To ask you all the take a minute to look at the proposed Green Paper on work & welfare, particularly the cuts to PIP.

[MarvellousMonsters]

The Government has published a green paper which amongst other things proposes to change the PIP eligibility, which will ‘save £5b’ by removing financial
support from those who don’t score 4 points in a single criteria in the daily living component of PIP.

green paper in full

It’s estimated that it can cost up to £1000 a month in extra living expenses as a disabled person, and the daily living allowance of PIP is designed to help towards these costs. The lowest rate is £72.65 a week, (£290.60 a month) and this is a literal life line to those who have a limited capability for work, are ‘not disabled enough’ to qualify for full support, but do need help. It allows people to pay for things like cleaners and domestic help, to buy ready prepped veg etc to allow them to eat proper healthy food, to heat their home if they have poor body temp control, and so on. The proposed changes will push these people into acute poverty, and also reduce their quality of life, not just financially, but because being in receipt of PIP makes people eligible for other types of practical support.

You may feel this isn’t something that affects you, but disability can happen to anyone, as those previous fit healthy people who are now incapacitated by Long Covid can confirm. You could be in a car accident, or become sick, it could literally happen to anyone, so this truly does concern everyone, even if you are currently able-bodied and well.

Please, if you do nothing else, please fill in the consultation form and lobby the DWP not to introduce the ‘4 point rule’. If you only do that you’ll help thousands of people who are currently at risk of losing vital support.

consultation form

TLDR: please tell Liz Kendall not to remove vital welfare support from disabled people.

Minor losing all your income is not minor

I will be responding to the green paper as I did to the previous one - I have also managed to get a place at one of the online consultation events
I work FT and claim PIP
I am very lucky that my job is flexible and have very sympathetic employers - hence I’ve been there over 25 years
The amount of medical appointments that I have to attend would mean most employers would not want me
Many of them are in a bigger city so add 3 hours travel - even if they are running to time that’s a half day off work
This month I have 3 appointments of that type, plus routine surgery and other tests to have done so probably only able to work 60% of my hours
I can drive but don’t qualify for mobility - I spend some of my PIP on taxis when I’m not well enough to drive to work or medical appointments - I can’t use public transport due to my health conditions
I pay for private massages and hydrotherapy as without that I would be even more immobile - I spend a fortune on supplements and things like vitamin infusions
If I have any spare funds from my PIP I use it for a one off clean or some gardening help

If these proposals are adopted, people like my brother will see their benefits cut by around two-thirds.

He is bipolar, and he has to have depot injections of aripiprazole every 4 weeks to keep him stable. For the first 10-14 days after his injection, he's like a bloody zombie: slurred speech, shuffles around, his short-term memory is shot, and he sleeps a lot. Then he has a few days of functioning normally before he starts to get manic, stops sleeping and eating has delusional thoughts and talks utter bollocks.

What job could he possibly do that would put up with him being utterly useless 75% of the time?

Someone did an FOI request on this very point. The response was that 87% of people current getting the standard rate of the daily living component of PIP would not get anything following this change, and neither would 13% of people currently getting the enhanced rate.

Huge numbers of people will find themselves in utter poverty.

My dd can't just move for work. She relies on me to make sure she eats and takes her meds. Change her bed linen etc.

She works two 4 hour shifts a week routinely and also does some ad hoc work for a local business owner.

Presently she can't manage more than this. I'm hugely proud of her for doing what she does.

She can't drive though has been trying.

She gets pip and I get carers allowance for her. Carers allowance is very strict. When I applied you could only work 8 hours a week but now that's 16 hours.

I pay for her therapy at 140 a week!!!!! The carers allowance doesn't cover this The rest is out of my pocket.

I'm very worried about her pip. It gives her independence and pays for her pain relief tens machine pads heat pads etc. she gets a monthly massage too which helps her mental health.

Labour are evil
I can't quite believe they have gone after
The elderly
The disabled
The carers
The care home workers
The small business owners

So so short sighted.

I think one MP pointed out that there were 600 suicides when we moved from DLA to PIP on account of a lot of disabled people no longer qualifying or having their benefits cut and no longer being able to cope with life and their disabilities. These proposed changes are far broader reaching in scale. There will be many more hundreds more suicides. And for every one of these, multiple other family members and loved ones left with long term mental health problems of their own. Our mental health services are already not coping. And at what point do we stop cutting when we're nowhere near to being able to finance NHS spending and proper education for our kids etc? I can't see why taxes can't go up when we pay below the average of OECD countries and massively below countries like France. They wouldn't be charging more tax if it meant less revenue so it seems like that's not actually what happens unless I've missed something here?

No doubt you will be told he can get job collecting trolleys, or pot washing.

In Scotland so in receipt of ADP but lcwra is going to be connected to the disability award (pip/ADP) so it still matters to us also. I've filled out your link! My disability means I will still qualify but I oppose the changes & they way they are going about it. They should be better supporting disabled people who can possibly work. I don't have to work search but I'm trying to find suitable employment because I want to work. If all the stars aline I might be able to work. It's taken 4 years of trying to improve my health to get to a position where I'm not a complete write off work wise. It didn't help that I wasn't referred to the appropriate specialists on the NHS because the criteria was so strict I told my GP 2 years ago what my suspected diagnosis was, only referred this year for confirmation & treatment. The waiting time is 1+ years. This might help improvement to a point I could work part time. The system is broken overall! The UC disability advisor told me I'm too disabled to work. I asked for support to retrain but have waited 6 months & still waiting to find out if it's happening. I also asked to speak with a careers advisor in Nov last year, I'm still waiting. It would help if work coaches were actually willing to help people who want to work instead of just ticking boxes!

I have a relative with Down's Syndrome and autism. He functions at the level of a 10 year old child and has a severe expressive language disorder, but would probably fail 1 or 2 of these proposed new 4 point PIP questions as he can prepare a basic meal and wash his own hair (albeit not to any acceptable standard!)

Then according to their own criteria he cannot do those activities. And it might be prudent not to use ablelist language in your own post.

Someone who is scoring 2 points on washing and bathing is likely to be scoring points in other categories. If any one of those categories scores 4 points and added together with the other points the total is 8 or more then they'll get PIP.

Also to a PP who was worried about mobility cars - this is quite a high threshold already - you need 12 points and there are only 2 categories so no-one would lose a mobility vehicle as a direct result of the 4 point rule.

These are cases which absolutely will continue to get PIP.

There are too many claimants who have lower level disabilities who exaggerate their symptoms and get 1 or 2 points across several categories to score the 8 points needed. Examples are 1 point if you use a dosette box to manage your medication; 2 points if you use a stool or any kind of aid to prepare food, 2 points if you need grab rails for the toilet or bath/shower, 3 points if you can't get into a bath (even if you only ever use a shower), 2 points if someone has to encourage you to interact with other people. It's not uncommon for claimants to get 8 points on these kind of low level needs.

If you are on a low income you can get help with NHS transport costs
https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-services/help-with-health-costs/healthcare-travel-costs-scheme-htcs/

'Low level needs'

This place.

But PIP isn't all somebody's income as far as I know. It's a top up. Winter fuel allowance was just taken away from vulnerable old people. No consultation,no nothing, An easy target obviously. And from what I understand it will only be people on the lower level who will lose PIP allowance and nothing has even been decided yet.

Im on Pip and can’t work due to the amount of medical conditions/disabilities i have as well as the affects they have. I would love to be able to work but it is not realistic, and my consultants and GP all agree. I’d happily swap situations too.

Whoops this was meant to be a reply to @iwentjasonwaterfalls

@Viviennemary but people are using pip and LCWRA to pay their rent and bills, due to the rising cost of living and huge reductions in housing benefits over the last 5 years or so. Honestly don't know where these people are going to go, they will become homeless and there is no social housing. It's going to be a shit show.

Labour should just come out and say it. They want disabled people to shuttle off. They might as well be honest about it.

No. It just means you must score at least 4 points for at least one descriptor. I'd also suggest if you have your score sheet from your last assessment I would certainly send a copy of that with your reassessment form. The onus is on them to prove you no longer score 4 or more points in a descriptor. And as a side note? I think what they're doing is utterly evil. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined the labour party doing this to our most vulnerable in society.

Of course pip and lcwra is someone's whole income for a lot of people. It's not only people on low level pip what on earth made you think that

But if I lost pip I would lose lcwra so wouldn't be entitled to any benefits so wouldn't be eligible for this. This scheme also isn't as easy at it seems hospital transport will just not show up a lot of the time so you miss appointments. If you make your own way their they will only pay the cheapest option of travel and I'm not able to go on trains or buses. You also often have to pay upfront and they refund you.

They absolutely are not why do people think pip is easy to get. Having multiple surgeries and almost dying doesn't get you pip, attempting suicide doesn't get you pip being on 50 pills a day doesn't get you pip

I find it interesting that people who have never tried to claim pip have this image of what you will and won't get pip for without taking into account the lies and tricks pip assessors will say to get out of awarding anyone. Changing the system will screw over the genuine people really struggling the people you say who are exaggerating their symptoms will still get pip as they will just exaggerate further

I'm one of those people you're talking about. I only scored a maximum of 2 points in a description. (I've gone through and should score at least 4 on 2 descriptions)

I'm also on enhanced mobility and registered partially sighted. Hardly "low level disability"