The promised genuine co-production of the Timms personal independence payment (PIP) review already seems to have been ruled out by disability minister Stephen Timms. Timms gave more details of the process in an interview with the BBC last week covering both the PIP review and the forthcoming white paper.
PIP review
It already seems clear that any possibility of genuine co-production of the Timms review with disabled people has been dropped.
Timms told the BBC that his idea of “co-production” is that: “we are going to be taking a lead from disabled people and representatives of disabled people in this work over the next year or so. And what we’re actually doing over the summer we’re going to be planning in detail how that process will be taken forward. What I envisage is there will be a fairly small group of ten people, something like that, who will work very closely with me as the minister for the period of this review, and they will have a lot of say and a lot of sway over the form that the recommendations emerge in.”
This, however, is a very long way from the amendment to the Universal Credit Bill proposed but subsequently withdrawn by MP Dr Marie Tidball MP, following assurances from Timms in the committee of the full house debate.
At column 1045 Timms called the amendment “a helpful checklist of the desirable features of our co-produced review”.
However, there is no indication that Timms intends to follow most of the items on that checklist, including:
The Secretary of State must establish a Disability Co-Production Taskforce (“the Taskforce”) to provide independent oversight of the conduct of the review and the preparation of the final report . . .
The Taskforce must—
(a)be provided with support by the Government Equalities Office,
(b)be chaired by an independent person appointed by the Secretary of State,
(c)have a majority of members who are disabled people or representatives of disabled people’s organisations; and
(d)include such other persons or representatives of such organisations as the chair considers relevant to the effects of the review and proposals developed for the purposes of subsection (3)(a) on disabled people.
Timms cannot in any way be considered to be an “independent person”. He is a government minister who fought hard to remove the PIP daily living allowance from hundreds of thousands of current and future claimants. He should not be chairing the taskforce, even if he is in charge of the review.
Yet Timms already seems to have decided that “the taskforce” will consist of just 10 people and it seems clear that he will make the final decision on who is on that taskforce, rather than those decisions being made by an independent chair.
When asked who was going to be on the taskforce, Timms replied “Well, we haven’t yet worked out who it’s going to be… I’m going to be talking to disability organisations, I mean, I do talk regularly to them of course, but I’ll be talking specifically about this point so that we can set out in the detail both the process and how it’s going to work.”
There is also a lack of clarity about one of the primary aims of the review: is it a cost-cutting exercise?
Timms told the BBC: “The review exercise that we’re undertaking is not designed to deliver spending cuts. I mean, we will certainly have to operate within the current projections for what spending is going to be. . . This review is not intended to deliver cuts. I think it’s quite important that that is well understood because I don’t think some of the people who we need to be involved in the review would be if they thought that that’s what it was for.”
Yet, in her welfare reform speech on 21 May 2025, secretary of state Liz Kendall told MPs that:
“And the number of people on Personal Independence Payments is set to more than double to 4.3 million.
There are now 1,000 new PIP awards every single day. That’s the equivalent of adding a city the size of Leicester every single year.
This is not sustainable or fair – for the people who need support and for taxpayers.
So unless we reform the system to help those who can work to do so…
Unless we get social security spending on a more sustainable footing…
And unless we ensure public money is focused on those with the greatest need and is spent in ways that have the best chance of improving people’s lives…
…the risk is the welfare state won’t be there for people who really need it in future.”
So, are the current projections that the PIP review will have to operate within, the ones that Liz Kendall says are “not sustainable” and, if so, what is the likelihood of Liz Kendall implementing the recommendations of the review?
Or are they the projections which take account of Labour’s original intention to cut £5 billion from the overall welfare benefits budget by 2030?
Whatever the reality, it is clear that the Timms review will be a carefully managed consultation and in no way a co-production in which disabled people have a clear say in what changes the government actually implements.
Five other committees
Timms revealed that five other committees have already begun work. These cover:
- Pathways to Work
- Right to Try
- Access to Work
- Raising the age at which people can claim PIP to 18
- Delaying access to the UC health element until age 22
There are approximately 10 people on each committee, all of whom are currently operating under a cloak of anonymity. They have all met once and will meet every month for two or three hours until October, when their recommendations will be presented to ministers and “will be very influential in the final decisions that get made.”
This means that each committee will have met a maximum of four times for a combined total of between 8 and 12 hours, before making recommendations that will affect the future of potentially millions of claimants.
No committees
There did not appear to be any mention of a committee to discuss the proposed new Unemployment Insurance contributory benefit, which was consulted on in the Pathways to Work Green Paper.
Nor was there any mention of a committee to consider the scrapping of the WCA, which was set out in the Green Paper, but on which there were no consultation questions. Timms has said, however, in his PIP review terms of reference that “We will be setting out plans for how access to the health element of UC will work when the WCA is removed as part of the forthcoming White Paper.”
No confidence
It is hard to take an optimistic view of the consultation processes taking place.
The fact that existing committees are operating anonymously, without any public information about their terms of reference or procedures, does not encourage confidence. Clearly individuals may not wish to be identified, but there seems no reason why organisations should not be.
And the lack of any real element of co-production in relation to the Timms review suggests that it will be little more than a cover for whatever it is that the DWP plan to do anyway.
