When the government first announced that it would be conducting a review of personal independence payment (PIP) in the Pathways to Work Green Paper back in March, it was little more than an aside and barely attracted attention. The first comprehensive review of the disability benefit for working-age adults since PIP was created, the Green Paper billed the Review as a ‘major undertaking’ and suggested that it could lead to a significant reshaping of this crucial benefit and the vital support it provides for disabled people. But the announcement of the Review was quickly overshadowed by the furore caused by huge proposed cuts to eligibility for that same benefit.
Fast forward just a few months and that review of PIP, now universally referred to as the ‘Timms Review’, has taken on significant political importance. What was originally an afterthought in the debate around the infamous ‘four-point rule’ has now taken centre stage, ultimately playing a leading role in that measure being dramatically dropped altogether from what is now called the Universal Credit Bill.
The government has now committed that the Review will be ‘co-produced’ with disabled people, with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) set to detail what this will look like in practice in the coming months. As well as resolving questions around process, the Review will also have to grapple with a range of complex and significant policy questions in relation to the future of PIP.
The Terms of Reference for the Review set out the government’s concerns around the rise in disability benefit claims and disability prevalence – which has been interpreted in some quarters as a hint that the government still intends to restrict eligibility for PIP along the lines of the discredited four-point rule. But rather less attention has been paid to two other important but knotty questions with which the Timms Review will have to grapple: the implications for PIP of scrapping the work capability assessment, and the relationship between PIP and work.
Scrapping the work capability assessment will require a rethink of the purpose of PIP
The government set out in March that it plans to scrap the work capability assessment (WCA). This is the test which determines whether someone should receive additional financial support through universal credit (which I will call ‘UC-Health’) if they have a serious health condition or disability that prevents them from being able to work. Instead of undergoing a WCA, a claimant’s eligibility for UC-Health will be determined by whether or not they receive the daily living component of PIP.
The intention, as the Pathways to Work Green Paper set out, is effectively to remove the concept of ‘work capability’ from the process of determining whether someone should be entitled to additional financial support in the social security system. Instead, the government is proposing that the only way someone should be able to receive additional support from the social security system is if they qualify for PIP, the disability benefit for working-age adults.
But there are some significant problems with this. PIP is intended to enable disabled people to meet the extra costs that arise directly from their disability. This could include costs such as needing to take taxis instead of public transport because of a mobility problem, or needing to purchase specific equipment as the result of a health condition. But these are not the only circumstances in which a disabled person might need support with costs because of their disability.
For disabled people who are unable to work there is a clear, separate need for additional support to meet standard costs like bills, clothing and furniture. These might not, strictly speaking, be ‘extra’ costs that arise directly from their disability, and they might well be costs that would be similar for a non-disabled person. But they are still costs that a disabled person needs extra support to meet if they cannot work, often indefinitely, as a result of their disability, whereas a non-disabled person might be able to cover them using employment income.
This matters in relation to the plan to link UC-Health to PIP. According to government data, over 600,000 people who currently receive UC-Health do not receive the daily living component of PIP.[1] Without any changes to the PIP eligibility criteria, people in this group – all of whom have been assessed by DWP as being seriously restricted from working – stand to lose out on up to £423/month as a result of these plans. While some of these people may well be awarded PIP if they applied for it, it is also likely that many will simply not be eligible, given that the criteria for each benefit are different.
The Green Paper does recognise this, noting that the DWP is ‘considering’ how abolishing the WCA would affect people who currently qualify ‘due to non-functional special circumstances’, and therefore may not be eligible for PIP. But it’s far from clear what this will look like in practice.
To complicate things further, the importance of protecting the incomes of disabled people who cannot work became a major political flashpoint during the UC Bill process. Under the UC Bill, the government is proposing to cut the rate of UC-Health by over £200/month for new claimants. But the government, seemingly under significant political pressure, introduced a safeguard in the form of the ‘severe conditions criteria’, which are intended to provide that disabled people who will never be able to work will continue to receive the higher rate of support. (Questions about the extent to which the design of these criteria actually fulfils this aim have been raised by a number of organisations, including Z2K).
The introduction of a protected higher rate of support for people who cannot work directly jars with the government’s intention to abolish the concept of ‘work capability’ within the social security system. If the government is to continue meeting this important commitment to protect the incomes of disabled people who cannot work – and it will no doubt continue to come under significant pressure from parliamentarians and the public to do so – then it needs to work out a way to continue protecting disabled people who cannot work. This has been made more difficult by the fact that the ‘severe conditions’ criteria are based on the activities and descriptors within the work capability assessment, which the government has committed to abolishing.
However the government decides to change the eligibility criteria for PIP as a consequence of abolishing the WCA, it’s clear that it needs to start from a place of rethinking the policy intent of PIP. We need to move beyond the current narrow conception of ‘extra’ costs that arise directly from disability, and instead consider in the round all of the costs that a disabled person needs support with as a consequence of their disability.
The link between PIP and work has to be considered
The government has been very clear that its main intention in relation to health and disability benefits reform is to ensure that the system is focused on supporting more disabled people into work. But currently the question of reforming PIP sits rather uneasily alongside this.
Government ministers received some flak for repeatedly talking in parliament and media interviews about the importance of supporting more people into work whenever they were asked about plans to restrict eligibility for PIP, given that PIP is not an out-of-work benefit and its eligibility is not assessed on the basis of work capability. But when pressed on the detail, ministers were clear that they did not see the four point rule as being intended to increase employment, and that this measure was instead focused on reducing ‘unsustainable’ levels of spending on disability benefits. When setting out the official rationale for the four point rule, the Green Paper said nothing about increasing disability employment.
When it comes to ensuring that the benefits system more effectively supports disabled people into work, the government has primarily focused on incapacity benefits. This focus led to its plans to cut the rate of UC-Health in order to ‘rebalance’ the system and remove ‘perverse incentives’ to apply for additional support on the basis of being unable to work, as well as the decision to abolish the work capability assessment altogether as discussed above. This focus on incapacity benefits in relation to disability employment has been shared by the vast majority of policy commentary on this issue. This has come at the detriment of considering the extent to which the design and delivery of PIP deters disabled people from trying work or increasing their hours.
Our clients do not see their benefit income in isolation. Although PIP is not means-tested, it is often perceived as an out-of-work benefit by claimants. Although many people who receive PIP are in work, this is the minority of claimants (only around 1 in 6). And while PIP is not focused on work capability in the way that the WCA is, it is still a functional assessment in which eligibility for financial support is determined based on the claimant’s ability to perform certain prescribed activities independently. Obviously, the activities that a claimant can carry out as part of their job are relevant to making a determination about whether a claimants meets the functional criteria.
It is clear from previous Z2K research that some of our clients worry not just that they will lose their LCWRA payments if they enter the workforce or increase their hours, but also that they will lose out on their PIP payments. This has often been framed primarily as an issue of claimant perception and mistrust. While this is undoubtedly a major issue, our caseworkers do see claimants’ work status being cited by DWP in PIP decisions as evidence that their capabilities are greater than they are claiming, and that therefore they do not meet the eligibility criteria for PIP. Very often, these decisions are wrong, and are overturned on appeal. According to government statistics, nearly four in five appeals against PIP decisions are successful.
Given the extent to which the government is seeking to prioritise reforms that support disabled people into work, it would be a curious omission if the Timms Review avoided the question of the interrelation between PIP and disability employment entirely. There are a number of questions to explore here: the extent to which the PIP assessment and decision-making process deters disabled people from entering employment; the extent to which the design of the benefit more broadly produces such an effect; and how if at all PIP should be changed to address these issues.
The way forward
These are complex and important questions that will require considerable further exploration through the Timms Review. It will be vital that the DWP does all it can to work with disabled people and to absorb as much insight and expertise from other key stakeholders in order to ensure the Review is as robust as possible.
That’s why Z2K will be conducting a piece of research on PIP which will examine these questions in detail. We will look at how PIP will need to change as a result of the abolition of the work capability assessment, drawing on our legal expertise and data from our advice and representation services to explore in detail the gaps between the WCA and PIP criteria. We will also work with our clients to explore the issues with assessments and decision-making from the fresh angle of ensuring that the social security system is doing everything it can to support disabled people into work. We will be sharing our findings with the DWP to inform the direction of the Timms Review.
PIP and UC-Health are both vital sources of support for disabled people living in poverty, so it’s vital that the Timms Review gets PIP reform right. The wrong reforms could just end up pushing disabled people deeper into poverty, without achieving any of the government’s broader aims. Resolving these questions is not only about mitigating potential harms, but is also about seizing opportunities for the kinds of positive changes that are so desperately needed to fix our broken health and disability benefits system.
[1] Data published as part of the evidence pack alongside the Green Paper. 598,000 people receiving UC-Health do not receive PIP at all (see T1.1); 18,200 people receiving UC-Health receive the enhanced rate of the mobility component only, and a further 20,300 people receiving UC-Health receive the standard rate of the mobility component only (see T1.2).
