Stride refuses to apologise for two untruths in TV interview on PIP cuts

Work and pensions secretary Mel Stride has refused to apologise for misleading viewers twice in a television interview about his plans to cut disability benefits.

On the day he launched a new green paper that described the Conservative government’s plans to reform personal independence payment (PIP) to ensure it is “targeted at those most in need”, he told the BBC that PIP claimants received “thousands of pounds a month”.

This is not true. The highest amount any PIP claimant will receive is about £800 a month (or less than £740 every four weeks) for those requiring the highest levels of support for both mobility and daily living.

Stride, a former financial secretary to the Treasury, also told the BBC on Tuesday that PIP was “a benefit that has not been reviewed for over a decade”.

This was also untrue. There were two high-profile independent reviews of PIP, with the first published in 2014 and the second reporting in 2017, just seven years ago.

When he was questioned about this in parliament, by Labour’s Neil Coyle, he appeared to add a further untruth, telling him: “It is the case that there has not been a fundamental review of PIP on the basis that that has subsequently led to a change in that benefit.”

But Stride’s own green paper makes it clear that the government made significant changes to PIP after the two reviews.

It says: “We have continued to implement the recommendations of the independent reviews as we strive to shape PIP into a modern and dynamic benefit.”

When approached about the two comments, DWP only responded to the first one, claiming that Stride “misspoke” and had meant to say “thousands of pounds a year”, which he said during other interviews that morning.

The department refused to explain why he had wrongly claimed there had been no review of PIP for over a decade, and refused to say if Stride would apologise for either statement.

Under the plans for England and Wales, which are now out for consultation, ministers are considering making it harder to claim disability benefits and replacing cash-based payments with vouchers or one-off grants.

It is not the first time Stride has misled MPs and the public about disability benefits.

It took him just six days after he was appointed in 2022 to claim wrongly that there were 2.5 million people who were “long term sick” and “economically inactive” and who wanted to work.

In fact, the Office for National Statistics figures he was quoting did say there were 2.49 million working-age people who were economically inactive and described themselves as “long term sick” in the latest quarter of that year (June to August 2022), but those figures also showed that only 581,000 (23 per cent) of this group wanted a job.

The 12-week PIP consultation closes on 23 July.

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