PIP review: Disability minister leading review warns there ‘may well be reductions’ in spending

The minister leading the review into personal independence payment (PIP) has told fellow MPs that there “may well be reductions” in spending on the disability benefit after the government publishes its final report later this year.

Sir Stephen Timms was speaking in parliament on the day he published the interim report from the Timms Review of Personal Independence Payment.

He was responding to former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, now the Westminster leader of Your Party, who asked whether the report accepted “the principle that personal independence payments – which are incredibly valuable – are based on an assessment of the needs of people, rather than a Treasury-based limit on spending”.

Sir Stephen told him that the review’s steering group had to “stick within” the “currently predicted” future spending levels of PIP.

And he added: “I think that there may well be reductions, because if we do all the things that we have been talking about, we can do a better job for both disabled people and the taxpayers whose taxes are paying for the system.”

Sir Stephen also suggested that the review’s steering group was considering whether some disabled people should be offered support services instead of a PIP cash payment.

He was responding to a call from Conservative MP Joe Robertson, who claimed cash payments for “some people with conditions such as ADHD” should be scrapped and some of the money “invested in better health and community services, some of it invested in technology, and some of it to incentivise businesses to go on and employ the six in 10 young people* who are not in education, training or work”.

Sir Stephen told him: “The steering group is clear that the provision of cash to meet the additional costs of disability is vital.

“We will not be moving away from the importance of that, but I think there is a question about whether the process can also point people towards help that may be valuable to them in addition to, or in some cases perhaps instead of, a cash payment.

“There is help and support that people need, and I think the process could help to point people to that.”

But he was warned by a Labour MP, Lewis Atkinson, that waiting-lists for one of these possible avenues of support, mental health care through the NHS, had not been falling and that the “longest waits have increased since last December, and the government need to get a grip on it”.

Sir Stephen told SNP’s Kirsty Blackman that the government’s priority was to both reduce spending on PIP and ensure disabled people’s human right to support.

Blackman asked whether the priority was “to reduce the bill, to reduce the amount of money that we are spending, or to ensure that disabled people can access all the human rights that the rest of us can, access society and be supported”.

The minister replied: “Our objective must be both the things that [she] refers to.

“We need a system that works well for disabled people and that helps to remove unnecessary barriers that too often hold them back, but we also need to create a system that has the confidence of taxpayers, which is the objective of our review.”

He appeared to accept criticism of the culture of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) from Labour’s Alison Hume.

She said the DWP culture “far too often harms the very people it is meant to support”.

Sir Stephen told her he hoped the review’s final report would be “a mechanism for changing the culture in the department and the way that it and, I hope, the wider government work”.

Labour’s former shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, warned the minister of the “invidious smearing” of young people with mental health conditions, including by MPs, and called on Sir Stephen to “publish detailed analysis of that issue as soon as possible to give us a greater understanding of it, so that we can perhaps avoid the stigmatisation of these young people”.

Sir Stephen said it was “very important that that evidence is properly sifted and assessed in the course of our work, and we will do that”.

He also assured Labour’s Nadia Whittome that disabled people and their organisations would shape the next phase of the reforms, telling her: “The co-production approach that we have taken so far will be the approach that we take throughout the review.

“Over the summer, we will be formulating our initial thoughts about conclusions and recommendations and then, in September or October, we will be discussing them with disabled people and disabled people’s organisations and we will hold events in different parts of the country to ensure that it is disabled people who are shaping the final conclusions that we bring forward.”

Meanwhile, the Scottish government has confirmed that the changes imposed on Motability customers in the rest of the UK will apply to those taking out a new lease on the equivalent scheme in Scotland from 1 September.

Those changes were announced by Motability after chancellor Rachel Reeves used last November’s budget to impose VAT at 20 per cent and remove the current 12 per cent insurance premium tax exemption on most new Motability leases from this July in most of the UK.

Motability is meeting some of these extra costs through changes including a lower mileage allowance, increased excess mileage charges, and limiting tyre replacements for most of those taking out new leases.

Disability News Service reported last week that the tax changes announced by Reeves last November are set to cost disabled people who take out a new lease on a Motability car much more than £400 each on average.

Discussions with the Scottish government have now led Motability to provide clarity on the support it will provide some customers “with the highest travel needs” across the UK, and to announce the start date for the scheme changes in Scotland.

This support – additional mileage allowances at lower or zero cost – could be offered to those who would otherwise exceed the new lower mileage allowance because much of their travel is for healthcare, education or employment, while some customers in rural areas will receive up to 3,000 extra miles a year on their lease before they need to pay excess mileage charges.

*The source of this figure is not clear, as a parliamentary briefing last month stated that 13.5 per cent of 16-24-year-olds were currently NEET, although it is possible he is suggesting that six in 10 young people with ADHD are NEET

Picture: (From left to right) Jeremy Corbyn, Sir Stephen Timms and Alison Hume