Ministers decided to sit on critical PIP report, just days before publishing ‘brutal’ green paper

Conservative ministers decided to hide a report that exposed the flaws of the “degrading” personal independence payment (PIP) system, just five days before they published proposals to replace PIP cash payments with vouchers or one-off grants, ministerial emails have revealed.

Disability News Service (DNS) has obtained copies of emails exchanged last year between ministers and advisers, which show how the minister for disabled people, Mims Davies (pictured above, left), was asked to approve the publication of four Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) research reports in January 2024.

One of those reports showed how the dishonest and unfair PIP assessment system left disabled people “broken”, “numb” and “fuming”.

When ministers finally made a decision, three months later, on 24 April, they decided to allow publication of three of the reports, but not the PIP research, with an email sent by a member of the ministerial team stating that ministers and special advisers were “not content to agree to publication” of that report.

Five days later, work and pensions secretary Mel Stride (pictured above, right) published his hugely controversial health and disability green paper, in which he said he was “concerned” about the growth in spending on PIP, and questioned whether this was “providing value to the public”.

Among its proposals – described as a “brutal, ideological attack” on disabled people’s support – the green paper suggested making it harder to claim PIP and even replacing cash payments with vouchers or one-off grants.

Researchers for the PIP report had interviewed disabled people who had been awarded zero points after being assessed for their PIP eligibility.

One of those interviewed, who had ME, and spent all but half an hour every day in bed, took three months to fill out his PIP claim form, but he said that when he tried to explain more about his case to the assessor, he was “cut off”.

Like all the interviewees, he was given zero points and so was found ineligible for any support with his disability-related costs.

The emails were released in response to a freedom of information request from DNS, following the new Labour government’s decision in October to publish the PIP report and 30 other papers commissioned by DWP under Conservative-led governments, but which were never released.

DNS had requested documents that showed why ministers refused to publish the PIP research report.

DWP provided just three short emails to DNS.

The first email was sent to Davies on 29 January 2024, asking if she wanted to publish the PIP research report.

The response, 10 days later – either from Davies or a member of her team – suggests “we should wait as there is a lot of thinking in this area”, and then warns: “Could set hare’s [sic] running and so not to publish while in this space of policy development.”

The final decision to prevent publication of the research, apparently from a member of Davies’s team, comes two-and-a-half months later, on 24 April, just five days before the green paper’s “brutal” attack on PIP was to be published.

In its freedom of information response, DWP said the three emails were “the only recorded information we hold” on the decision by ministers not to publish the PIP report.

Neither Davies nor Stride had responded by 11am today (Thursday) to a request to comment.

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