With a general election happening in a matter of days now, it is with utter predictability that Rishi Sunak – the presumably outgoing Prime Minister and multi-millionaire married to the daughter of a billionaire – is throwing out some lazy appeasements to the taxpayers/dodgers in an attempt to claw back some of the former Tory voters who’ve wandered over to Reform or Reclaim or any of the other loony fringes of right wing populism. As ever, benefits are a popular way for the Tories to direct their voters’ focus onto easy targets (the unworking! the useless eaters! the single mothers!) and this time it’s PIP (Personal Independence Payments) that is under scrutiny. PIP is a benefit that anyone can get, working or not, with savings or assets or not, as long as they are disabled enough to qualify. It has two components – “daily living” and “getting around”. Someone getting the maximum of both components who isn’t using the mobility portion to lease a car via Motability (the “free car” legend still lives rent free in some heads) will be getting just north of £700 a month at time of writing. However, from the “man on the street” interviews some media have done it appears that the general public don’t know much about it, as in the ones I read and saw many people mentioned how Sunak’s proposed changes will “encourage people back into work”. Maybe we should encourage people to research the subject before opening their mouths. Anyway, I’m preaching to the choir here I know, but without PIP many disabled people wouldn’t be able to work in the first place, without help to cover the extra costs involved in getting to and from work and managing throughout the working day. Because that’s what PIP is for on paper – levelling the playing field by helping with the extra costs of being a disabled person in the UK. These costs are ongoing, because our disabilities and conditions are ongoing. Which brings us to the takedown of the shakeup:

Scheme 1 – ONE OFF PAYMENTS:
The first of Rishi’s ideas to possibly replace PIP is one-off payments for adaptations. Here’s a radical thought: these should already be a thing. Not instead of PIP, but on top. Currently, disabled people can apply for grants via their local authority for help towards ramps, stairlifts, door widening etc. but this is means-tested and takes into account the income of partners as well as that of the disabled person themselves (and is why we don’t have a level access back door yet.) I’m sure if the one-off-PIP was introduced, some people who don’t qualify for such grants would appreciate the ability to make their home as accessible as possible – there, I said something nice about it. However, what good will that do the many people who live in homes that have already been adapted? Would we get money back for works already paid for? Most importantly, there are many people who qualify for PIP who don’t need any home adaptations at all, and it once again feels like mental health, neurodiverse and developmental conditions are being ignored in the name of cost-cutting. Of course, the big issue with the idea is that one-off payments, even if they help with the costs of adapting homes for those who need it, won’t help with covering the ongoing costs of disability and chronic illness be it taxis, extra use of water/heating/electricity, private therapies etc. that PIP is supposed to be an equaliser for. If they’re truly one-off, they also wouldn’t cover later necessary adaptations – say, for someone who uses a walker and can manage with grab-rails and a stairlift, but later uses a wheelchair which needs a ramp to be able to enter the property. Also, since this would still be managed by the DWP, I imagine applications would still be scrutinised by unqualified assessors who will turn a good number of them down. Plus ça change. So, my verdict on payments for adaptations is that they’re a good idea on paper, yes, but only as an adjunct to the existing PIP payments, not as a replacement.

Scheme 2 – VOUCHERS
The idea of benefits being paid in voucher form is a longstanding favourite of many who complain about benefits being a “lifestyle choice”. It’s a popular topic for below the line discussion about most benefits, such as Jobseekers Allowance and ESA (but not the state pension, never the pension). The commenters in these cases seem to think that anyone claiming money from the state has a responsibility to only spend it in a way that they, The Taxpayer, explicitly approve. This, of course, means no cigarettes, alcohol, Sky TV (the classic combo)… or in 2024 terms no vapes, no takeaway coffee and no Netflix. This kind of thinking starts with “no luxuries allowed” and ends with “you can survive on beans on toast”. In a pique of irritation with this attitude, I may once have ended up telling someone that it was no matter to them if I spent every penny of my benefits on pick & mix and then found myself unable to pay my rent! As a way of breaking down the problems inherent with the voucher idea, I’m going to see how it would hypothetically handle a few things my own PIP is spent on currently and in the past. So first, non-prescription medications and supplements: I take a lot of these, so for cost saving measures I tend to use Amazon as the alternative is spending an eye-watering £210 a month on Co-Enzyme Q10 alone from Holland & Barrett (my cardiologist continues to apologise that it’s not available on prescription “but please keep taking it”). Would this voucher system let claimants buy products online, and if so would it limit them to “approved” retailers such as supermarkets? Many recipients of PIP cannot get out to the shops to buy things they need and rely on online shopping for everything from groceries to personal care products. Then there’s the matter of paying others for the things we can’t do ourselves: I didn’t qualify for council care, so when I lived alone I hired a friend to work as my PA. He would come over for an evening most weeks to help me blitz the laundry pile, hoover the floors, tackle the kitchen chaos and make sure I managed to have a bath without passing out either during or afterwards. I paid him by bank transfer, but if PIP were given in vouchers or pre-pay card format then presumably it wouldn’t see a bank account at all. And now, although this is something I keep meaning to expand on in another post, now I live with my partner in a house of our own – and as a result, PIP is the only income I have, the only guaranteed money coming into my account. It is how I pay for my share of the food, and the bills. I will argue until I’m blue in the face that this too is a cost of disability, because I can’t earn a salary and my ESA has been stopped for the crime of cohabiting. There are many disabled people like me, who find themselves with drastically stripped down benefits after making such a move, and for this reason PIP in vouchers or one-off payments would be a disaster for us. How can I contribute to my household if my sole income comes in voucher form?

So here’s the thing – Rishi Sunak is unlikely to remain the Prime Minister after this election; all signs point to Labour regaining the higher ground and Keir Starmer taking the reins. This means that Sunak’s statements about shaking up the disability benefits system will likely come to nothing. However, I feel that after 14 years of Tory cuts and scapegoating of benefit claimants (disabled or otherwise) that things aren’t going to be much better under Labour, or anyone else. It’s a depressing thing to say, but I feel the best I can hope for after this election, as a disabled person on benefits in this current climate, is that nothing changes – not because the current system is a just one, but because in my experience as someone who first claimed (what was then) DLA in 2004, change to the benefits system has been progressively more weighted against those who it purports to help. Maybe I’m just feeling mentally and emotionally drained after seeing my “lifestyle” (ha!) tossed up and thrown around like a political football, dissected in newspaper articles and op-eds, discussed in fabricated detail by people who wouldn’t recognise chronic illness if it smacked them in the face, let alone spent weeks unable to leave the house* because of it (*not during a global pandemic). Underneath my fear and weariness, I do realise that these PIP changes are most unlikely to happen and that Labour are similarly unlikely to want to do an overhaul of the benefits system – at least one to the wider detriment of the people who use it. The problem with being the subject of a political football, though, is that even if it only ever remains outlined in speeches and articles and never even gets close to scoring, you still feel rather, well…kicked.