Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill

Deirdre Costigan Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)]

I want to begin today not with statistics or slogans, but with the reality of just one life: a constituent of mine, Sarah, from Hassocks. Sarah has a spinal cord injury. She is a wheelchair user, and this is what her personal independence payment makes possible.

It pays for underwear that does not dig into her skin, wedge pillows to raise her legs, grabber sticks, so that she can pick things up off the floor, and a second wheelchair to keep upstairs. It covers the use of a specialist rehabilitation gym that keeps her as healthy as possible. It allows her to buy heated blankets for the cold weather, because the cold weather makes her pain worse. It pays for specialist outdoor clothes from Norway to cover her legs, and in hot weather, it pays for extra fans, because the heat makes her injured body swell.

Sarah’s PIP funds a CPAP—continuous positive airway pressure—machine that runs 24 hours a day, connected directly to the hospital, because she has developed sleep apnoea, and it pays for the additional electricity to keep it going. It pays for a specialist mattress to prevent pressure sores, bathing aides and specialist body wipes for when cleaning herself is just too difficult. It pays for extra fuel for an average of four medical appointments each month, some in Hassocks and some as far away as London, and it has helped to make her garden accessible so that there is at least one part of her home where she feels free. These are not luxuries; they are the bare essentials that allow Sarah to live in dignity, with some measure of independence.

Sarah told me she has no faith in the system operated by the Department for Work and Pensions and no trust that fair and just decisions will be reached, because in her experience, the DWP’s overriding drive is not to understand but simply to cut.

[Deirdre Costigan (Ealing Southall) (Lab)]

I wonder whether the hon. Member has told her constituent, Sarah, that under these proposals, nobody who is currently on PIP will have a single penny of their income cut, and they will be protected for time immemorial.

[Alison Bennett]

I did not need to explain that to Sarah—she fully understands that—and I am about to address that point.

The Government’s last-minute climbdown has brought Sarah no comfort, because she never imagined she would be in a wheelchair. She never thought her life would change forever in an instant, and she knows that for thousands of people, that change is still to come. Life can turn on a sixpence—a single diagnosis, a single accident—and suddenly we find ourselves in a world we never imagined, up against barriers we never thought we would face. When that happens, the welfare system should be there to support us, not abandon us.

It is not just disabled people themselves who will be harmed by this Bill; it is also the millions of family carers—the unpaid carers—whose labour sustains our entire health and social care system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ayoub Khan (Birmingham Perry Barr) (Ind)]

This Government’s Bill is not just flawed, but morally indefensible. From the outset, we need to be honest about what this Bill represents. It is not a reform; it is a calculated assault on some of the most marginalised people in our society—people with disabilities, people with complex mental health conditions and people already struggling under the weight of austerity and neglect. This Bill continues a pattern we have seen too many times, with cuts dressed up as reform and cruelty wrapped in the language of efficiency. The Department’s own assessment confirms the truth: 150,000 people will be pushed into poverty, approximately 20,000 of them children, if the Bill passes. That is not a side effect but the outcome, and the Government know it.

This Bill targets those with fluctuating, invisible or mental health conditions—the very people who already face systemic injustice. It imposes narrow functional descriptors that do not reflect the real-world barriers people face. It punishes people not for being unwilling to work, but for not fitting neatly into bureaucratic tick boxes. Worse still, there has been no meaningful consultation with disabled people or carers, and no engagement with those who live this reality every single day. The Government are making policy about disabled people without disabled people. That is not just neglect; it is offensive. The evidence is clear: the Government are looking to make savings by depriving thousands of their means to live while telling them that the planned changes will empower them.

According to research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, one in five people in receipt of PIP are already in paid employment and working to the limits that their condition allows. Of those, 60% will lose their PIP. These people are already in work. What more do the Government want? Why are they punishing them? In my constituency of Birmingham Perry Barr, 9,000 people rely on this vital payment, but nearly 4,000 are set to lose out entirely, including 630 people currently in work. What do the Government say to my constituents who will lose the income required to live with their condition? What do they say to the millions of families who will have to tighten their purse strings so they can pay for the basic needs of loved ones?

[Deirdre Costigan]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Ayoub Khan]

Worse still, just a year ago, when this Labour Government came to power, the people were promised change. The Prime Minister said on the campaign trail that those with the broadest shoulders should pay their fair share, yet only one year in this Government are stripping income from those who are most in need by telling disabled people that they are not impaired enough to earn state support.

[Deirdre Costigan]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Ayoub Khan]

This is nothing short of shameful, and if the Bill passes, it will be a national disgrace. The welfare state was built on the principles of solidarity, dignity and security, and this Bill tramples on those values. It will strip away independence, force people into deeper hardship and leave many with no safety net at all.

[Deirdre Costigan]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. I just make the point to the hon. Member that the hon. Gentleman is clearly not going to give way, which is in his gift.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

Welfare reform is important because the current system is not working and because it has a huge impact on the lives of so many individuals and families across the country. For the past 10 years in this place, I have seen so many of my constituents trapped in poverty with the constant fear and insecurity the current system brings, but we should not be in a position in which the Government are scrambling at the last minute to make changes to improve proposals that were not good enough when the Bill was tabled. While there are many positive measures in the Bill, we should not be here because the Government have had evidence since April of the extent of concerns from right hon. and hon. Members. Those concerns have been patiently and respectfully expressed in private and in public, but it appears that the extent of those concerns was simply ignored for a long time, until it became clear that the Government might lose the vote.

We are now reaching for solutions at the final hour, which should have been better considered over a longer period of time as part of a rational and respectful response to feedback. I regret the situation deeply, and I say to Ministers that, whatever happens today and in the coming days, there must be a profound change in the approach to engagement with MPs, whose primary duty is to their constituents and especially to those who rely on the services we design and govern.

On where we are with the Bill, I welcome the substantial changes agreed to in discussions last week to which I was a party. The protection of existing PIP and universal credit health top-up claimants will alleviate the anxiety so many of our constituents have been experiencing for months that they would see their incomes drop, with no additional support, without any change in their condition. The commitment to co-produce the Timms review with disabled people is significant and welcome. I hope that the Government will put that commitment on the face of the Bill before we get to Third Reading and that more detail will be provided about how co-production will be done so that disabled people and their organisations can have confidence that they really will be true partners in the process, and that engagement will be properly resourced.

The commitment to bring forward employment support is also helpful. The last Labour Government sought to address unemployment and the size of the welfare bill, and they did so by front-loading employment and health support. That should have been part of the plans from the start, because addressing the barriers to employment that many sick and disabled people face is the best way to address the challenges that the Government are seeking to tackle.

[Deirdre Costigan]

I know that many hon. Members were concerned that support would not be put in quickly enough. However, my constituency of Ealing Southall already has £8 million of funding from the Government’s get Britain working trailblazer programme. Does she welcome that the new proposals include £1.3 billion for investment in that programme and that that help will be rolled out to every disabled person who wants a job?

[Helen Hayes]

I welcome the bringing forward of employment support, and I know how effective that support can be, but we have yet to see it bed in.

I have further concerns that have not yet been addressed. I am concerned about the impact of the Bill on young people, and care-experienced people in particular. We need further detail on the support that will be provided for 16 to 22-year-olds, particularly with their mental health, to enable them to participate in the workplace.

There is one further concern that has not been addressed and on which I want to press the Minister, which is the lack of alignment between the conclusion and implementation of the Timms review and the implementation of raising the threshold for PIP to four points. I believe that the Secretary of State made some movement on that point in her opening speech, but so far, it is not clear that we will avoid a situation in which there will be a category of new claimants—people who become disabled after November 2026 but before the implementation of the Timms review—who will face an increased threshold without any of the mitigations that will come from a revised assessment process and descriptors that are co-designed with disabled people. That would be unfair and unequitable, and I believe that it makes the policy and putting four points in the Bill incoherent. We must have a system that aligns the implementation of the new system with the review process, co-designed with disabled people, that defines it.

I believe that the Government must also set out further detail on the impact assessment between today and Third Reading. That the Bill will plunge 150,000 people into poverty is an unacceptable consequence. If the Government are confident that their mitigations and the additional support mean that that will not be the case, it must provide this House with credible evidence so we can believe that. At the moment, we have to base our judgments on the evidence that is in front of us and that says that 150,000 people’s lives will be made worse as a consequence of the Bill.

One of the most regrettable aspects of the process is that it has harmed the trust and confidence of disabled people. Full alignment of the Timms review with the introduction of the new system is an essential requirement of beginning to rebuild that trust. I will listen carefully to what the Minister says from the Dispatch Box in closing the debate.