Personal Independence Payment

And once the clinician has done that, that then enables the patient or with support from their family or with support from a benefits advisor to actually access increased benefits.

So in the case of people under state pension age, that would be personal independence payment.

Uh, and for those over state pension age, that would be attendance allowance.

And, um, it's a significant amount of money for people.

Personal independence payment is a hundred and ninety-four pound a week.

So, um, and it's not means tested, so people can still be working.

It won't affect their pension.

And you mentioned that for a lot of people, that means they'd get those payments within two to three weeks.

So people's fear is if they take steps to, whether it's getting into work, whether it's getting out into their community, that that will be used to take away the support, which is their only means of survival.

And that is a well-founded fear because even though something like PIP is not supposed to be me- is not supposed to be linked to something like employment status, there are lots of examples where people have lost PIP because they did what everyone is telling them to do, which is try and get into work.

So reducing that fear is crucial to getting a system which actually gets the outcomes we want.

The third thing, really quickly, is when we're connecting people with support, it needs to actually work.

Uh, it's not working for those who are seriously sick and disabled, who are often really struggling.

We're talking about some examples of that.

It's also not working for those who are less, uh, sick and disabled, but finding that, uh, having an income through a combination of Universal Credit, Universal Credit Health, uh, and PIP, uh, even though, of course, as you just said, Helen, that PIP is a benefit that you can get whether you are in or out of work.

The reality of it is that people really worry that they will lose, uh, their PIP if they do work, and there are examples of people, in fact, for whom that has happened.

For some time now, RNIB, along with other charities, have been petitioning and questioning the UK government over its plans for a shakeup of the welfare system, and in particular, we're looking at personal independence payments today.

Now, they only form about eight percent of the overall DWP budget.

Fraud is very low, so why do the government want to make these changes? We've got, uh, Ross Megan from RNIB with us now.

And some of that evidence base, those evidence gaps have led to some of the kind of disagreements we've seen between, for example, the OBR and the Treasury at some of the previous attempts to reform various parts of the social security system.

In terms of what we can learn from the past, if we go back to spring 2025, setting aside the content of the reforms for a moment, there was a real problem of government not laying the groundwork and trying to explain why they were doing various parts of reform there, as well as the relatively crude approach that was taken to the cuts to PIP in that, which were unpopular on their own merits.

there was also a real problem with political communication.

And the lesson here is not that it's not possible to reduce spending on the social security system if that's your objective.

What would you like to see in this government's approach to tackling health-related inactivity? And maybe what is it that would make you and other Labour MPs more likely to support reforms?

Well, first of all, I should say very clearly, we need to tackle health related inactivity.

It is shocking that so many young people aged 18 are going straight on to PIP when they've got perhaps a mental health problem where the NHS needs to be stepping in and supporting them.

So this solution isn't just one part of government.

Why not just, for a start, put £25 a year on everybody's rate belt? which generates about 50 million, give or take, a year.

And another thing, which would be slightly controversial, but again, wouldn't really hurt anyone, the likes of PIPs, which is non-means-tested benefit, reduce it by £5 a week for everyone.

That generates another something like 70 million a year.

So you're talking about targeting...

It hasn't hurt anyone? You want to reduce PIP? You want to reduce benefit payments? People who are on a disability benefit, who you want to target?

Even some people on the Gilex PIPs on the high rate of it, it's £800 a month, give or take.

And some

people are on a high rate of disability benefits because you need every penny of it in order to survive in this country.

Edwin, what are the terms of reference for that review? What are we expecting it to be talking about?

So it's looking at- Options for reforming the disability benefit system, so that's personal independence payment for working age adults.

Um, and it's broadly been set an envelope to not increase spending relative to current projections.

So we're probably expecting it to either bring forward proposals which change how the system works, but roughly keeps the spending at the same level or bring forward proposals which they expect, um, might save money.

Um, but they've also said some other things of what they may or may not do, so maybe worth starting with one of those.

They've said they're not going to means test the benefit, although notably other people, Reform UK, for example, do still want to, uh, means test it.

Tom, I think this speaks to basically what personal independence payments are for.

Um, and in the chapter that you guys wrote, there was, uh, we spent a lot of time writing about the, the rationales for such a benefit.

Thankfully, it was never tested.

From BBC Radio 4's In Touch programme, We hear a little more about the review that's being carried out by the government into personal independence payments.

Among the offerings from TNF Soundings, Roger Brooks will be along with another of his quizzes.

There is also a feature about the visit of Laurel and Hardy to the UK back in the early 1950s.

Yes, myself some good news to share.

Thanks, Toby.

We'll hear next about the current situation into the government's review into personal independence payments.

This comes from InTouch, which was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on the 18th of August and was presented by Peter White.

Yeah

... need to be on, uh, personal independence payment.

But I just don't accept that the rates at which we're seeing it climb, uh, can be realistic, can be a genuine reflection of, uh, something wider going on in the country.

We know this morning a report out saying that autism and ADHD diagnoses, which lead to payouts for up to £10,000 a year for PIP, are rising fastest in wealthy areas.