Personal Independence Payment: Disabled People

Manuela Perteghella Excerpts

Wednesday 7th May 2025 Westminster Hall

[Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott). I myself applied for this very debate last week, but I am delighted that the Mother of the House came out of the hat—or maybe Mr Speaker chose her. I am delighted that the right hon. Lady has led the charge so ably.

This is about dignity and independence. What is the point of being an MP? It is to give people agency over their own lives, and that is what PIP does in shedloads—it gives people with disabilities agency over their own lives. In my constituency of Torbay, 8,592 people claim PIP—12% of our working-age population, against a national average of 8%. I have the honour of representing the most deprived Liberal Democrat constituency in the country, and I live some of that myself, being disabled. We face real challenges. The issue is the highest area of interest for those who come to our citizens advice bureau in Torbay.

Only this week, I met a couple of people who came to take part in events. A blind gentleman from Portsmouth shared with me how he has PIP to back him up if things go wrong with Access to Work—and sadly, things regularly go wrong with the Access to Work system, as the Minister knows, because I have crossed swords with him on this before. I also met a young lady yesterday who has mental health challenges. She is able to have therapy, but that would not be there and she would be spiralling in a mental health doom loop if she did not have PIP to support her.

[Manuela Perteghella (Stratford-on-Avon) (LD)]

In Stratford-on-Avon, I have heard from constituents who fear that the welfare reforms could actually undermine their ability to remain in employment. Does my hon. Friend agree that many of our constituents rely on PIP as a crucial support that allows them to overcome the barriers they face to staying in work?

[Steve Darling]

That is the crucial thing—PIP is there to support people getting back into work; my hon. Friend is quite right.

Whether it is the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the Chancellor or the Prime Minister, they all say that the benefits system is broken, so let us make sure we reform it with some compassion. Liberal Democrats would like to see the benefits system reformed, but we want that to be done with people with disabilities, rather than it being foisted upon them. The Office for Budget Responsibility has said there is no evidence that the cuts will get people back into employment—actually, 300,000 people will end up in poverty. We must also remember that PIP is a passport to other benefits; for example, carer’s allowance is often married to it. Under the proposals, a number of households across the country could lose £12,000 if they lost PIP and carer’s allowance at the same time. That would be massive.

I want to touch on a couple of case studies. One is from Scope: the case of a gentleman called Anthony who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and autism. He gets 13 points—brilliant—but sadly, all those points are collected up under the four-point threshold. That is extremely concerning. He is worried sick about what he will be able to afford, and he works part time. The citizens advice bureau in Torbay reached out to me about a lady whose condition got worse. She was assessed, but sadly she lost her PIP. She is almost a harbinger of what could go wrong for other people, because she is now not able to meet her living costs, particularly her housing costs. That is a massive challenge for her.

I have a few questions for the Minister. I am particularly interested to know why the Government are introducing this cruel cut to PIP without undertaking reform in advance. As a few Members have highlighted, academics have found that there were about 600 suicides at the time of the change from DLA to PIP. As this cohort is much larger, has the Minister undertaken an assessment of how many suicides there will be? Is it over 1,000? Will he share with us what mitigating measures the Government are considering to ensure we do not hit those figures, which are extremely scary?

As the Mother of the House highlighted, there was a by-election in the not-too-distant past. Will the Minister listen to the people who spoke in that by-election and make sure that some of the most deprived communities do not have the heart ripped out of them by cuts to PIP?