Personal Independence Payment and Universal Credit

Lord Scriven Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question. I have already said what we are doing, but, just for example, the Milburn review is looking at the position of young people, because almost 1 million—one in eight—of our young people are not in employment, education or training, and a growing number of those are on the grounds of sickness, disability or the inability to work. We also have a growing number of people across the age range who are simply not able to work. We need to make sure that the system supports them and gets them into work. The Milburn review will look at young people. The Timms review, by my right honourable friend Stephen Timms, is reviewing whether PIP is fit for purpose—the interim report suggests that it is not. Both reports will be coming out this month, the Government will respond soon after that and we will be legislating in the new year.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, earlier this year, the Government told me that they do not expect to identify the impact of the evidence-led decision-making trial on people with a learning disability and have no specific available evaluation to do so. Will the Minister commit that the trial will not be expanded until the impact on people with a learning disability has been measured and published?

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I know the noble Lord has raised this before and that it is an issue about which he is deeply concerned. The Government look carefully in their decision-making at the impact of all the reforms on all those who use the service and who have a range of different needs. Whenever that happens, we have to look, for example, at an equality impact assessment, and we look at the impact of changes. We will continue to do that. All evaluation that is to be published will be done at the appropriate time.