on June 20, 2025, 9:08 am
The highly controversial idea would mean payments contributing to extra disability-related costs in future only going to those with less than a certain level of income, savings and investments.
It comes as the government’s new universal credit and personal independence payment bill, which aims to restrict eligibility to personal independence payment (PIP) and cut the disability element of universal credit, received its first reading in the Commons (see separate story).
That bill does not include any measures to means-test PIP, and the Pathways to Work green paper, published in March, insists that “PIP will remain an important non-means tested benefit for disabled people and people with long-term health conditions”.
But behind that pledge, ministers, special advisers and civil servants have been discussing whether PIP should soon be merged with universal credit.
The new information came in a response to a freedom of information request from welfare rights expert Finn Keaney, who had asked DWP for copies of reports produced since Labour came to power last July that discussed the possibility of making PIP a means-tested benefit.
He had noticed that various members of Labour’s cabinet, including work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall (pictured), had repeatedly linked PIP to work, even though it is available to disabled people both in and out of employment.
When DWP responded to his request, it admitted that it “holds information relevant to your request”.
But it refused to release the documents, taking advantage of a Freedom of Information Act exemption that “protects the private space within which Ministers and their policy advisers can develop policies without the risk of premature disclosure”.
It admitted there was “a legitimate public interest in understanding the rationale behind proposed changes to disability benefits, including whether and how the Department has considered the option of means-testing PIP”.
It then added: “The information requested includes early-stage analysis and internal advice that is directly informing live policy development.
“Releasing this material prematurely would risk distorting public understanding of the policy direction, especially where proposals are still evolving and subject to change.
“It could also lead to undue pressure on decision-makers or misinterpretation of ideas that have not been finalised or endorsed.”
It also noted that PIP reform was “highly sensitive and subject to ongoing public and Parliamentary scrutiny” and that it believed, on balance, that “withholding the information at this stage better serves the public interest by ensuring that policy is developed rigorously, responsibly, and with the benefit of full and frank internal deliberation”.
Keaney said: “Over the last year there has been a pattern of cabinet ministers describing cuts to PIP as being part of a strategy to get people back into work.
“It is tempting to think of this as nothing more than individuals being woolly on the details, but when you have the DWP’s own secretary of state making this mistake four times in 23 minutes you have to wonder: what is going on here?
“I am really concerned that between these repeated ‘mistakes’ and the DWP’s recent proposal to merge the PIP and work capability assessments, we are witnessing the government laying the foundations for eventually means-testing PIP by bringing it under the umbrella of universal credit.
“Means-testing PIP would unfairly punish disabled people and would do nothing to help anyone to live independent lives in or out of the workforce.”
There has been mounting evidence over the last four years that DWP civil servants are keen to cut spending on disability benefits by means-testing PIP.
Two years ago, Disability News Service (DNS) was told that participants in focus groups had been asked questions about which people “deserve” various benefits and what they think about the idea of means-testing “extra cost” benefits.
Questions about the “extra cost benefit” ended with participants being asked whether it should be means-tested on the grounds of “affordability”, although it was never clear who had funded the focus groups.
Two years earlier, the Conservative government had published its Shaping Future Support green paper, which suggested that ministers could create a “new single benefit” to simplify the disability benefits application and assessment process, which could “provide support for disabled people and people with health conditions on low income and with extra costs”.
Work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey later told DNS at a fringe meeting at the party’s annual conference in October 2021 that merging PIP with universal credit was “on the table”.
Just a month later, DNS reported how a DWP civil servant had told a disability charity that the government planned to merge PIP with universal credit, although not for at least six years.
This would suggest that such a merger could be introduced from as early as 2027.
The response to Keaney’s freedom of information request shows yet again how the key elements of DWP policy over the last 30 years remain almost unchanged behind the scenes when political power shifts from Conservative to Labour, to Conservative, and back to Labour.
It suggests, as demonstrated in The Department*, by DNS editor John Pring, that the course of policy development within DWP is decided mainly by civil servants, with ministers playing only a minor role.": https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/ministers-are-secretly-considering-means-testing-pip-dwp-admits-despite-pledge-in-green-paper/
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