Welfare Reform

Baroness Watkins of Tavistock Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend, and I am really grateful to her for clarifying that. Those of us who spend a lot of time in the weeds of social security policy have to remember to be clear what we are talking about at different times. To be absolutely clear—I know that Members of this House will know—PIP is a non-means-tested, non-taxable benefit and will stay so, and it is claimable in and out of work. Roughly 17% of people who get it are in work, and we hope that more will do so in future.

My noble friend’s broader point is extremely important. To tackle the disability employment gap, we need to do a number of different things. One is to tackle the underlying conditions. For example, she mentioned mental health. We have seen growing challenges in mental health in this country, but the Government have invested very heavily—for example, with young people, in specialist mental health professionals in every school. Our youth guarantee for young people will improve access to mental health services. We are also investing heavily in the NHS to try to get waiting lists down and to support people into mental health services.

We also have to make sure that employers are able to do their bit. I am really excited and looking forward to the report that we will get soon from the former chair of John Lewis, which will look at how we can support employers, what more employers can do and what barriers there are to employers taking on sick and disabled people. We are going to tackle it on all fronts, but I am grateful to her for raising that.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a current non-executive director of NHS England. Will the Minister explain whether it the Government intend to return to face-to-face PIP claims, including a biannual review for the majority of claimants? If not, what are the reasons behind that? The Timms review continues, and none of us wants people who are genuinely disabled to lose out, but we also know that the online system has resulted in a lot of inappropriate claimants who have been successful. We need to deal with that, rather than wait for the outcome of the Timms review. In addition, will the Government review the Motability scheme, which the majority of taxpayers, particularly the lower paid, consider unnecessarily expensive, as new vehicles are normally provided every three years?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness raises a very important point about face-to-face assessments. There used to be face-to-face assessments; they were stopped during Covid and restarted only slowly and at quite a low level. We have said publicly that we want to ramp those back up again, so she raises an important point. On the Motability scheme, just for clarity, nothing in the proposals in the Bill now or in earlier incarnations affects the mobility element of PIP, only the daily living allowance, but I take her broader point and I will be happy to have a look at that.