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

tornandfrayed said:
I don't think Kirsty Blackman was impressed by what Timms said or thinks we should be relieved. But he did open up a gap whether it's a concession or he just hasn't a clue what's in the Bill. It isn't anything that should change anyone's vote, but I think Blackman was thinking about legal action in the future.
Click to expand...
It’s probably going to pass so that is useful.
 
Lurgee Liz at 5.42 pm

'Nadia Whittome: Govt. amendments do not alleviate all concerns Bill will still take £3,000 pa from new claims. Benefit cuts trap women experiencing domestic abuse, make children grow up in poverty & even cost lives. NC10 requires Human Rights memorandum before Bill can be enacted'

 
tornandfrayed said:
Timms is now saying symptoms don't have to be present all the time but fulfilling the descriptors does. That doesn't make any sense and doesn't help.
Click to expand...

Might it help, though, if the descriptors don't require symptoms to be constant? Just present for more than 50% of the time, and the standard repeatedly, reliably, safely, as often as is needed rules apply?

I haven't watched all of it and I have to go out now, so forgive me if I've missed something—but on the face of it, that could potentially be useful.
 
Transcript of Stephen Timms's comments, courtesy of Benefits & Work:

"The severe conditions criteria in the bill exactly reflects how the functional tests are applied at present. That is in guidance. It’s being moved in this bill into legislation. It does take account of Parkinson’s. It does take account of MS. Because people need to meet the descriptors reliably, safely, repeatedly and in a reasonable time frame. And so I can give a very firm assurance to those who are concerned about how the severe conditions criteria will work for those on fluctuating conditions.

"The word constantly here refers, as I said in my intervention earlier, to the functional criteria needing to apply at all times, not to somebody’s symptoms."
Click to expand...
 
But the language of the Bill uses the word "Constant". People having to do mandatory reconsideration or appeals can refer to Timms words in the debate/parliament, but the word "constant" will be interpreted by DWP decision makers as they want to. So could result in a great many unnecessary stressful MRs and Appeals.
 
Lou B Lou said:
But the language of the Bill uses the word "Constant". People having to do mandatory reconsideration or appeals can refer to Timms words in the debate/parliament, but the word "constant" will be interpreted by DWP decision makers as they want to. So could result in a great many unnecessary stressful MRs and Appeals.
Click to expand...

I agree, I don't think it's going to be straightforward. Those words will have been carefully chosen, and there might be a specific gap that I'm too foggy to have spotted yet.

Much will depend on what actually passes into law. I don't think the money bill question has been settled yet (I admit I haven't looked very hard, it's Day 1 of the Lord's Test), but if it is certified as such, the text voted on last night will likely pass as it stands.
 
MrMagoo said:
What does that actually mean?
Click to expand...

I'd say it should mean the criteria apply at all times.

E.g, I'm always unable to mobilise more than 20 metres—even when I'm mobilising more than 20 metres—because I can't do it as often as I need to, and I can't do it without pain, reducing my capacity to do other essential activities, and risking a fall.

Whether it will mean that is another question of course.
 
Kitty said:
I'd say it should mean the criteria apply at all times.

E.g, I'm always unable to mobilise more than 20 metres—even when I'm mobilising more than 20 metres—because I can't do it as often as I need to, and I can't do it without pain, reducing my capacity to do other essential activities, and risking a fall.

Whether it will mean that is another question of course.
Click to expand...
Something fluctuating won’t “constantly apply” to functional criteria though, will it? Horrible wording.
 
MrMagoo said:
Something fluctuating won’t “constantly apply” to functional criteria though, will it?
Click to expand...

No, but if an illness or disability is always present because it can't be relieved with treatment, the criteria would apply constantly. They allow for fluctuations in symptoms and also for incomplete impairment, e.g. my walking example.

The same would apply to engaging with others if someone could only do it for an hour before they started to risk meltdown. They don't need to be in meltdown constantly; it's the condition that causes them to go into meltdown that's present constantly.


MrMagoo said:
Horrible wording.
Click to expand...

Yeah, innit.
 
Dolphin said:
“Send patients to gym instead of writing sick note, British Health Secretary Wes Streeting tells GPs”
Click to expand...
MrMagoo said:
Wow I didn’t know Wes was medically qualified
Click to expand...
It's even worse than that. What they're doing here is peak biopsychosocial brain. This is what biopsychosocial medicine fundamentally is, and given that this is the UK, it's guaranteed that no less than half, likely over 70%, of GPs think this is a great idea. And they'd keep supporting it for years after it's revealed to be a disaster, probably still for years after it's reformed and made even worse.

So this is not the absurd ideas of a harebrained politician who didn't think about any of this for a second, it's something that is highly valued and considered good, quality health care by most in the medical profession, and happens to be exactly the kind of ridiculous ideas a harebrained politician who has never given a second's thought about it would come up with.

It makes the "homeopathic A&E" sketch by Mitchell and Webb tame by comparison. You can bet that behind this are powerful figures like Clare Gerada, and the cabal of ideologues who are pushing to bury us all alive, but pretty much everyone in a decision-making capacity supports it. Most MDs think it's great, this absurd enshittification is the natural outcome of psychobehavioral ideology, which itself is part of the general enshittification of everything.

And of course you can be certain that for every one of those ideologues, if something happened to them that would make them fall under this guideline, they would be offended by it, because their problems are real and serious, unlike us whiny worried well.

This is the death of health as a public goal. It's fully privatized now, everyone is personally responsible for their health, and the value of an individual is 100% determined by our capacity for work. It doesn't matter that it doesn't work, that's not the goal. The goal is the same old regressive "some people (people like me) deserve help, some (people unlike me) are beyond saving and we shouldn't bother with them" eugenics brain.

It doesn't even take a second to see how this is ridiculous, it's a matter of alternative facts, of holding absurd worldviews and straight up not understanding how the world works. Which is becoming the main problem these days: when you don't understand how things work, everything looks like a conspiracy (I don't mean @Kitty here).

The people behind this harebrained nonsense think that lazy people capable of working are living the good life on secondary benefits by exploiting good working people who pay taxes, the only people who actually have value in this worldview. The exact same thing is happening in the US, the exact same language and policies, the only difference is they don't bother with the stupid gym or job coach scheme, they simply shut down the social safety without bothering with giving excuses other than conspiracy fantasies.
 
Last edited:
rvallee said:
It's even worse than that. What they're doing here is peak biopsychosocial brain. This is what biopsychosocial medicine fundamentally is, and given that this is the UK, it's guaranteed that no less than half, likely over 70%, of GPs think this is a great idea. And they'd keep supporting it for years after it's revealed to be a disaster, probably still for years after it's reformed and made even worse.

So this is not the absurd ideas of a harebrained politician who didn't think about any of this for a second, it's something that is highly valued and considered good, quality health care by most in the medical profession, and happens to be exactly the kind of ridiculous ideas a harebrained politician who has never given a second's thought about it would come up with.

It makes the "homeopathic A&E" sketch by Mitchell and Webb tame by comparison. You can bet that behind this are powerful figures like Clare Gerada, and the cabal of ideologues who are pushing to bury us all alive, but pretty much everyone in a decision-making capacity supports it. Most MDs think it's great, this absurd enshittification is the natural outcome of psychobehavioral ideology, which itself is part of the general enshittification of everything.

And of course you can be certain that for every one of those ideologues, if something happened to them that would make them fall under this guideline, they would be offended by it, because their problems are real and serious, unlike us whiny worried well.

This is the death of health as a public goal. It's fully privatized now, everyone is personally responsible for their health, and the value of an individual is 100% determined by our capacity for work. It doesn't matter that it doesn't work, that's not the goal. The goal is the same old regressive "some people (people like me) deserve help, some (people unlike me) are beyond saving and we shouldn't bother with them" eugenics brain.

It doesn't even take a second to see how this is ridiculous, it's a matter of alternative facts, of holding absurd worldviews and straight up not understanding how the world works. Which is becoming the main problem these days: when you don't understand how things work, everything looks like a conspiracy.

The people behind this harebrained nonsense think that lazy people capable of working are living the good life on secondary benefits by exploiting good working people who pay taxes, the only people who actually have value in this worldview. The exact same thing is happening in the US, the exact same language and policies, the only difference is they don't bother with the stupid gym or job coach scheme, they simply shut down the social safety without bothering with giving excuses other than conspiracy fantasies.
Click to expand...
Why don’t they levy a tax on every company that “can’t” aka won’t make reasonable adjustments? That would be a licence to print £££
 
Kitty said:
No, but if an illness or disability is always present because it can't be relieved with treatment, the criteria would apply constantly. They allow for fluctuations in symptoms and also for incomplete impairment, e.g. my walking example.

The same would apply to engaging with others if someone could only do it for an hour before they started to risk meltdown. They don't need to be in meltdown constantly; it's the condition that causes them to go into meltdown that's present constantly.
Click to expand...
That's how it's supposed to work, but in practice it just doesn't. Otherwise many more claimants would be on the highest scores for both PIP and the LCWRA. I have at least two PIP criteria where I was given a 4 (which I now realise is actually very hard to get) but where I should have qualified for an 8 on my PIP assessment (the written side of the report is consistent with this but the scores are marked down). One relates to the severity of my ME, the other to my autism. I never obtained my WCA report as I was transferred to the LCWRA back in 2013 without a face to face, after being awarded the enhanced rate of PIP on both care and mobility. I suspect I was given this because I met the the mobility criteria of the WCA based on my PIP answers.

Because they may change the PIP criteria after my anticipated 10 year light touch review (due next year) and it will then cover the Health Element of UC, I am going to write detailed answers to the questions on the review form (using additional sheets). This is because I think they are very likely to effectively remove the mobilising criteria from the UC health element (and severe conditions) when they abolish the WCA. I'm pretty sure they will make having the care element of PIP the criteria for getting the new health element, effectively removing mobility problems from giving access to it. They will likely claim people with mobility issues 'can work from home' despite the fact that the WCA's assessment of mobilising takes into account lack of upper body strength (being able to use a manual wheelchair excludes a claimant from scoring), whereas the PIP one is focused on the lower body (being able to use a manual wheelchair does not prevent a claimant from scoring). This is why the WCA mobilising criteria worked as a good proxy for overall disability and so many claimants qualified on this ground. Something the government failed to take account of was that the WCA could be cut short if the claimant met one criteria, and the mobilising question was one of the first on the assessment. Hence many claimants would have been recorded on the DWP statistics as getting LCWRA based on their mobility issues, but they may actually have still qualified on other grounds. So they definitely over-estimated any potential savings when the Conservatives were going to change the WCA. Now Labour will be doing the same, or probably worse.
 
Last edited:
Simbindi said:
Because they may change the PIP criteria after my anticipated 10 year light touch review (due next year) and it will then cover the Health Element of UC, I am going to write detailed answers to the questions on the review form (using additional sheets).
Click to expand...

I always have, they never get less than 7,000 words. I'm quite happy to make the contractors work for their money, and I can blather for England.

There seems to be a lack of clarity about how the review might affect working age people still on DLA. I've suggested to a couple of people that they consider applying for PIP before they're invited, because it's possible changes will be made that won't apply to current claimants. If PIP daily living is harder to claim after the review and the UC health element depends on getting it, it might be beneficial to apply under the current rules.

It's tough, though, when people are unwell and it's all so bloody stressful and difficult. But another advantage of applying ahead of time is that you can draft most of your PIP application before you even ask for the application form. That's what I did; I knew I'd struggle to write it all up and pull together all the evidence in the short window you're allowed after requesting a form. I spent months on it, just doing one section at a time then having a break.
 
Kitty said:
I always have, they never get less than 7,000 words. I'm quite happy to make the contractors work for their money, and I can blather for England.

There seems to be a lack of clarity about how the review might affect working age people still on DLA. I've suggested to a couple of people that they consider applying for PIP before they're invited, because it's possible changes will be made that won't apply to current claimants. If PIP daily living is harder to claim after the review and the UC health element depends on getting it, it might be beneficial to apply under the current rules.

It's tough, though, when people are unwell and it's all so bloody stressful and difficult. But another advantage of applying ahead of time is that you can draft most of your PIP application before you even ask for the application form. That's what I did; I knew I'd struggle to write it all up and pull together all the evidence in the short window you're allowed after requesting a form. I spent months on it, just doing one section at a time then having a break.
Click to expand...
I saw a recommendation on here for Charlie Anderson on YouTube, I found her very helpful as well as using the Benefits and Work guides.
It’s just such a lot of work.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom