DWP Timms Review already looks like a stitch up

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has put out a call for evidence for the Timms Review into Personal Independence Payment (PIP).

However, as with pretty much everything the DWP does, it’s already looking like it’ll be another major stitch up.

DWP PIP: Timms Review launches call for evidence

In the last few days, the corporate media has noticeably up its demonisation of disability benefit claimants. Of course, that’s usually a tell-tale sign. You can all but guarantee the department has something in the pipeline when the gutter press kicks into gear maligning welfare.

The latest bullshit was the shitrag Daily Mail clamouring:

One in 10 working age Brits are on disability benefits with 1,000 successful claims A DAY

However, as the Canary’s chief DWP botherer Rachel Charlton-Dailey pointed out, that 1 in 10 figure is complete nonsense. And when disabled people make up 25% of the population – she rightly underscored that it should be closer to 1 in 4. What’s more, as Charlton-Dailey highlighted:

that 1,000 is the number of successful claims. The Mail article glosses over the fact that, in those 13 years, 4.4 million claims were denied. It also completely ignores the scale of the backlog to even get PIP.

In short, it was more lowlights in the Mail’s revolting history of vilifying benefit claimants. But crucially, now its agenda in publishing this has been made extra obvious: to manufacture public consent for devastating PIP cuts.

Because lo and behold, less than 48 hours later, the Timms Review has launched its call for evidence. And predictably it’s chock-full of the kind of leading questions that just scream ‘forgone conclusion’.

Just 10 weeks for disabled people to have their say

In a press release the DWP published 19 March, it announced the call, stating:

The Review is examining whether PIP – which supports nearly four million people in England and Wales with the extra costs of disability – better reflects how people’s conditions impact them in the modern world.

The Call for Evidence – which runs until 28 May – is the first step in a wider, accessible programme of engagement, shaped by the Review’s steering group. This will ensure as many disabled people as possible contribute to it, including young people.

The first thing that immediately stands out is that the call for evidence runs for only 10 weeks. Technically, since this isn’t a consultation, that’s not unlawful – unlike the previous Conservative government’s 8-week Work Capability Assessment (WCA) consultation.

Even so, ordinarily, the government will host these in line with its 12-week requirement around consultations. Case in point: the Treasury has announced a call for evidence on the “future of the Advance Corporation Tax regime” today (19 March) as well. That runs for 12 weeks (until 11 June). Because when reforms are for Labour’s billionaire buddies in business, the government will give them ample time to lobby their grievances.

Of course, it speaks volumes that the DWP is giving disabled people – some of whom will need more time to engage – even less time than the standard amount to do so. Ironically, the press release quotes Stephen Timms suggesting:

it is vital that as many people as possible have the chance to contribute.

The DWP likes to talk a big game about listening to disabled people when it’s doing exactly the opposite. Naturally, it’s also not the only ‘stakeholders’ it wants to hear from:

Anyone can respond and those with lived or learned experience of PIP, including disabled people, the organisations that represent them, carers, clinicians, experts, MPs, and other elected officials across the UK, are particularly encouraged to do so.

Those ‘experts’ will inevitably be stacked with talking heads from the likes of Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) and other diabolical think tanks, no doubt.

Constricting PIP criteria: the real agenda – again?

Some of the questions and information the review is seeking could be genuinely game-changing if the DWP responds right. It wants to know about disabled people’s experiences of the assessment process and barriers to it. In other parts of the call, it asks for evidence about reasonable adjustments, experiences with external assessment providers, and both the award review and appeals process.

There’s a lot of opportunity in these parts for disabled people to highlight the many flaws in the current system.

That said, this it the DWP we’re talking about here. The chance it will actually do anything positive to improve the PIP process feel slim to none. At best, it will take forward a few good changes, but use them to package more brutal cuts.

One notable sentence confirming this concerns what the review says it’s “particularly interested in”, states that:

the assessment criteria for both Mobility and Daily Living elements of PIP – including activities, descriptors and associated points – and whether these effectively capture the impact of long-term health conditions and disability in the modern world (from the Terms of Reference)

It’s hard not to see this as a sly to justify constricting the PIP criteria to exclude people. Of course, this is precisely what the DWP previously tried to do to slash people’s access to PIP with its egregious 4 point policy.

Keeping PIP in ‘fixed financial limits’

And question four brings this into focus further. It asks:

What has changed in wider society and the workplace since 2013 (and might be expected to change in the future), how has this impacted PIP and does PIP need to change accordingly?

On its own, that might sound innocuous enough. However, it couches this in calls for:

the factors contributing to increased disability prevalence in society including different conditions, ages, people, and terminal illness

That’s very blatantly a hat-tip to the government’s latest scapegoating around the rise of claims involving mental health and neurodivergence. And of course, the DWP and its lapdog press have been on overdrive stigmatising and trivialising them. The department’s clear goal has been to make it harder for people with these conditions to claim PIP.

To top it off, the review also wants to hear from stakeholders:

how PIP can remain within fixed financial limits

In reality then, this is what it’s all about. The DWP wants to kick people off PIP to slash spending. Making PIP more accessible and inclusive won’t make the department savings. So whatever evidence disabled people provide, a fit-for-purpose disability benefit system won’t be the outcome.

A tick-box exercise

At this point, we feel like a broken record, but it still needs saying: this Labour government has no real intention of genuinely including disabled people in decisions that will deeply impact their lives.

From the moment the government paused its plans for PIP (because let’s be honest, it never committed to chucking its shameful cuts out altogether), it was only a matter of time before it started weaponising bare minimum ‘consultation’ and ‘co-production’ with disabled people. Naturally, it’s all to lay the groundwork for following through with them.

This call for evidence shows that once again, disabled people’s lived realities are little more than tick-box exercises to the callous DWP.

But then, what more should anyone expect from a government that’s already gutted the health element of Universal Credit, is sneakily slashing Access to Work support, and continues to vilify disabled claimants at every turn.

You can respond to the call for evidence until 28 May here.

Featured image via the Canary