welfare announced just last week with fresh punitive measures.

Because the official watchdog the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) claimed those cuts would not save the full £5 billion projected, Ms Reeves eagerly came back for more.

She announced that the health element of universal credit would be cut by 50 per cent for new claimants and frozen thereafter.

Official figures from the Department for Work and Pensions made clear the crisis this would cause for millions of families.

The department’s impact assessment calculated that the health and disability benefit cuts will push an extra 250,000 people, including 50,000 children, into relative poverty in the coming years.

And it estimated that by the end of the decade 3.2 million families will be losing an average £1,720 per year because of the changes, although some others will gain smaller amounts.

And Ms Reeves conceded that Labour would miss its target of building 1.5 million new homes over the course of the parliament by at least 200,000 dwellings.

But for the Chancellor it was, as ever, all about Labour’s fiscal rules governing debts and deficits, which she claimed would be met by the new measures.

Jeremy Corbyn, on behalf of the Independent Alliance of MPs, said: “Ever since this Labour government was elected, they have chosen to balance the books off the backs of the poor.”

He argued that the disabled in particular were being robbed of security and dignity and “dehumanised by a heartless government.”

Mr Corbyn added that the government should “tax the super-rich to fix our public services and empower those in need” instead.

The OBR further added to the gloom by cutting the economic growth forecast for the coming year in half, to 1 per cent. 

Ms Reeves, however, clung to improved OBR forecasts for the more distant future as evidence that the government was on course.

But left campaign group Momentum said: “Balancing the books on the most vulnerable in society was not in the party’s manifesto, nor is it what voters voted for.

“Increasing military spending to fund war overseas and meeting arbitrary fiscal targets rather than investing heavily in our public services does not deliver for working-class communities.”

Momentum urged all Labour MPs to stand against the proposals.

One who will is Richard Burgon, who said he would vote against the cuts, calling them “cruel attacks on disabled people.

“The government is taking the easy option of cutting support for millions of vulnerable people rather than making the wealthy pay.”

And former Labour Party chair Ian Lavery said simply: “There is always an alternative. Tax the rich.”

Unions were universally critical. TUC general secretary Paul Nowak warned: “You cannot cut your way to growth. UK taxes are low as a share of GDP.

“Those with the broadest shoulders must continue to contribute more through a fairer tax system.”

And Mr Nowak called on ministers to “rethink their plans” on benefit cuts. 

“The changes mean many disabled people, whether they are in work or not, will be pushed into hardship,” he said.

In the Commons, most Labour MPs looked uneasy or worse through Ms Reeves’s presentation, although she was not short of backbench toadies ready to get behind her new austerity during questions.

But Poole Labour MP Neil Duncan-Jordan, emerging as a principled socialist critic of the government, pointed out the extent of the suffering Ms Reeves’s measures would cause and urged her to tax the rich instead.

And Mr Corbyn asked Ms Reeves to reverse the welfare cuts and lift the two-child benefit cap, to which the Chancellor responded with a rant about arms spending and the foundation of Nato in 1949.

Champagne corks were sure to be popping in arms manufacturers’ offices as Ms Reeves fast-tracked the increases in military spending, to be made at the expense of overseas aid.

The Ministry of Defence is to get £2.2 billion extra in the coming year, 10 per cent of it to be spent on drones and other advanced technology, which the Chancellor said would create jobs in Glasgow, Derby and Newport.