DR UK Responds to Timms Review on PIP

Disability Rights UK has submitted our response to the call for evidence by the Timms Review into Personal Independence Payment (PIP). You can read the full submission by downloading the PDF on the right.
Our response has backed calls from the Lived Experience Social Security Commission for an Additional Cost Disability Payment (ACDP). The ACDP is rooted in the social model of disability and provides a realistic financial contribution to the extra costs faced by Disabled people in our current society. Our response demands that eligibility is personalised, genuinely exploring barriers and additional costs, and that the process is more collaborative and far less hostile.
The Response firmly opposes the proposal that PIP be used as a gateway to the health component of Universal Credit. These benefits have very different purposes and should not be conflated.
Alongside a new, improved PIP, the submission seeks a new scheme for accessibility equipment, including accessible vehicles, improvements to other government services and better connection to other forms of support.
At the end of our response, we offer 12 recommendations.
Recommendations
1. PIP, or any replacement, must recognise the additional costs Disabled people face and help tackle the barriers that create inequality.
2. Any replacement for PIP must be rooted in the Social Model of Disability and the right to independent living, choice, control, dignity and participation.
3. Assessment processes must be accessible by design and never create additional barriers.
4. Assessments must take a holistic view of people’s lives and support needs, not reduce them to narrow activities and descriptors.
5. PIP, or any replacement, must remain a non-means-tested cash payment and must never be linked to employment status.
6. Support must make a meaningful contribution to Disabled people’s real additional costs and recognise the wider barriers that create and increase them.
7. A replacement system should identify wider barriers and connect Disabled people to advocacy, support and services without making access conditional on benefit entitlement.
8. Assessment processes must work with Disabled people, not create additional harm, stress or distress.
9. Eligibility must be based on lived impact and barriers, not diagnosis alone.
10. Decisions must be transparent, collaborative and provide swift and accessible routes to appeal.
11. Any replacement system should include a separate accessible equipment and mobility scheme without requiring Disabled people to sacrifice their payment.
12. Reform must recognise that disability benefits do not operate in isolation and must be supported by wider policy change:
• The impact of changes to PIP on unpaid carers must be recognised and the value of their contribution properly acknowledged.
• PIP can enable Disabled people to remain in work; attempt work and maintain independence.
• Replacing the Work Capability Assessment must not mean merging it with PIP; both serve fundamentally different purposes.