Disability minister on controversial benefit cuts

7th April 2025

bbc.co.uk/accessall

Access All – episode 155

Presented by Emma Tracey

MUSIC-               Theme music.

EMMA-               Benefits and disabled people have been top of the news agenda in the past few weeks following the long awaited and much anticipated changes to the welfare system, and a £5 billion cost saving. Eight months after Labour took power we are very, very pleased to say that we’ve got the Minister of State for Social Security and Disability, Sir Stephen Timms ?joining me today on Access All. Hello, Minister Timms. How are you doing today?

STEPHEN-          Hello, Emma. Thank you for having me.

EMMA-               Great stuff. It’s really good to have you at this very difficult time for quite a lot of disabled people, and lots of disabled people want to know more. It’s your first time on the podcast so hopefully you can kind of help us understand some of the things that are happening.

STEPHEN-          I can certainly have a go.

EMMA-               So, shall we jump straight in to talking about benefits changes? Fewer people will be eligible for Personal Independence Payments, the health part of Universal Credit is going to be almost halved for new claimants, and that’s the benefit for people with work limitations. The reason for making cuts is often to help the economy to grow, and you are increasing the defence budget. The protestors, the disabled people who have started protesting in cities across the country and online they feel like the changes are laid squarely on their shoulders.

STEPHEN-          Well, what we’ve set out is a plan to fix a broken system. We’ve published it in our Pathways to Work green paper, and we’re publishing today all of the accessible versions of the green paper. So, that starts a 12-week consultation period, during which we want to hear from everybody about what they think about the proposals. But the key elements of it are firstly providing proper employment support for people who are out of work on health and disability grounds, support rising to £1 billion a year by the end of the parliament. We know there are lots and lots of people who are not in work at the moment who would like to be and we’d like to give them the support that they need.

Secondly, it’s about removing incentives for inactivity that are in the benefits system at the moment, that have kept economic activity in the UK less than it was before the pandemic. Uniquely amongst the big world economies our employment rate is still less than it was pre-pandemic.

And thirdly, as you say, we will be tightening the eligibility criteria for Personal Independence Payment to make the rapidly rising cost of that benefit more sustainable, and also release funding for employment support. But we would like everybody to respond to the green paper and let us know what they think.

EMMA-               So, why were those consultation papers not available in alternative formats when the document was first released?

STEPHEN-          Well, we published the green paper at the earliest opportunity so that people could see what it was we were proposing. There was lots of speculation, as you might well remember, so we thought let’s get all the proposals out so people can see what it is we propose. But we made clear we weren’t going to start the 12-week clock on the consultation until all the accessible versions were available. As of today they are and so the 12 weeks has started.

EMMA-               Some people might say though it wasn’t a great look having the consultation document come out and then not have it accessible to many, many of the people who it was aimed at. Now, part of your job, Minister Timms, is to talk to all sorts of different disability related groups. Now, deaf and disabled people’s organisations, so those run by deaf and disabled people themselves they’ve told us that they’re actually considering no longer engaging with you. They currently meet with you on a regular basis; they’re considering not doing that anymore because of what they call brutal cuts, and a lack of genuine engagement.

STEPHEN-          Well, I hope they don’t stop talking to me. I’ve certainly enjoyed talking to them and lots of other organisations. As I say, there was a lot of speculation in the press, which we thought it was better to set out clearly what our plans were earlier, but that did mean we had to wait for a couple of weeks until the accessible versions could be published.

EMMA-               Is it important to you that these groups do engage? And what will you do to help them reconsider that idea of not coming to meet with you?

STEPHEN-          It certainly is important that I continue to talk to all the disability organisations that I’m in touch with. I’m not sure which groups it is that you’ve been hearing from, but I very much hope that they will carry on talking to me because I need to know what they think about these proposals, and I want to make sure that the views and voices of disabled people are at the heart of what we do in this area as elsewhere across the government. Our manifesto of commitment was that those views and voices should be at the heart of what we do and it’s our job to make sure that that’s what happens. So, I do need to hear from people in order to do it.

EMMA-               Listen, the Department for Work and Pensions own impact assessment, Stephen Timms, says that changes to PIP will put 250,000 people into poverty. Many disabled people are already in poverty, they’re much more likely to be in poverty, and they’re absolutely terrified at this prospect. The manifesto missions were about improving living standards across the country. So, how can disabled people really feel like that this is a government that has their best interests at heart?

STEPHEN-          Well, it’s really through the improved employment support. You’re right, the impact assessment, we set it out, if you just look at the impact of the benefit changes only then that’s the figure that you come up with. But that doesn’t take any account at all of the extra people that we want to support in to work through better employment support with this commitment.

EMMA-               Tell me about those, because this is really your opportunity I think to put a bit of meat on that bone. There hasn’t been a huge amount of detail around them. And actually you’ve been around disability for a very long time, I’ve been a disability journalist for 20 years, we know that so many schemes and attempts to bring more disabled people into work haven’t been all that successful so far.

STEPHEN-          Well, the one that I remember very well, because I was involved in introducing it, was the New Deals for Disabled People, that was launched when I was doing a job a bit like I’m doing at the moment in 1998. And as soon as that came in from 1998 onwards we saw the disability employment gap getting smaller. So, I think actually that was a really successful intervention. We learnt a lot from that experience about how to help people get into work. The disability employment gap carried on falling right up until the change of government in 2010, and then it flatlined for years after that. So, I think we want to get back to providing proper support, with this commitment rising to £1 billion a year. But we are going to be working through these things we’re calling collaboration committees with disabled people, with disability organisations…

EMMA-               If they’ll engage with you.

STEPHEN-          …and with experts as well to make sure we’ve got really good plans in place, drawing on all the experience that’s available so that the 200,000 people out of work at the moment on health and disability benefits who say they’d like to be in work today if they could get the support that they need, they will have that support because of the changes we’re going to make.

EMMA-               Well, that will be really, really interesting to see because also some people would question the employment gap, they would say that there are more and more disabled people and it didn’t quite reflect that. Can we talk about the health top up of Universal Credit and that young people under the age of 22 won’t be able to get that? Do disabled people only become disabled when they’re 22?

STEPHEN-          No, Emma, they don’t. At the moment we’ve got one in eight young people not in education, employment or training. And we know that a long period out of work at the start of what should be your working life it has terrible scarring effects that last for years and years and years. We want to do everything we can to avoid that scarring effect affecting so many young people, including disabled young people who want to earn a living, who want to be in work and should have the chance to do that. So, what we’re suggesting – and this is for consultation, and we’re looking forward to hearing what everybody thinks about it – is instead of increasing the cash benefit that we pay for under 22 year olds, we should use that funding instead to deliver our youth guaranty for those young people to give them the best possible chance at the start of their working life.

EMMA-               Okay, Stephen Timms. Suspended Labour MP, John McDonnell, was on the programme last week and we asked him if he felt like you were the right man for the job. And actually he really likes you.

STEPHEN-          It’s mutual, Emma.

EMMA-               This is what he had to say:

JOHN-                 I think he could prove himself to be. He needs to stand up to the Treasury. Liz Kendall and him need to say to the Treasury, you’ve got this wrong, we’re not willing to implement these cuts and you need to think again. It needs the Treasury and the Chancellor to back off now.

EMMA-               Is there a tension between the Treasury and you and Liz Kendall?

STEPHEN-          No. I used to be a Treasury minister a long time ago; the Treasury has got a job to do. I mean, what is true is that the costs of PIP have risen extremely fast: five years ago we were spending 12 billion a year on PIP, last year we spent 22 billion, so it’s gone up by 2 billion every year above inflation for the past five years and that shows no sign at all of slackening off. So, we do have to make the costs of PIP sustainable. And one of the benefits of doing that is we can agree with the Treasury that we can make this very, very big commitment, £1 billion a year to employment support by the end of the parliament, giving a lot more people a chance to work.

EMMA-               But doesn’t the rise in numbers of people getting PIP just mean there’s more need? I mean, it’s not easy to get.

STEPHEN-          Well, there’s lots of things going on. I mean, certainly the fact that the NHS has been in a parlous state for the past few years that’s clearly part of the problem. And quite a lot of people who are claiming PIP are on an NHS waiting list, where Streeting is getting to grips with repairing the NHS.

EMMA-               So, is it not putting the cart to work before the horse then, cutting PIP before getting the waiting lists and stuff sorted?

STEPHEN-          We’ve got to fix all of these things and you’ve got fix them in parallel; we can’t wait for one thing to be fixed until we do another. But we do want to make progress. We think the proposal that we’ve made for restricting eligibility for PIP, which is that you should get at least four points in at least one of the ten daily living activities set out in the PIP criteria, that’s the fairest way to do it because it means that those who are more severely impaired are fully protected and won’t have their benefit altered in any way. There was talk, you might remember, of freezing PIP, of means testing, the previous government wanted to convert cash to vouchers. We’ve thrown all of those ideas away. We are simply saying that those who are the least severely impaired will no longer be eligible for the benefit. And we’re consulting on what transitional help and support is going to be needed to make that successful.

EMMA-               And instead meant that less people can actually get the benefit in the first place. Okay, Stephen Timms, how do you feel you’ve been doing since Labour came to power as Disability Minister?

STEPHEN-          Well,  I think we’ve made some progress. We’ve done lots of thinking, we’ve set out our proposals in the green paper, now I’m very eager to hear what everyone has to say in response.

EMMA-               That’s a quick and very diplomatic answer. Thank you, Stephen Timms, for joining me on Access All.

STEPHEN-          Thank you, Emma.

EMMA-               That was Sir Stephen Timms, the Minister of State for Social Security and Disability. If you want to comment on anything you’ve heard in this week’s episode you can email accessall@bbc.co.uk. You can get us on the WhatsApp, send us a voice message or a text message on 0330 123 9480. Or you can find us on social media on X and Instagram @BBCAccessAll. If you’ve just clicked on Access All for the first time you can search us up on BBC Sounds and hit that big subscribe button and we will come down onto your device every single week. See you next time. Bye.

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