Taking The PIP – Part 2

Last updated July 17, with a section at the end for a few new developments.

For disabled people here in the UK it’s been a very anxious time lately, because of all the proposed cuts to disability benefits in the Universal Credit & Personal Independence Payment Bill, and the misinformation that’s been spread to try and justify them (e.g. falsely claiming that PIP is an out of work benefit or is easy to get, which isn’t remotely true).

I wrote about the plans back in April after the Green Paper was released, and the government have been determined to push it through as quickly as possible since then because of all the backlash – which they knew full well it would generate from the outset but just didn’t care.

Yet despite having a sizeable majority of MPs, it’s not been as easy as they’d hoped, and there have been significant developments recently. If you follow me on Bluesky or X you’ll have seen me sharing several posts by others to raise awareness of what’s been going on, and I thought I’d do a quick update here to give my reaction to the latest events.

Contents

• Labour Rebellion
• First Concessions
• Second Reading Concessions
• Conclusion
• Updates

Labour Rebellion

The pressure put on Labour MPs by disabled people, support organisations, charities, families and others has certainly been worthwhile, as it persuaded 127 of them to sign up to a reasoned amendment, which would have scuppered the bill entirely if it had been voted on and passed.

In the amendment they acknowledged that the welfare system needs reform, that support should be provided to get people into work, and those who cannot work should be protected – and even disabled people agree with all of that in principle, just not the awful way the government are trying to achieve it.

However, the amendment objected to the bill because:

• It hadn’t been formally consulted on or co-produced with disabled people or their carers.
• The Office for Budget Responsibility won’t publish its review into the employment impact of the reforms until autumn.
• Most of the extra funding for employment support won’t be in place until the end of the decade.
• The Government’s own impact assessment estimated that 250,000 people will be pushed into poverty as a result of the reforms, including 50,000 children.
• The Government had not published an impact assessment on people’s health or care needs.
• The review by Stephen Timms, the Minister for Social Security and Disability, into the PIP assessment hasn’t been done yet, nor has Sir Charlie Mayfield’s independent review into the role of employers and government in boosting the employment of people with disabilities and long-term health conditions.

That’s quite a significant list, and shows just how poorly planned the bill has been. But the threat of that amendment, given the number of MPs backing it, along with the intensely damaging media coverage surrounding it, backed PM Keir Starmer into a corner with no easy way out.

First Concessions

The PM and his team then made so-called concessions in a desperate bid to win some of the rebels over, marking his third big U-turn since being forced to change course over the Winter Fuel Allowance and the grooming gangs inquiry. Keir Starmer’s first year in power has been defined by those 3 stories, which isn’t a good start!

He claimed the concessions had struck the right balance and that there is a moral imperative to fix the welfare system. But he was still clearly blind to, and totally dismissive of, the actual issues and concerns that disabled people have.

One of those concessions was blatant discrimination for a start. It said that those currently claiming PIP or the health element of Universal Credit will continue to receive what they currently get, and the cuts will only affect future claimants. But that would create a totally unacceptable two-tier system, in which disabled people in the future would be deemed as less important and receive less support than those now.

What’s more, if existing recipients were to come off their benefits and later re-apply, they would be caught by the new rules as well. So actually, hardly anybody would be immune from the cuts with that concession. It would just give the DWP even more incentive to refuse renewal claims in the future, in order to force people to reapply from scratch under the new regime.

I can only assume that, in their extreme naivety, the government thought it would be easy to put the bill through given their big majority, and that it would also give relief to people who are currently disabled, so that we’d stop pressurising our MPs to vote against the bill. But we’re not just interested in our own individual benefits, we want the whole community to be supported, now and in the future.

The government also announced that the comprehensive review of the PIP assessment will be co-produced with disabled people, disability organisations, and MPs who have a big focus on people with disabilities and long-term health conditions. But that raises the question of why they weren’t prepared to do that in the first place. The answer being that they already know how stressful and rigged the assessment process is, because it was designed that way to try and put people off applying and appealing, and they’d much rather make it even more difficult if they could.

It’s also hard to believe that they truly value our opinions, given that they refused to consult us on the key aspects of the Green Paper or these concessions, which speaks volumes as to the contempt in which we’re held. And just recently Liz Kendall pretty much admitted that no disability organisations support the bill and that she doesn’t care what they think anyway. Sure, I’m paraphrasing, but it’s hard to know how else to interpret her response to the question that was put to her.

So I don’t have any faith that the review really will be fair or that they will work with us properly to make the assessment process better, given the government’s clear agenda and attitude towards us. It really needs to be an independent review without political motivations interfering with it. But any review is better than none I guess, so we’ll have to wait and see. I’m happy to be proved wrong.

The government also said that they would speed up the £1 billion package of employment support scheduled for 2029 – but it’s totally unworkable according to DWP staff, and we know how inefficient the DWP are anyway.

Altogether, therefore, it was hard to see how these concessions were of any real benefit, because if anything they just made things worse, and failed to address the problems at the heart of the bill. They were really just an attempt by the PM and Liz Kendall to win just enough rebels over to their side to win the vote at Second Reading. They’ve been determined to push this bill through at any cost, despite the devastation many have told them it will cause.

Yet as it turned out, even those concessions weren’t enough.

Second Reading Concession

The government had successfully persuaded the rebel MPs to drop their first amendment because of the above concessions, and on Tuesday this week Liz Kendall insisted that the bill was now fit for purpose during a Commons debate. They seemed to think that they were making progress at last, and even if some MPs voted against the bill, they would have enough supporters to get it through.

But Rachael Maskell MP raised a new amendment, and gave an emotional speech in the Commons in defence of disabled people, who in turn were still pleading with their own MPs and dominating social media with their views as to why the bill should be scrapped.

While there weren’t quite as many Labour MPs backing the amendment, many were still seriously considering voting against the bill itself. And as the afternoon gave way to the evening, it became clear to the government that they were still facing a possible defeat at the Second Reading.

So at the last minute they made yet another U-turn, saying that the changes to PIP eligibility would not happen at all in November 2026 as originally planned, and instead they would wait for the outcome of the PIP assessment review (due to conclude by October 2026) and decide what to do then. Which would have been the logical thing to do in the first place.

It basically means they’ve removed Clause 5 about PIP eligibility from the bill entirely, gutting the legislation of one of its core pillars that Liz Kendall had been promoting for months. And in theory it’s hard to see how they can ever bring it back in its original form, especially the 4-point rule, given the reaction it got – although we certainly can’t be complacent on that front, as they will absolutely restore it if given the opportunity. Indeed, the disabled community have vowed to keep fighting as, like me, they don’t trust the government not to make cuts in the future.

So what with that, and all the other amendments, the bill has become severely weakened, which is deeply humiliating for the government. But the concessions were finally enough for the bill to be voted through, although the government only won by a margin of 75, which is pretty low considering they command a big majority of 156 seats.

That doesn’t mean it’s a done deal either, as the bill still has several stages to go through, which Labour are trying to accelerate as much as they can. After all, it still contains big cuts for those who get the health component of Universal Credit, any discussion of which has been rather drowned out by the PIP complaints, although I think it will become more prominent in the next wave of campaigning.

So the bill could – and should – still change, or ideally be withdrawn altogether, with the government going back to the drawing board. But the fact that they’re still pressing ahead with what’s left of the bill shows how desperate they are to salvage anything from it and get it out of the way.

Conclusion

So it’s reasonably good news for PIP claimants like myself, at least for the time being – but we can’t trust that the review will be fair or that there won’t be any damaging restrictions placed on the benefit in the future.

And the bill will still cause harm to many people, including many disabled people, because of the Universal Credit cuts – for which another amendment has been put on the table to try and stop it. This is far from over.

So if you still have concerns, it’s strongly recommended that you write to your local MP, especially if they’re Labour, as the more letters they get from concerned constituents, the less they can ignore it, as the recent rebellions have proved. It will certainly be interesting to see what happens to the bill going forward.

Updates

Since writing this post, there have been a few updates:

July 10: The weakened bill has passed its Third Reading, so those on Universal Credit are still at risk of cuts. And while Stephen Timms has sought to provide reassurances regarding the involvement of disabled people in the PIP review, I still don’t believe that it will truly be fair, as it certainly won’t be independent.

July 17: Rachel Maskell is among 4 MPs who Keir Starmer has now suspended over their rebellion, removing the party whip so they have to sit as independent MPs. In other words, the vindictive PM has punished them for listening to and supporting disabled people. Just further proves his attitude towards us!