As Labour’s crunch Spring Statement draws near, details of the rumoured cuts to welfare have grown rife.
Estimates of what the government is hoping to save have continued to grow – now sitting at around £6 billion – with health and disability related benefits understood to be at the heart of the changes.
Reforms to the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) have now been widely reported, although Labour MPs are understood to be divided on the cost-cutting package. Claimed by 3.6 million people, the payment is designed to help people with extra costs incurred by their disability, whether they are working or not.
The changes will include making it harder to qualify for PIP, likely by changing the descriptors assessors use to determine if an applicant is eligible for the benefit. Further savings are also to be made by freezing PIP payments next year, ITV reports, meaning they will not rise with inflation as in previous years.
The plans come as spending on all health-related benefits rose to £65bn last year – up 25 per cent from the year before the Covid pandemic. They are forecast to rise to £70bn before the next election. The prime minister on Monday called the current system ‘unsustainable, indefensible and unfair’.
“People feel that in their bones,” he said, “It runs contrary to those deep British values that if you can work, you should. And if you want to work, the government should support you, not stop you.”
But welfare experts, alongside claimants with experience of PIP, say the benefit is already too hard to claim, and cutting it back further would be ‘catastrophic’.
In an open letter, organisations including Disability Rights UK, Citizens Advice, and Sense urged Rachel Reeves to “safeguard” PIP and other health-related in her upcoming spring statement. Around 700,000 disabled people “could be pushed into poverty” without it, disability equality charity Scope adds.
David Southgate, policy manager at Scope told The Independent: “Life costs a lot more when you’re disabled, and disability benefits are a lifeline.
“The benefits system desperately needs improving, but cutting benefits will just push thousands more disabled people into poverty.”
The PIP application process is “complex, stressful and degrading” he adds, something several claimants attest to. Generally, to apply for the benefit, applicants must call the DWP’s dedicated phone line, complete the 90-plus question paper form that is sent to them, and return it.
In most cases, an application will then be followed by an assessment, which is carried out on the phone or in-person. It is this assessment where most claimants find they run into the greatest difficulty.
Health assessments for PIP are carried out by “functional specialists”, which are employed by private companies like Serco, Maximus and Capita. A job description for one of these assessors says they must have one-year post registration experience as a ‘nurse, occupational therapist, physiotherapist or paramedic’.
Many welfare experts argue these are not appropriately qualified professionals, and not equipped to understand how a person’s health condition may affect their day-to-day life.
And the figures behind PIP reveal a deeper issue with the current system. While 56 per cent of PIP assessments resulted in a reward between 2019 and 2024, 22 per cent of these were overturned after an initial appeal. Meanwhile, over two-thirds (68 per cent) of appeals that escalate further to the tribunal stage have a negative decision overturned.
“This shows there are serious systemic issues with the benefits system,” says Mr Southgate. But because most people accept the first rejection, only seven per cent of PIP decisions are appealed, and only three per cent overturned at tribunal. And the fraud rate for PIP in 2024 was 0 per cent, official DWP figures show.
“The application process is complex, stressful and degrading, so it’s very difficult for disabled people to access the support they need,” Mr Southgate says.
“Many disabled people tell us their assessors treat them with suspicion, and don’t understand their conditions.”
“But the government needs to work with disabled people to fix these issues, rather than setting a target of how much to cut.”
Lucy, 53, from Kent, says she has experienced this issue with assessments first hand. The mother-of-two has health issues relating to her digestive system, nerve pain, and mobility problems due to a hip replacement.
When her health conditions began to worsen she moved from London to Kent to continue her independent business. When she became unable to drive, she had to give that up as well, and begin claiming health-related benefits.
“And I tried for a job in [a supermarket], bearing in mind I was on crutches by then and I couldn’t walk” she says, adding that she was not taken past probation “because with my hip, even though I went for a cashier job sitting down, they still wanted me to stack shelves.”
It was at this point, in 2025, that she applied for PIP and was rejected without an assessment. She was able to get a face-to-face assessment after applying again, she says, but was turned down due to being able to stand in the waiting room while she waited for her appointment.
“And I could only stand in the waiting room with a walking stick,” she says, “because there were no seats, because the waiting room was ram-packed with people waiting to get in for their interview.”
It wouldn’t be until 2022 that Lucy was able to get PIP – seven years after her first application – and only after taking her case to tribunal.
In another case, one welfare expert says, a person was marked down on the mobility side of the application for telling their assessor that they had “just taken their dog for a walk”. What they had meant was they had let their dog out the back door, and were dismayed that such a small detail had tripped them up.
And once the assessment is complete, the wait for the benefit can be long. Last week, The Independent has previously revealed 1,300 applicants died before receiving a final decision between 2023 and 2024. It is also only secure until the next assessment.
Francess Kray, 45, suffers with PTSD and facial neuralgia, which gives her severe jaw pain, following a violent domestic attack over ten years ago. She also has lung disease, and lower back pain from her medication.
The mother-of-one was able to secure PIP after two years, first applying in 2018 and finally securing the benefit in 2020 after appealing to a tribunal.
Three months later, she was reassessed and had her entitlement lowered, which she was able to successfully appeal against.
“But as soon as that letter of your next assessment reaches your front door, the anxiety is there,” she says, “because you know you are fighting that battle yet again, to keep your financial stability and that of your child.”
A DWP spokesperson said: “We help millions of people every year and our top priority is they receive a supportive service and get the benefits they are entitled to swiftly.
“We continuously review our services to ensure they are accessible, responsive and recognise the diverse needs of our customers.
“All PIP assessments are conducted rigorously and are independently audited to ensure claimants are receiving the same high-quality service.”
