Government plans to cut disabled benefits have led to the mass resignation of several major charities from an official advisory panel. Here representatives from both sides of the row present their case.

Alistair Darling, Social Security Secretary, says that no one will lose out.

The proposals we are making are fair and balanced.

We are increasing the income of severely disabled young people by �25 per week. We are giving a higher rate of mobility allowance to three- and four-year olds, worth about �35 per week.

We are increasing the amount of money for people with highest care needs by �5 for a single person and �8 for a couple. We are giving more money to people who can work through the disabled person's tax credit, worth �155 per week.

So, what we are doing is providing security for people who can work as well as giving help to those people who are able to work. What we are putting forward is a fair and balanced package.

We are saving �750m a year through other proposals that we are making over the next 10 years. To put this in perspective, the government spends �25bn on a year on benefits for sick and disabled people.

What we are proposing is to do more for those who are severely disabled, �35 a week for some people.

We are also going through all the benefits, as we promised to do, benefit by benefit, line by line, to ensure that they meet modern conditions.

We are making changes to incapacity benefit: we are doing two things. One is to restore it to its original intention, which is to be available to people who became sick or injured while they were at work.

The second is taking account of the fact that nearly half the people on incapacity benefit today, with an occupational pension, are in the top 40% of the income bracket.

The first �50 we will ignore. After that, we will take some of the pension into account.

In the last 15 years when the Tories were in power, they quite cynically moved people off unemployment benefit and onto incapacity benefit to hide the unemployment figures and so distorted the purpose of this particular benefit.

What we are saying is that people should have a recent contact with work. (If you are on average earnings, you would need to work for four weeks to have enough credits to qualify, so it isn't unfair.)

Nobody on benefit at the moment is losing out in any of the changes we are making.

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Richard Wood, Co-chair of the Disability Benefits Consortium says society's most vulnerable will be hit.

If the Welfare Reform Bill is implemented in its current form it will cut �750m from disability benefits through harsh new National Insurance requirements.

But a joint press statement on 30 March 1998 made by the then Secretary of State Harriet Harman MP and officers of the All Party Disablement Group said: 'There was agreement that future savings would come from helping disabled people get jobs rather than reducing benefit.'

The Department of Social Security has broken its promise.

The bill will penalise those who have made provision for occupational pensions that are worth more than �50 per week.

Proposed changes to the qualifying conditions for new claimants of Incapacity Benefit will save the government �70m in the first year, �700m per year after 10 years.

This is on top of projected savings from cuts to the same benefits made by the last government which are estimated to reach �1.3bn by the year 2000.

Further proposals to abolish Severe Disablement Allowance for all new claimants will eventually save �80m per annum.

This benefit specifically helps people who become sick who have not been able to pay National Insurance contributions. Abolition of this would particularly hit women who have been bringing up children and carers.

More than 300 detailed responses to the government's consultation paper on welfare reform were submitted, but the disability benefits section of the bill was identical to the government's original proposals.

The government has ignored our detailed and constructive proposals during the consultation process and has managed to give the impression that our membership of the Disability Benefits Forum indicates our support for what are totally unacceptable cuts.

This is why 12 major disability organisations have felt that resignation was the only option.

We urge the secretary of state to look again at these fundamentally flawed proposals that will hit some of the most vulnerable people in society.