'Incentivising work' or instilling fear? How making the benefits system meaner has backfired

Proposals for cutting disability benefits – and in particular personal independence payment (PIP), the disability benefit for working-age adults – are back in the news again. Last week, Reform UK unveiled a plan to cut billions of pounds of spending on PIP, targeting people receiving the benefit because they have mental health problems. And earlier this week, the Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch dialled up attacks on the government over the issue, pointing to her party’s own proposal to restrict eligibility for PIP.

One argument used to justify proposals for cutting disability benefits is that doing so boosts the economy and generates growth by ‘incentivising’ more disabled people to enter work. When setting out his party’s proposals, MP Lee Anderson, Reform UK’s spokesperson on social security, claimed that PIP provides some people “an excuse not to go to work”. Badenoch similarly suggested that cutting spending on PIP would lead to more people entering work, echoing rhetoric used by the government when justifying its own ill-fated attempt to narrow eligibility for PIP.

The most obvious flaw in this argument is that PIP is not an out-of-work benefit, and many people who receive PIP (around one in six) are in work. But the claim that there is no link between PIP and work is overstated. Although the PIP assessment is not explicitly focused on work, many of our clients who receive PIP tell us that they fear losing this support if they were to try work.

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Does that mean that the problem with our disability benefits system is that it’s too generous? Is it too easy to qualify for PIP, giving disabled people an easy option to avoid work? New research from Z2K finds that precisely the opposite is true. Far from being too generous, it’s precisely the meanness of our disability benefits system that is holding some disabled people back from trying work.

PIP was introduced by the David Cameron government as one of its key ‘welfare reform’ measures, in a period that was notorious for its ‘strivers vs scroungers’ rhetoric. It was a significant plank of that government’s austerity programme and had an explicit aim of reducing spending on disability benefits by 20%. PIP failed to achieve these desired savings, but this cuts-focused intent left a legacy of cruelty that can be found in the operation of the PIP assessment system today. Harsh decision-making is rife: the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) routinely refuses perfectly legitimate claims for PIP, with nearly four in five appeals leading to the original decision being overturned.

Our new report – Ending the Culture of Fear: Reforming the PIP assessment system to get decisions right first time – reveals just how counterproductive this punitive system is. Working with clients and case records from Z2K’s advice and representation services, we found evidence that poor PIP decision-making is creating a culture of fear which is leaving disabled people afraid to take steps towards work in case it is used against them by DWP at a future PIP assessment.

This fear is justified. We found numerous cases where the DWP had wrongly used someone’s work experience as evidence that they did not meet the functional criteria for PIP, only for the decision to be overturned by a tribunal following a lengthy and distressing appeals process.

Our report identifies three areas where the current PIP system is going wrong. Firstly, assessors are failing to apply the PIP eligibility criteria correctly. Secondly, disabled people’s medical evidence is being misinterpreted or ignored. Finally, assessors are placing excessive weight on their own poor-quality observations, frequently undermining the disabled person’s own account of how their condition affects them.

Working with people who receive PIP, we then mapped out what a better system might look like. To bring an end to this counterproductive cycle of cuts and punishment, we are calling for the government to change the PIP assessment system. This should include moving away from the model of assessment as default, fast-tracking claims for people meeting certain prescribed medical criteria, and improving decision-makers’ and claimants’ understanding of the eligibility criteria. In short, meaningful reform – not more blunt cuts or punitive measures – is what is needed to end the culture of fear and reduce barriers to work for disabled people.

The question, then, is whether the government recognises the mistakes of the past and is ready to act. The attempt to bring forward savings-focused restrictions to PIP eligibility earlier this year – along with continuing media speculation that the prime minister and chancellor still have a long-term ambition to make cuts to the social security budget – might suggest that it doesn’t and isn’t.

But there have also been some encouraging recent signs. Last week the government published an updated terms of reference for its highly-anticipated review of PIP, known as the Timms Review. Here the government said that the review is not intended to “generate proposals for future savings” and will instead focus on reforming PIP so that it is “fair and fit for the future”. Although it’s still very early days, this is a welcome commitment.

The government must now use the Timms Review to make a decisive break from the past and reform PIP to create a system that gets decisions right first time and removes the fear and uncertainty that is currently holding both disabled people and the government’s own ambitions back.

Ayla Ozmen is director of policy and engagement at the anti-poverty charity Z2K. Z2K’s new report, Ending the Culture of Fear: Reforming the PIP assessment system to get decisions right first time, can be read in full online here.

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