Cutting PIP would only increase pressure on other services, MPs warn minister

A cross-party committee of MPs has warned the government against using the Timms Review to cut disabled people’s access to personal independence payment (PIP), which it said would only increase pressure on other services.

The warning came in a letter from Labour MP Debbie Abrahams, chair of the Commons work and pensions committee, to Sir Stephen Timms, the minister co-chairing the review.

The review is currently testing its draft recommendations through a series of workshops, but there are concerns that ministers are planning cuts to at least some cash payments.

Earlier this month, analysis of findings from the British Social Attitudes Survey showed the public – including those supporting right-wing parties – strongly oppose cuts to spending on disability benefits.

Abrahams tells Sir Stephen in her letter that her committee concluded in a report last year that increased levels of spending on PIP were linked to “rising ill health, financial insecurity, disabled people’s exclusion from work and gaps in public services, particularly NHS mental health provision”.

And she says that cutting PIP would “further increase pressure on other services”.

She also says that the committee had questioned in a letter to the government last year whether proposed cuts to PIP spending – which were later abandoned – were “being pursued without sufficient evidence about PIP’s purpose, claimant impacts and potential unintended consequences”.

That letter warned that cuts to disability and incapacity benefits could “push people deeper into poverty, worsen health, especially in more deprived areas, and move people further from the labour market”.

It had been written in May 2025 as Sir Keir Starmer’s government was trying to push through severe cuts to PIP spending, which were later withdrawn in the face of anger from disabled people and allies, and opposition from Labour backbenchers.

The latest letter from Abrahams was published days after the government released draft recommendations from the PIP review, which suggest ministers are planning cuts to some PIP cash payments.

Abrahams says in her letter that ministers need to be aware in drawing up their reforms that “disabled people are more likely to live in poverty” than any other group.

She also says that the committee is “concerned” about the review’s approach to co-production, which fails to ensure that its disabled members “have shared power in decision-making”.

In the letter, she asks Sir Stephen a series of questions about the review’s approach to co-production, including how it has ensured participation by “people with different impairments, conditions, ethnic backgrounds, age groups and locations, and how it has engaged disabled people’s organisations of different sizes”.

She says she hopes DWP can build on its experience of co-production through the review and in its approach to safeguarding so that co-production is placed “at the heart of policy making and operational delivery”.

Abrahams also questions why – when publishing its draft recommendations – the review had not released its proposals for changing PIP assessment criteria and descriptors.

It is in this area where ministers are most likely to reveal whether – and how – they plan to cut future spending on PIP.

Sir Stephen is due to respond to the committee’s letter by 16 October.