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!