The Timms review has explicitly linked personal independence payment (PIP) with work as part of a public consultation so appallingly designed as to not be fit for purpose.
The online consultation was published by the DWP at 8am today, with a closing date of 28 May.
There are just four questions.
1. How effectively is PIP delivering on its intended role and purpose?
What is the difference between a role and a purpose? Presumably the committee think there is a difference, but the terms are not defined.
Most importantly though, what was PIP’s intended role/purpose? The committee don’t tell us. Many probably don’t know what the intended purpose was. Many people might say it is to help with the additional costs of disability. And some will consider that its original purpose was to cut the benefits bill by replacing DLA for adults with what was intended to be a much less generous system.
So, when the DWP analyse responses to this question, they won’t even know what any particular respondent has in mind as PIP’s role when they answered it. Which makes any analysis worthless.
2 Does the PIP assessment, including the assessment criteria, effectively capture the impact of long-term health conditions and disability in the modern world, and provide fair access to the right support at the right level across the benefits system?
It is hard to know where to start with this question. It would be possible to write a whole thesis on why this fails as a tool for capturing responses that can be analysed in any meaningful way.
But, we could ask what “the PIP assessment, including the assessment criteria” actually means? Do they want people to include their opinion of the effectiveness of the “How your disability affects you” form; of their own and the DWP’s collection of medical evidence; of the types of health professionals used; of the guidance and training that health professionals and decision makers receive; of the effectiveness of telephone, video and face-to-face assessments; of the system of challenging decisions; as well as analysing the entire points system for PIP?
Equally, what does “capture the impact of long-term health conditions and disability in the modern world” mean? The impact on what? On people’s ability to meet their everyday care needs, their ability to get around outdoors, to be treated fairly and respectfully, to take part fully in society? There are so many possibilities
In addition, what does “provide fair access to the right support at the right level across the benefits system” mean? Does it mean passporting to other benefits and premiums or something else entirely? A few examples would have been very helpful.
But most of all this is a terrible question because it has so many parts, and all so ill-defined, that it will be utterly impossible to analyse responses in any meaningful way. All that can realistically be done with thousands of answers to such a complex series of linked questions is feed them to AI and accept whatever slop it produces as a summary of the answers.
3 What is the experience of people claiming PIP and does this vary for different groups of people?
This may be a valid question.
But a much more important question for members of the public is what is your experience of claiming PIP. Many people will not know about “the experience of people” and whether this varies, they will only know about their own experience, but they are not being explicitly asked this most basic of questions.
4. What has changed in wider society and the workplace since 2013 (and might be expected to change in the future) and how has this impacted PIP and does PIP need to change accordingly?
Again, an extraordinarily complex question that seems to require the creation of a history lesson, some prophesies about the future plus an analysis of PIP as it is now and suggestions for change.
Most worryingly of all is the assumption that changes in the workplace are relevant to PIP, even though PIP can currently be claimed regardless of your employment status or income.
Workplace changes should be irrelevant to PIP and it is deeply concerning that this is one of the issues being consulted on.
There is just one box in which to answer all these questions, plus an “Is there anything else you would like to tell us?” box.
Benefits and Work suggests you use the anything else box to tell the committee what you think of the usefulness of the questions.
You are then asked if you are answering as:
- A disabled person or a person with a long-term health condition
- A carer for a disabled person or a person with a long-term health condition
- An organisation that supports and/or represents disabled people and people with health conditions
- A clinician or other expert
- A Member of Parliament
- A think-tank or academic
However, the questionnaire is anonymous, so anybody can claim to be anything they like and the DWP will have no way of verifying the answer, making the question essentially pointless.
Benefits and Work does absolutely believe that readers should respond to this survey, but we also believe it is so unfit for purpose that any decisions based on it may be open to legal challenge.
The consultation closes on 28 May.
You can find more details here and the Call for Evidence form is here.
Update
The Timms steering group have now published more details on the the information the questions are designed to collect. For example, question 4 wants opinions on:
- the factors contributing to increased disability prevalence in society including different conditions, ages, people, and terminal illness
- the impact of changes in wider society on disability prevalence and the rising number of PIP claimants
- the impact of changes in the workplace and labour market
- the flexibility of PIP to adapt to future changes in disability and society
- adapting to the future abolition of the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) and other changes to benefits
- how PIP can remain within fixed financial limits
The fact remains that the questions are extraordinarily complex and they do not produce measurable results. It has the feel of being the stage before you do the hard work of designing a detailed questionnaire that will be easy for readers to understand and respond to and will produce quantifiable results (for example, the numbers who agree or disagree with a particular statement) as well as open questions that allow respondents to give more details about why they chose the answer they did.
See also: Is the Timms review a con and should you respond?
