This week sees the first phase of the government review of the Personal Independence Payment (PIP), a welfare benefit extended to individuals living with long-term physical or mental health conditions or disabilities.
Last Thursday, more than 100 Labour MPs signed an open letter to The Guardian in opposition to the policy, deeming it “impossible to support”.
East Bradford Labour MP Imran Hussain tells MPs that he is “rightly horrified” and that these cuts would “devastate lives” as it would affect 41,000 disable people in his constituency. Across England, Wales and Northern Ireland there are over 3.7 million disabled people that are entitled to PIP that this decision could impact.
The Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall has proposed crucial changes to the eligibility criteria and the Office of Budget Responsibility has projected that this will affect approximately 800,000 people. It is forecasted to be implemented in November 2026.
As part of these reforms, individuals must now score a minimum of four points of difficulty for at least one daily activity such as preparing food, washing, dressing or shopping. Eligibility for the daily living component of PIP is based on a scale from zero to 12 where the more difficulty you have with completing a task, the higher you score. This comes alongside other criteria that currently must be met to qualify for the payments.
There are also plans for the frequency of reassessments to increase for people claiming PIP and these changes mean that less people will be eligible to receive it.
One of the people that this will affect is Evie Gregory, an English Literature and Creative Writing student from Manchester who has autism, PTSD, panic disorder and whose mobility is massively affected by her dyspraxia. She says, “the simple fact that a person’s disability must be confined to numbers is disgusting. I think that the idea that someone must score four points in challenges they face in their private life is not only intrusive, but it isn’t inclusive at all”. Speaking on her best friend’s mother, a terminal cancer patient who has undergone chemotherapy and suffered hairline hip fractures from radiotherapy, she says, “They refused her PIP completely”.