UK: Disability benefits (UC, ESA and PIP) - news and updates 2024 and 2025

Maybe this/these questions would be more appropriately thought about and discussed in a members-only/different and specific to the issue thread?

 

If they are fishing and spinning, they will do it regardless.

 

Benefits & Work has reported on some (possibly) reassuring news on the proposed four-point rule for pensioners receiving PIP:

https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/good-news-for-pension-age-pip,-but-questions-still-remain

 

By John Pring on 1st May 2025:

Ministers have no idea how much impact their cuts to disabled people’s benefits will have on levels of disability poverty, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has admitted.

 

That's exactly the level of thought it felt like they were putting in.

 

Benefits and Work.co:

'Mental health PIP claimants demonised as cover for massive assault on physical health awards'

'Under both Conservative and Labour governments, the DWP have colluded with the press to demonise younger claimants living with mental health issues, ADHD and autism. Ministers have joined in, to create a smokescreen which obscures the politically inconvenient truth that the majority of those at risk of losing their personal independence payment (PIP) under the Green paper proposals are older people with physical health conditions – many of whom have worked all their adult life until they became ill.'


'Physical health to be hardest hit

All the figures provided by the DWP suggest that it is physical health awards, not mental health or neurodevelopmental ones, that will bear the brunt of Labour’s cuts.

PIP awards at risk are those where the claimant did not score a minimum of 4 points for any daily living activity. DWP statistics show that of all at risk awards for working age claimants:


72% are based on physical health
26% are based on mental health
1% are based on ADHD
1% are based on autistic spectrum disorders (ASD)
0.25% are based on learning disabilities.
(Numbers do not add up to 100% due to rounding).
Clearly, from these numbers, ADHD and ASD awards are not at the forefront of cuts.


The DWP did not provide us with a condition specific breakdown of awards, but even from the categories it did provide, the focus on physical health is very apparent. The percentage of awards with no 4 point or higher descriptor is:

79% for back pain
77% for arthritis
71% for regional musculoskeletal diseases (excluding back pain)
68% for chronic pain syndromes
62% for cardiovascular disease
55% for respiratory diseases

By comparison, 48% of awards for anxiety and depression have no 4 point or higher and, as we have seen above, 19% for ADHD and 6% for ASD.


What Labour are threatening with their Green Paper then, is almost eight out of ten awards for back pain and arthritis being stopped and even awards for conditions like heart disease and breathing problem being taken away from well over half of all current recipients......'



Read On ....... https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/.../mental-health-pip...
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Disability News Service:

'Ministers are clueless on impact of PIP cuts on disability poverty, DWP admits'

'Ministers have no idea how much impact their cuts to disabled people’s benefits will have on levels of disability poverty, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has admitted.

DWP published figures in March that showed that the government’s decision to tighten eligibility for personal independence payment (PIP) will drag a quarter of a million working-age adults into both relative and absolute poverty* by 2030.

Another measure, to cut the health element of universal credit for new claimants from £97 per week currently to £50 per week in 2026-27, while freezing it for existing claimants until 2029-30, is estimated to drag another 50,000 working-age adults into relative poverty by 2030.

But even though the measures are aimed squarely at disabled people, nowhere in the publication did DWP state how disability poverty would be affected by the two measures.

Because of this omission, Disability News Service (DNS) asked DWP in a freedom of information request for the impact of each of the measures in the Pathways to Work green paper solely on disabled people.

But DWP admitted this week that it had not been able to calculate their impact on disability poverty.

It claimed that it “does not hold information on the specific poverty impacts of the changes on disabled people, disaggregated from everyone else”........


Read On ....... https://www.disabilitynewsservice.c...of-pip-cuts-on-disability-poverty-dwp-admits/

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It appeared to be badly-thought through. Now we have confirmation that it was.

 

No 10 rethinking winter fuel payment cut after Labour slump in local elections

Exclusive: government fears further electoral losses from unpopular policy as well as from planned £5bn of benefits cuts

https://www.theguardian.com/society...in-local-elections?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Ministers have sketched out tentative plans for a second round of tough welfare reforms this autumn

“We didn’t go big enough the first time round. The costs are unsustainable,” one No 10 source said. “It’s a fairness issue but also a fiscal one – how can we spend money on the public’s priorities, like schools and hospitals, if all the money is going on welfare?”

A second government source said: “We should’ve done it all in one hit – we didn’t go far enough. We’ve had all the political pain for very little fiscal gain.”

Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) officials believe the government would need to cut a total of £15bn from the benefits bill to make an impact on the rate of growth.

 

This is unbearable - I think they just want us dead.

Also they're massively cutting Access to Work

https://twitter.com/user/status/1919275568131899714


was to have been operational from today, but there's reports of a pause -

https://twitter.com/user/status/1919682214494638447

 

There was a lot going on on Wednesday. Session of Work and Pensions Select Committee with Ellen Clifford for DPAC, Disability Rights UK and Scope giving evidence, followed by academics.

https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/164/work-and-pensions-committee/events/

Then the debate Diane Abbot secured in Westminster Hall. Powerful contributions from MPs of most parties with a number of Labour MPs committing to vote against these measures. Tessa Munt spoke up for people with ME and LC -

https://twitter.com/user/status/1920390627230953560


Stephen Timms replied for the Government. Said although almost half of claimants would lose PIP DL (and LCWRA) as it stands, people would appeal and it would go down to only 10% losing out. Hmm.

In any case awful to put us through having to appeal and lots of appeals cuts into their "savings".

 

Also the consultation has been proceeding farcically with a data breach and then participants unable to log in to an online session -

https://benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/...nt-participants?utm_source=iContact&utm_medi=

https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/green-paper-consultation-fiasco-deepens

However, brilliantly, Manchester Disabled People Against Cuts gatecrashed an in-person consultation session and changed the agenda after a vote by participants to discuss all the issues in the Green Paper -

https://www.disabilitynewsservice.c...age-to-ministers-your-consultation-is-a-sham/

 

"After an hour-long stand-off (pictured), the activists eventually persuaded Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) civil servants to allow one of them, Rick Burgess, to address the disabled people taking part in the consultation.

He asked those present to vote on whether they wanted to give their views on the whole of the green paper, and not just the questions selected by ministers.

When they voted strongly in favour of giving their views on all the questions in the green paper, about a dozen disabled activists filled up the rest of the tables and Manchester DPAC took over the event from DWP and posed all the questions the government had not wanted to be asked, with DWP staff taking notes of the contributions made in response."

good work!

 

Useful report by Carers UK. This would help if you want to write to your MP or complete the Green Paper 'consultation' [sic]:

https://www.carersuk.org/media/ss2n...n-pathways-to-work-green-paper-april-2025.pdf

 

So he is saying that the vast majority of PIP assessments are currently incorrectly scored...(too harshly).

He is therefore probably aware that most claimants don't pursue an appeal because they are at risk of losing the entitlement they had been given or may have passed the threshold for standard or enhanced care, but didn't score the 4 points in a single criteria. The fact that they can give a figure suggests the DWP already holds these statistics.

But when claimants will have 'nothing to lose' and everything to gain they will change their behaviour and appeal.

The question then is, given the DWP and government know this, why are they even planning on implementing these changes? It really shows how much they despise sick and disabled claimants, some of the most vulnerable people in society. Clearly we are not all equal under Liebour.

 

Yup. They'll also make a better case for activities where they might have been awarded four points by a different assessor.

Currently, some choose not to pursue an appeal even though they got fewer points on an activity than they thought they should. There's no point going through all the hassle because it wouldn't increase their overall award.

If that's true, I don't see the point of the exercise—as you say. If only 10% of claimants lose out, and even some of those will go to tribunal (which costs public money) and succeed, where are these huge savings supposed to be coming from?

It could end up being one of those so-called cost saving policies that increases spending, like the replacement of DLA with PIP.

 

There was an article in the Guardian yesterday about the proposed review of the PIP assessment starting now -

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/may/12/liz-kendall-dwp-disability-benefit-assessment

It may have been covered (better) in other papers but the above is a free article.

I am pretty sure they are planning on creating a very small, condition based, group of 'severely affected' claimants. The concern with this is that it is condition based, only conditions that are always life long and/or always progressive will be included. It isn't going to be based on functional capacity in the way the current PIP system is. ME/CFS even in its most severe form will be excluded on this basis. So you will have people in the very severe group who are actually functionally more able that many of those excluded from it, just because they have a very specific condition. Diagnosis like ME/CFS (and probably conditions like MS) won't meet the criteria as there is so much variation in how the condition affects the person.

This might be fine if it was just being done to help those included, but we can be sure that it will disadvantage those excluded. Certainly in terms of being expected to look for work.

Of course, a condition like severe ME might be lifelong for some individuals, but you won't be able to predict that ahead of time. It will only be when the claimant reached retirement age you will be able to say 'ah, their condition did preclude them from working all their adult life' (or from when it became moderate or severe until retirement age).

 

I thought Timms had just pulled it from the air but apparently it's from the OBR -

As has been referenced, we have published data that shows that just over half of those who claim PIP today scored four points in one daily living activity in the last PIP assessment. Understandably, as we have heard, almost half of those who currently claim the benefit will be concerned that they will not be eligible in future. However, we have also published the Office for Budget Responsibility’s assessment, which is that by 2029-30 only around 10% of those who currently claim the daily living component of PIP will lose it as a result of the changes. That is the assumption that has gone into the spending forecasts.

Here's the transcript -

https://hansard.parliament.uk/commo...B82/PersonalIndependencePaymentDisabledPeople

Exactly.

 

I found that article confusing. Are they talking about the existing consultation on the Green Paper or a new process on the changes that weren't being consulted on up to now?

Kendall said she would invite disability campaigners and disabled people to be involved in the implementation of many of the changes. “We are consulting with disabled people and the organisations that represent them about what support can be available for anyone who loses out.

So only consulting on the implementation, not whether these changes should happen. Why ask what support should be available for anyone who loses out if they think these measures are fair and only people people with minor health niggles will lose out?

This is a farce of a process, it seems it's happening come what may. I hope lawyers are paying attention. It traduces parliamentary process as well. We are just at the Green Paper stage which is the consultation document, yet some aspects are to be voted on before the consultation is completed, never mind evaluated. Normally there would then be a detailed Select Committee report, then the White Paper where the Government states exactly what its legislation will be and the evidential basis for that. Only then is the Bill drawn up and presented to Parliament for scrutiny, revision and debate before the final vote.

 

Ah, I see. Sneaky.

They're forecasting that, by the time the 29/30 financial year comes around, a lot of people with the standard award (who are likely to be reviewed frequently) will already have lost their PIP award. That would mean they're not included in the figures.

The 10% they mention are the people on standard daily living awards who haven't yet been reviewed. They probably would only make up a small percentage of total current claimants, as by then the majority would be those on enhanced awards.

I'd be surprised if the government could progress it that fast, to be honest. Benefits changes usually get delayed by years—sometimes it's for political reasons, sometimes it's DWP capacity.