'I was barely existing before PIP': Benefit claimants say they're 'terrified' of Labour's cuts

Mandy Fox’s disability benefits are up for review – and she is “absolutely terrified”.

“It just makes you think I’m going to have to go back,” she tells Big Issue. “I don’t want to go back to what that was before PIP. I wasn’t living, I was barely existing.”

The grandma from Newcastle has applied for the renewal of her personal independence payment (PIP). The process – phone interviews with advisors from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), a series of complicated forms, letters in the post – made her feel like she’d “done something wrong”.

Read more:

• Meet the rebel Labour MPs voting against disability benefit cuts: ‘I don’t want to be part of it’
• Labour’s disability benefit cuts will force nearly half a million people to turn to food banks
• Tens of thousands of households face a ‘triple hit’ of benefit cuts as part of Labour’s reforms

“They ask you questions like, are you sure? I just wish they could spend a week with me. I mean, I know that’s really silly to say, but then you’d see that I need it.”

Fox is one of the 3.7 million Brits who claim PIP, a benefit that helps people who have a long-term physical or mental illness or disability.

But new reforms could see some hundreds of thousands of people lose this support entirely. In March, the DWP proposed sweeping cuts to PIP and the health component of universal credit.

These proposals were tabled in parliament on Wednesday (18 June). Just five minutes away, more than 700 people – including Fox – had gathered to slam proposed cuts and to call for an overhaul of the UK benefit system at a lobby day organised by Trussell.

Trussell food bank managers and volunteers from across the country are calling for an ‘essentials guarantee’: demanding that the basic rate of universal credit should at least cover the cost of essentials like food, household bills and travel.

Lauren Pritchard, a local organiser from South and East Bristol Foodbank, described the current system as “failing”.

“We see people who are stuck in cycles of poverty,” she told Big Issue. “One of the most heartbreaking stories I had was a lady who called up a few weeks ago actually said, ‘I’ve got a voucher. Can I still use it?’ It was from 2019. She had been struggling since then, limiting her meals, not eating, but she was too scared to use her food bank voucher because ‘things could always get worse’.

“That’s how scared people are.”

Pritchard herself also receives disability benefits. But under the proposed cuts – outlined in more detail by Big Issue here – she fears losing her benefit.

Applying for benefits in the first place was a “horrific” process. She had to go to a tribunal in the magistrate’s court, an experience that left her “feeling like a criminal”.

“There is no way I would choose to do that, if I didn’t absolutely have to. No one is trying to cheat the system – you wouldn’t put yourself through that,” she said.

“I burst into tears because it’s horrible having to describe how actually, on my worst day, my mum needs to shower me as a 30-year-old. I have to sit there and go, ‘Actually, Mum, can you help me wash?’ And that’s humiliating. And then you’ve got to relay that.

“And for the DWP to then say, we don’t think you deserve anything or need anything. You’re going, ‘Am I just a drain?’ Then am I just seen as worthless to society?”

Parliament is expected to vote on the cuts within the next few weeks.

The DWP published an impact assessment into these cuts, showing 370,000 current PIP claimants are forecast to lose their daily living payment by 2029/30, cutting their benefits by £4,500 a year each on average. It has subsequently admitted that 70,000 more people will lose their benefits.

The government has framed the cost-cutting as a moral imperative – a way of encouraging people back into work. But PIP recipients question that logic.

“PIP is one of the reasons why I can get into work,” Pritchard said. “It helps to pay for things like my transport. It means that I can work part time because I can’t physically work full time.”

 Likewise, Fox says that the PIP payment gave her the security she needed to start volunteering at a Trussell food bank.

“PIP put me right. I had a granddaughter that lived with me, lived with me, all my life, and as long as she ate, you know, I’d go without food,” she said. “It’s not that we want it [PIP]. We need it. We need it.

Sharron Spice – a lived experience partner with Trussell – says that benefits are “not enough to live on”.

“It’s an everyday struggle, and it affects your mental health. Like I’m a really positive person, but within eight weeks I was a shadow of myself,” the Londoner says. 

“To cut it [benefits] even more, I think it’s horrendous. The government needs to review and reflect and see that this policy is not going to work.”

Jacob Forman is the director of Epping Forest Foodbank. 

“People that really, really get trapped in this system through no fault of their own,” he said.

“There’s one guy who sticks my mind. His housing benefit is basically £200 less than what he needs to pay his landlord, and his universal credit just doesn’t cover it, and he can’t work, and he’s waiting on a PIP assessment, and in the meantime, that £200, he has to pay it from somewhere, so he’s getting in more and more debt.”

Comedian Nish Kumar was also at the Trussell lobby day. He slammed the government for launching “consistent financial assaults” on the disabled community.

“Keir Starmer pledged no return to austerity. But this is austerity. You can pop a pig in a hat, and it’s still a pig,” he told Big Issue.

“We hear a lot of talk about Labour values from the front bench, but you know this is not consistent with Labour values. We should have a benefit system that is commensurate with the reality of people’s day to day lives.”

“People on benefits didn’t tank the economy. People on benefits are not responsible for the situation that the country finds itself in today.”

Some 9.3 million Brits are facing hunger and hardship, Trussell estimate – including three million children.

The benefit cuts will “undoubtedly” worsen things, warned chief executive Emma Revie.

“It feels really significant that we’ve shown up on such an important day where the government are asking MPs to consider £7 billion worth of cuts to disabled people’s social security,” she said.

“To be taking money away from people who are already struggling to make ends meet, just feels cruel and is wrong.”

Three quarters of Trussell food bank users are disabled or live with someone who is disabled.

Revie urged the government to reconsider its position, pointing out discontent among backbenchers.

“There’s still time to think again about these cuts,” she said. “Liz Kendall has said how passionate she is about ensuring actually that people can afford the essentials. We need to reconcile that aspiration with these policy changes and the cuts that the Treasury are looking for should not be born on the shoulders of those people who are least able to bear them.”

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