New details about the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) shelved cuts for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) demonstrate this contemptuous Labour Party government’s penchant for providing misleading figures in a bid to downplay the impacts of its callous welfare plans.
Rates of claimants meeting the 4 point policy at recent award reviews reveal that the government’s 370,000 losing their Daily Living allowance should have been more than DOUBLE that number. However, the DWP methodology made the outlandish assumption that ‘behavioural’ factors would cause a staggering 57% of those to score it.
One of these factors was astonishingly, simply that current claimants would be more ‘incentivised’ to get 4 points in a descriptor. Obviously PIP claimants have just been too lazy and unmotivated to score 4 points before, and it has absolutely nothing to do with a labyrinthine and inaccessible process that sets chronically ill and disabled people up to fail.
Scathing sarcasm aside, unsurprisingly, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) also branded the government’s raft of behavioural assumptions a “highly uncertain judgement”. Yet outrageously, this is what the DWP based its key estimate in the impact assessment on regardless.
DWP PIP cuts ditched, but not because it listened to disabled people
At the start of July, the Labour Party government made a last-minute, rushed U-turn on brutal plans to cut DWP PIP. Literally mid-debate, and only hours before it was to head to a vote, DWP minister Stephen Timms announced the government was dropping the dreaded ‘Clause Five’ from the bill. It subsequently tabled amendments to this effect – which MPs voted through on Wednesday 9 July.
Essentially, the clause encompassed the main PIP part of the bill. It prompted the government to rename it the Universal Credit Bill. Obviously, this reflected the fact it no longer contained the original policies designed to slash the disability benefit.
Minus this, the bill was still a toxic tribute to the worst of a longstanding right-wing obsession with austerity-riven welfare cuts. The remaining callous cuts to Universal Credit’s Limited Capability for Work Related Activity (LCWRA) health component will still push hundreds of thousands of chronically ill and disabled people into abject poverty. And the unconscionable cost of Labour’s vicious war on welfare will still be chronically ill and disabled people’s lives.
Of course, it was also only thanks to months of concerted campaigning from the community that Labour ditched its DWP PIP 4 point policy. MPs feeling the rage of their chronically ill and disabled constituents had been set to rebel against the bill. So, sensing defeat, the government pulled the clause. It was evidently in a desperate bid to save face and ram some version of the bill through parliament. And this most certainly was not the magnanimous ‘concession’ Timms presented. It has long been clear the government isn’t genuinely interested in listening to the voices of disabled people.
The danger hasn’t gone away…
There’s also nothing stopping the government from reintroducing this after Timm’s DWP PIP review. Moreover, it’s hard to imagine this duplicitous Labour government passing up the review as an opportunity to build ‘evidence’ and support for this. As the Canary’s Steve Topple already pointed out, which disabled people get a seat at the table will be telling. He argued that:
If it is charities such as MIND and Scope, then opposition to government changes will be weak – as these charities often fail to properly represent disabled people. MIND, for example, has historically had paid contracts with the DWP.
Regardless, any disabled people engaging with the review should be wary of this deceitful Labour government’s ulterior motives. From the start, it has operated with a cuts first, half-assed ‘support’ later mentality. If the PIP review is not a monumental stitch-up to pave the way for some version of its PIP cuts, it’d be damn surprising.
Now, what makes this even less conceivable, is the details of how the DWP misled with its key impact assessment figures.
1 in 10 PIP claimants unaffected? Disabled people call bullshit
For months, the government bandied about brazen claims that ‘only’ 1 in 10 current DWP PIP claimants would lose their Daily Living under their flagship disability benefit-slashing 4 point policy.
This was based on its impact assessment estimate. That showed that 370,000 current PIP recipients would lose their Daily Living allowance under the measure.
It was always a bullshit figure. Many pointed out that the number referred to a proportion of current PIP claimants affected. Specifically, it only accounted for those expecting award reviews between November 2026 and March 2030. In other words, because a significant number of PIP claimants aren’t due an award review in this time-frame, the estimate excluded a huge proportion from after this date.
To sum up then, the estimate isn’t derived from data on the total number of current DWP PIP claimants.
But notably, there’s also another reason why its underpinning figure – and corresponding claim – are utterly bogus. Specifically, it has to do with how it calculated this.
Something doesn’t add up
Instead, we knew from the OBR in March that the DWP used award review data to work this out. It used the date to calculate how many current PIP claimants could expect to fall short of the 4 point policy at their next review.
The proportion of recent award reviews not scoring 4 points in any descriptor was 52%. For future claimants, this was 58%. In other words, it looked at upcoming award review volumes. It then assumed that the new criteria would hit 52% of these. However, the DWP’s calculation then applied a so-called “behavioural response”. It was this which reduced the number down to the 370,000 the DWP presented in its impact assessments.
Through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, the Canary obtained the recent award review figures the DWP used. We also asked for these to show the breakdown between Enhanced and Standard Daily Living claimants:
The OBR projected in June that the DWP would conduct approximately 1.64 million award reviews. Specifically, this would be for the period between November 2026 and March 2030.
Using the OBR’s projected number, the DWP’s methodology would arrive at a substantially higher number. That is, far more current claimants would have lost their DWP PIP Daily Living entitlement. In particular, this would be before the DWP applied its so-called ‘behaviour response’. Specifically, this would amount to 859,360 current PIP claimants. It therefore comprises 728,160 on the standard Daily Living component, and 131,200 on the enhanced rate of this.
Yet, somehow, the DWP’s figure is less than half this total.
DWP PIP claimants just not trying hard enough, apparently
To get to this, the department explained to the Canary that it assumed:
a reduction in the numbers affected due to behavioural changes.
The DWP pointed the Canary back to OBR’s Economic and Fiscal Outlook for answers on what underpins this behavioural assumption. In particular, the OBR explained the reasoning for the vastly reduced estimate of DWP PIP claimants losing their Daily Living component. It was as follows:
- the strong financial incentive to qualify for the daily living component, with the standard rate currently £3,800 a year and the enhanced rate £5,600 a year, and to therefore demonstrate four points in at least one descriptor at assessment;
- that assessing whether a claimant qualifies for four points in any descriptor is a judgement that heavily relies on an assessors’ interpretation of the relevant criteria, and one which depends primarily on self-reported evidence rather than external medical evidence; and
- that these changes will lead to higher levels of mandatory reconsiderations and appeals among unsuccessful claimants, along with higher volumes of reclaims.
So, to start, the DWP seems to be effectively suggesting – baselessly – that people will be more motivated to meet those four points in a descriptor to keep their PIP entitlement. It’s as good as saying that the reason so many don’t at present is because they haven’t tried hard enough.
We shouldn’t have to spell out why this is utter nonsense. The DWP is laughing in the face of chronically ill and disabled people. Many have expended inordinate amounts of time, effort, and health attempting PIP assessments.
Seven in ten claimants have won appeals on the SAME evidence. Between 2019 and 2024, more than one in ten appeals lapsed or overturned resulted in claimants going from no award to the enhanced rate in both components.
Far be it though for the DWP to recognise its own glaring cock-ups. Instead, claimants falling foul of its 4 point policy are down to their own failures. There’s a strong tie in here to its disgusting rhetoric that paints gross notions of disabled claimants’ deficiencies of character. Think: lazy, scrounger, skiver, shirker tropes.
Damning evidence of DWP PIP failures tell a different story
It’s also then laughable that it effectively suggests assessors might award more people 4 points. This is especially ludicrous when so many assessors are getting awards so vastly wrong.
Then, to put some of its reduction down to more people applying for mandatory reconsiderations (MR) and appeals ignores the disgraceful present reality. Supposing chronically ill and disabled people are even in a health position to pursue an MR or appeal at tribunal – because many aren’t – there’re gargantuan backlogs anyway. As it stands, the DWP is making claimants wait over 10 months on average for appeals. In practice, it means disabled people are waiting more than a year to get DWP PIP entitlements.
Pursuing it takes time away from looking after their health. It swallows up work hours for those who can. It stops chronically ill and disabled people finding time for simple acts of enjoyment – which whatever the cesspit government and corporate media says – they DO deserve. Others, it might hold up searching for employment. It could eat up key hours that people who aren’t able to work could be using to apply for other state support. Needless to say, not everyone can even afford to go through the process.
That the DWP is ALREADY factoring in an uptick in applications for MRs and appeals says all you really need to know.
But in short, the DWP was basically determining that 57% of those that wouldn’t get 4 points under the current rates, will because of some very volatile, hugely presumptive behavioural factors its all-but pulled out its arse.
Labour lies: all part of its MO
Of course, what the figure also does not represent is the number of people up for award reviews between November 2026 and March 2030 who did not score four points in any descriptor at their last assessment. This would have arguably been a more honest and representative figure. However, that would also still ignore a huge number of people who didn’t score it, but are due award reviews after that date.
Thanks to a previous information request by Martin Bonner, we already know the full number who don’t score this. Shockingly, this was 209,000 people on the enhanced rate, and a further 1.1 million on the standard rate. Some of that 1.3 million will be getting the mobility component of DWP PIP. As such, that’s not the total number that would have lost the benefit. However, it still showed that the DWP’s figures fell far short of this. Now, we can see why there was such a huge disparity.
As it turns out, it was more despicable distortions from these remorseless, career politician truth twisters. Chronically ill and disabled people would do well to remember this. Ultimately, when push comes to shove, this Labour government will shaft us again without a second thought.
Featured image via the Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.