Ben Golightly, Disabled People Against Cuts Cymru and Swansea Socialist Party
The interim report into the PIP (Personal Independence Payment) disability benefit is a milestone offensive in the UK Government’s ongoing siege of disabled people.
The report itself is shallow and actually says very little about what disabled people think. There’s very little breakdown of people’s experiences by disability, gender, location, etc. But for the government this wasn’t the point of the review. Far deeper emphasis is put on the costs.
The headline finding, that PIP – although a vital benefit – is administered badly, is stating the bleeding obvious. Disabled people have said so since its inception. The Timms Review’s only purpose is to weaponise our suffering to justify cuts. Ministers have wasted no time doing exactly that.
Despite promises of ‘co-production’ with disabled people, genuine engagement has been actively opposed by the government at every turn. The Timms Review is clothed in a paper-thin mockery of the language of disability activism, but none of the methods. It is the ‘nice, caring’ face of the government’s assault. As an undemocratic, top-down review that continues a penny-pinching race to the bottom, it is incapable of bringing about a better system.
Out of its other, nastier, face is the government’s blatant abuse of statistics to make the supposed economic case for cuts. This, too, is only a justification, and not the true purpose of the cuts: PIP is barely 1% of the budget, and its benefits are never accounted for; welfare spending as a proportion of GDP is flat; disability spending as a proportion of total government expenditure has actually been falling for years. The increase in PIP spending relative to other welfare benefits is not a mystery, nor inevitable.
The government’s own evidence base explains that fully one third of the pre-pandemic increase is down to “structural and demographic changes”. For example, an ever-increasing retirement age means that what counts as the ‘working age’ population is growing, is older, and is more disabled.
The rest of the increase, the evidence base itself directly suggests, is due to worsening health and NHS waiting lists, post-Covid labour market disruption, and above all the cost-of-living crisis giving people who were always entitled to the benefit no choice but to brave the system and apply.
Preparing the attacks
There is absolutely no evidence to support the government’s case, under the flawed biopsychosocial model, that people are incentivised to be disabled by money and sympathy. Truth is the first casualty in war.
Caught in the middle of these two angles of attack, in a pincer movement, are disabled people.
The purpose of a system is what it does. The purpose of the UK welfare system reform is not to support disabled people, or to save the taxpayer money. It’s to punish and demonise disabled people to distract from the failings of British capitalism, which has been in crisis for a generation. The bosses and their politicians are trying to use divide and rule to make it easier to make cuts to other areas and distract from the real cause of falling living standards – the super-rich and their failing system.
Unfortunately for the government, disabled people have also shown that we can seriously kick back. If it was not for the bloody nose we gave the government last year, the PIP cuts would already be in effect today.
Workers’ movement
The TUC (Trades Union Congress) General Council has taken the mistaken and shameful decision to refuse to implement TUC 2025 motions 38 and 39. Those motions, passed unanimously by delegates, clearly committed the trade union movement to coordinated, sustained, and specific action in defence of disabled people and young people, and link that to fighting austerity attacks on all working-class people.
This is an emergency issue for the entire trade union movement, its 1.4 million disabled members, and our communities. Motions calling on the TUC to recommit to action have since been passed in the CWU and other unions. The National Shop Stewards Network lobby of the TUC in September will be an important additional point of pressure, for the TUC to enact passed policy and organise a weekend demonstration against austerity and attacks on workers’ rights.
If the TUC leaders continue to put Labour Party loyalty ahead of members and ahead of disabled people, then the TUC will lose authority.
If so, it will be down to a ‘coalition of the willing’ – those unions prepared to take a stand. We want the largest possible fightback, but we can’t wait forever.
We are fighting back
Fighting disabled people’s organisations have not been fooled by Timms’s tokenism. Disabled People Against Cuts Cymru (DPAC Cymru) has pioneered the demand for a genuine and independent disability review, democratically led by disabled people and our organisations, including our trade unions, and inviting the views of carers and all workers involved in providing the services that we rely on. A review based on the socialist principle: from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.
We have patiently won extremely wide support for that demand in Wales and intend to make it a reality, demanding MPs refuse on principle to vote with the government as it proceeds.
MPs that vote for disability cuts must become pariahs. Our trade unions should stand candidates against them.
The Timms Review concludes in the Autumn, and the entire workers’ movement must urgently prepare. We have every confidence of winning because defeat is unthinkable.
