Labour has repeatedly claimed that “only” one in ten claimants will lose their PIP daily living component as a result of the four-point rule. But the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) latest estimate is that one in four of all claimants who are assessed will lose their award. Which one is correct?
OBR figures
The OBR published a supplementary forecast the day after the first reading of the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill. It now considers that “roughly a quarter” of all PIP claimants assessed between November 2026 and March 2030 will lose their daily living award.
What they say in detail is:
“We expect 1.64 million PIP claimants will have an award review between November 2026 and March 2030. Of these, we expect roughly a quarter (430,000) will lose their daily living award as a result of the tightened criteria. We expect the net impact of these additional disallowals on the caseload to be 390,000 by March 2030,1 as 40,000 of those disallowed due to the policy would have subsequently left the caseload later in the forecast period.”
So, in total the OBR estimates that 430,000 out of 1.64 million claimants will lose their PIP daily living. But because they consider that 40,000 of those claimants would have lost their award for other reasons in that period anyway, then the final figure is 390,000 fewer awards as a result of the four-point rule.
Government figures
Yet the impact assessment published by the government the day before uses the previous OBR estimate of 370,000 – only 20,000 different - losing their award, but claims that this means “around 9 in 10 of the original caseload are not affected.”
So which is it – one in ten or one in four?
DWP ruses
The DWP have used two ruses to get the lower figure.
The first is that they have included pension age PIP claimants in their total number of awards, even though they insist that pension age claimants will not be affected.
The OBR have only looked at the 3 million working age PIP claimants, not the 3.7 million total number of PIP claimants.
The second DWP ruse is to pretend that all claimants will have been reassessed in this period. In fact, the OBR expects only 1.64 million claimants to have been reassessed by March 2030. This leaves another 1.36 claimants still waiting to be reassessed by 2036.
If the one in four figure holds good for all reassessments, then the final number will be nearer 715,000 PIP daily living claims cut by 2036/37 when all reassessment have been completed.
What happens after 2028?
In fact, neither of these estimates may be anywhere near the truth, because disability minister Stephen Timms has already begun a review of the PIP assessment system in which descriptors, scores and everything else is up for grabs.
Timms’ new PIP assessment system is due to be introduced in 2028 and may have a dramatic effect on how many PIP claims are cut. It will be in Labour’s power to make the PIP scoring system much more generous or much harsher.
For example, removing just one point from the 4 point descriptor “1 (e) Needs supervision or assistance to either prepare or cook a simple meal.” would mean over thirty percent of claimants who currently get four points would no longer do so and would lose their award on reassessment.
The reality is that if the four point rule makes it into law, it gives Labour the power to adjust the number of PIP awards in any way they want, with just a few simple tweaks to the scores.
So, by 2030, both the one in ten estimate and the one in four estimate may both be wide of the mark.
But, in the meantime, it might be worth sharing that one in four figure and a link to the OBR supplementary forecast with your MP, before next Tuesday’s debate.
