Personal Independence Payment: Disabled People

Warinder Juss Excerpts

Wednesday 7th May 2025 Westminster Hall

[Ms Abbott]

Far from enabling the Government to put people into work, removing PIP will actually stop people working, because they depend on PIP for the extra cost of going to work.

Perhaps the most preposterous argument for cutting disability payments is that it is the moral choice. This is obviously nonsense. In what universe is slashing benefits for the disabled moral? No one is taken in by that, not even those who think that all benefit claimants are scroungers.

[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

I have a constituent who has two sons suffering with cystic fibrosis. The condition means they have to be on a high-calorie, high-fat diet, so the cost of their food is much more than the ordinary shop. On top of that, my constituent has to bear the additional costs of buying medication and the loss of income as a result of having to be a carer for her two children. My right hon. Friend mentioned the need to look after our children. Does she agree that we need a system in which PIP provides for individuals such as my constituent’s two sons, so that children can also have the support to lead good-quality lives?

[Ms Abbott]

I entirely agree. Furthermore, it seems to me that Ministers have not really looked into the costs that PIP is covering, otherwise they would not be talking about slashing it in this way.

I wonder whether it ever occurs to the Government that voters will begin to notice that whenever they want money, they take it from the most vulnerable—old people, poor children and now the disabled. When we suggest a wealth tax, they recoil in horror, yet a 2% levy on men and women whose assets are worth more than £10 million would affect only 0.4% of the UK population and raise £24 billion a year. Politics is the language of choices, and sadly, this Government are making a conscious choice to balance their books on the back of people on welfare in general and the disabled in particular.