Work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall has refused to apologise after repeatedly misleading MPs by suggesting that her planned cuts of billions of pounds to personal independence payment (PIP) were linked to supporting disabled people into work.
On four occasions in just 23 minutes during work and pensions questions in the Commons on Monday, Kendall replied to questions about her plans to cut spending on PIP by £4.5 billion a year – laid out in March in the Pathways to Work green paper – by speaking about Labour’s plans for disability employment.
Sir Stephen Timms, the minister for social security and disability, also answered a question about the PIP cuts by talking about employment support.
Both ministers will be aware that PIP is not an out-of-work benefit, and that it can be claimed by disabled people who are in or out of work.
But Labour ministers have repeatedly responded to criticism of the planned cuts to PIP, since they were announced in March, by speaking instead about their plans for disability employment.
On Monday, Labour’s Imran Hussain asked Kendall at 2.36pm about the 41,000 disabled people in Bradford who were “rightly horrified” by the PIP cuts, which “has the potential to devastate the lives of tens of thousands of people in Bradford overnight”.
But in reply, Kendall said: “We want to improve people’s chances and choices by supporting those who can work to do so and by protecting those who cannot.”
When Conservative MP Sir Roger Gale, who himself has a long-term health condition, asked about the PIP cuts, Kendall said the government would be “consulting with disabled people about how to build our £1 billion a year employment support programme, and we will make sure that those who can never work will be protected”.
She was then asked by Labour’s Rachael Maskell about the impact of the PIP cuts on public services, particularly adult social care, but told her: “We have clear evidence that being in work is good for people’s health: good work is good for people’s physical and mental health.”
And when Green MP Sian Berry suggested that the PIP cuts were “cruel and wrong”, Kendall told her – at 2.59pm – that “disabled people who are out of work and economically inactive are more likely than non-disabled people to say they want to work, and if they are in work, they are half as likely to be poor”.
When Sir Stephen was asked by Liberal Democrat work and pensions spokesperson Steve Darling about the “300,000 people set to be plunged into poverty” by the PIP cuts, he joined Kendall in misleading MPs by telling him: “The crucial thing is to improve the employment support for people who are out of work on health and disability grounds.”
He then added: “At the moment there are 200,000 people out of work on health and disability grounds who say they would like to be in a job now, and could be in a job now, if they had the support they need.”
Asked by Disability News Service why Kendall repeatedly misled MPs, and whether ministers were refusing to engage honestly with questions about the PIP cuts because they realised the devastation it would cause to hundreds of thousands of disabled people, a DWP spokesperson refused to comment.
Kendall also announced during work and pensions questions on Monday that the government had started its review of the PIP assessment process.
She said the government was now beginning the review’s “first phase”, and that Sir Stephen was “inviting in stakeholders this week to develop the scope and terms of reference of this review”.
Sir Stephen appeared to suggest later that the review could lead to further cuts to support as he told MPs it would “consider whether the assessment criteria effectively target the right people at the right level”, and would “look at the descriptors and consider the points allocated to them”.
In the green paper, the government had said the work capability assessment would be scrapped, and that the PIP assessment would – from 2028 – assess eligibility for both PIP and the health element of universal credit.
The green paper made it clear that the government planned significant changes to the assessment process, which it said needed “modernising” as it was more than a decade since PIP was introduced.
It pointed to “significant shifts in the nature of long-term conditions and disability, as well as changes in wider society and the workplace”, with increases in the number of people receiving PIP with “mental health or neurodiverse conditions as their primary condition”, while “increases in disability have been more marked among younger adults than older people”.
It also said the review would “shape a system of active support that helps people manage and adapt to their long-term condition and disability in ways that expand their functioning and improve their independence”.
And it warned that the review would “provide an opportunity to consider how to extend the goals and approach” of the green paper, which suggests that it could assist the government in further tightening eligibility for benefits.
Picture: Liz Kendall as she delivers each of her four misleading answers to MPs on Monday
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