If they can genuinely walk that far regularly and not as a once every so often they manage and then recover/suffer for days, they shouldn’t be getting higher mobility.
This is absolute nonsense. There is a 20 metre distance rule to obtain higher rate mobility, but the decision on whether you can exceed this distance depends on several factors, not just the inability to actually walk the distance because of mobility restrictions. In many cases claimants are awarded the higher rate despite being able to walk much further, because of the degree of difficulty they have.
Some of the factors are pain, breathlessness, the need for help from another person, how often you have to stop and rest and for how long, whether you have to take pain killers to complete the task, how often you can do it throughout the day (the standard to meet is as often as needed throughout the day so if you can only do it once, you can’t do it). Assessors also consider whether walking presents a danger to others because of the manner in which you move, and danger to yourself because walking may make your condition worse - medically speaking, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Also considered is the length of time it takes to complete the task (no more than twice that of someone without a disability) and they take into account the knock on effect where completing one of the descriptors assessed would affect the ability to do another. It isn’t, and never has been a simple case of ‘right you can walk 20 metres so you don’t qualify’.
I was a disability outreach worker for many years, and was involved with PIP and its predecessor, DLA. Where claimants are reported for suspected fraud benefit is stopped while the claim is investigated and in many cases the individual is interviewed under caution. This can cause financial hardship and is incredibly stressful, and in the vast majority of cases where l acted as a support worker benefit was eventually reinstated because the reports were either malicious or woefully misinformed and therefore baseless. I saw cases were claimants went into debt when benefit was stopped, and in some cases motability vehicles were removed so their means of travel to work was lost. Imagine this happening to you when you haven’t done anything wrong.
PIP claimants have to provide substantial evidence to support their claim. They also have to convince a healthcare professional that their level of impairment satisfies the strict descriptors applied. To obtain the higher rates of payment, there has to be substantial disability.
My advice to anyone considering ‘dobbing someone in’ is this. Unless you are living with the disabled person 24/7, are familiar with their condition and it’s effects, or are involved with their care, have seen the information they presented in their application/have the medical knowledge to understand it, and are privy to the assessment they had with the health professional assessing their claim, then you really don’t know anything. What goes on on the surface is rarely all there is, and you have no right to know anyone’s medical condition, in order to judge whether they deserve benefit just because you don’t think they look disabled enough.
Benefit entitlement isn’t assessed on a snapshot of a few minutes of someone’s life. It’s a complex process and simply judging whether someone is ‘worthy’ by eye is ignorant in the extreme. Unless there is actual evidence of fraudulent activity it’s really no-one elses’ business and reporting will likely cause unnecessary hardship for someone whose life is likely very difficult to start with.