Benefits and Work is urging readers to begin challenging the Timms review right now, rather than waiting until its final report is published. We’re providing some suggestions about issues you can raise with your MP.
Many people feel that it is best not to speculate about what will be in the final Timms review and only respond when we see what it recommends. But there is a danger of leaving things too late if this approach is taken, for at least three reasons
Backbench opinion is changing
Firstly, it is clear that the government have been working hard to move backbench opinion in favour of welfare reform, having learnt the hard lessons of their disastrous four-point PIP proposal. Some of the MPs who were at the forefront of the rebellion last year are now talking much more positively about benefits change.
As far back as June of this year, Meg Hillier – a leading rebel against the PIP four-point plan - said that Alan Milburn’s interim report on youth unemployment was a “game-changer” and that opinion in the Labour party on welfare reform is “worlds apart” from last year.
Louise Haigh, another leading welfare rebel, who the Guardian calls “an influential adviser to Burnham”, said on the eve of the release of the Timms review interim report that welfare reform is essential to tackle the ballooning welfare budget.
Lack of real detail
Secondly, it seems increasingly possible that the final report will tell us very little more than we already know about two of the most important issues: assessment pathways and disability-related costs.
With so little time left after the current workshops conclude, it is now looking more likely that the Timms review will only set out the broad principles of a wholly new disability benefit. The details of how it will actually work – where pathways will lead, how eligibility for PIP or its replacement will be decided and how disability-costs will be calculated - may be left to the DWP to decide later, perhaps with some token consultation.
There is no point in waiting for a detailed report that may never appear.
Failure to consult
Thirdly, there is no need to even address the possible recommendations of the Timms report. The utter failure to genuinely consult with disabled claimants, let alone co-produce the report, is grounds for objections right now.
Once the final report is out, attention will be on what is in it, rather than how it was created. The opportunity to question the whole legitimacy of the report may be lost once it is published.
Challenge now
So, we are encouraging claimants to begin contacting MPs now, in order to challenge the legitimacy of the whole Timms review process before it is complete.
Because we can be certain that the Timms review final report will insist that disabled people have been involved at every stage of the review. This is one of the major ways they will aim to get backbench support.
This slide, shown to participants of the September to October workshops, demonstrates the kind of claims they will make.
It lists:
- A Call for Evidence submitted by 38,713 people
- A national survey with disabled people
- DWP administrative data
- Workshop in a box submissions
- Sessions with experts and resources shared by SG [steering group] members
This is the kind of evidence that the DWP will be thrusting at MPs, but the reality is very different.
Above all, the DWP will claim that the report was co-produced with disabled people and Disabled People’s Organisations. Timms himself gave repeated undertakings to co-produce the review with disabled people, such as:
“The Timms Review will be co-produced with disabled people, the organisations that represent them and other experts to ensure that expertise from a wide range of perspectives is drawn upon. This means the Government will share ownership and responsibility for how the Review runs and what it recommends.”
(Stephen Timms, Parliamentary written answer. 20 October 2025)
“Hearing from disabled people across the UK is vitally important to inform the Review.
“That is why we are co-producing this review with disabled people every step of the way — to make sure that PIP is truly fair and fit for the future.”
(New engagement toolkit puts disabled people at the heart of the Timms Review 8 June 2026)
In reality, there is overwhelming evidence that this level of shared ownership and co-production never happened. Below are some of the issues we think are worth raising with MPs.
Co-chairs were recruited by an unexplained process
The two co-chairs were appointed by the DWP using a process that was never open to scrutiny, with no published selection criteria or account of how they were selected or by whom. That is secrecy, not co-production.
The steering group member selection criteria ruled out most PIP claimants
The Timms review steering group members were selected by Timms and the co-chairs using criteria that were always likely to rule out many ordinary PIP claimants who had much lived experience of the benefit, but not of policy or strategic engagement. One of the essential criteria was that applicants needed:
“Experience being involved in strategic engagement on matters relating to disability, long-term health conditions or social security-related issues.”
This was always likely to rule out most applicants, as the DWP would have been aware.
The steering group members are not representative of most PIP claimants
Because of the criteria used to select steering group members, they are extremely unrepresentative of the majority of PIP claimants. Around 80% of PIP claimants are not in employment, although many will have been employed in the past.
Yet the review steering group is made up of high-achieving Paralympians, company directors, academics, policy specialists and entrepreneurs. There is no reason why such people should not be on the steering group, but there is every reason for them not to make up the entire steering group.
Only two of the steering group members could be regarded as welfare benefits specialists, according to the biographies published by the DWP.
One of these, Jean-André Prager, was a Downing Street special adviser covering the DWP in 2024, when Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government published their infamous Modernising Support for Independent Living Green Paper, which called for a disability-costs based PIP system with some cash payments being replaced by vouchers, equipment or services.
He is also the lead author of a report published this October by a right-leaning think tank calling for savage cuts to reduce the number of children getting DLA for mental health, learning difficulties and neurodevelopmental conditions by up to 70%.
The other benefits specialist is Professor Ben Geiger who was seconded to the DWP in 2015-16 and who had already told Timms years before the review that the DWP should “have a look at the extra costs that people face and how those match up to the assessment”. If the DWP already had in mind a disability-related costs-based replacement for PIP, these are two experts they would have been happy to have on the review.
There has been no general consultation with disabled people
There has been no general consultation with disabled claimants about the September proposals for cost-based assessment system.
There was a confusing Call for Evidence with just four questions, including some extremely complex ones, such as:
“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?”
The DWP have made much of the fact that the Call for Evidence received over 38,000 responses. But this was not a consultation and it did not set out options for change and ask respondents to say which they preferred.
The review also commissioned a survey of 2,000 working-age disabled people which allegedly asked for their views on welfare reform. But the survey ended on 17 August 2026, before the review unveiled its costs-based PIP awards recommendation in September, and absolutely no details of the questions or results have so far been made public.
Disabled People’s Organisations (DPOs) were not involved in creating the Timms review recommendations.
DPOs were not given any opportunity to shape the recommendations of the Timms review, according to Disability Rights UK, they are only being asked to comment on them now they have been published:
Sophia Kleanthous, Campaigns and Policy Officer at Disability Rights UK said:
“The Government has consistently failed to properly include Disabled People’s Organisation’s in decisions and processes that affect us, including a lack of notice of significant updates and decisions during the Timms Review process, and not co-producing any part of the Review with DPOs despite promises to do so. The next stage is for the draft Review recommendations to be considered by Disabled people, DPOs and charities at a number of round tables, to gain feedback on the draft Review recommendations”
DRUK have produced a briefing paper for disabled people who want to challenge the Timms review, which you can download from this page.
The Timms review workshops were not co-produced and the Timms review has admitted this.
The Timms review scheduled a series of workshops between 15 September and 7 October.
However, these were not co-produced with disabled people, as the DWP admitted in the slides sent out to attendees which explained:
“The steering group recognise that these workshops have not been co-produced but are important opportunities to hear directly from people who interact with PIP."
The Timms review workshops asked for responses to proposals that were meaningless because of lack of detail.
Disabled people have never had an opportunity to give their opinions about the final proposals because these have never been set out in sufficient detail to be able to assess them.
On the massively important issue of PIP awards being calculated on the basis of disability-related costs in the future, the only information given at workshops was:
“The award will contribute fairly to the extra costs that arise from disability and long-term health conditions and reflect fluctuating and cumulative impacts.
“Cost categories used to discuss the person’s circumstances, and therefore determine their award, could include: equipment and aids; mobility and transport; clothing and bedding.”
It is nonsensical to claim that such scant information could form the basis of a genuine consultation, let alone co-production.
It’s also worth noting that when we put these few details to Benefits and Work readers, 80% of over 5,000 respondents did not support the idea of a disability-costs related award.
The DWP only wanted to fund Timms initiatives it selected
The DWP awarded £1 million to a private sector company, The Public Service Consultants (PSC), for assistance in the co-production of the Timms review. PSC facilitated the workshops at which attendees were asked to put counters on a stripey sheet of paper to show their degree of support for different proposals. Funding was provided to ensure venue accessibility, pay transport and support costs and make payments to each individual attendee.
By contrast, when it came to the “Workshop in a box” initiative in which disability groups were given access to some slides and other material to run their own workshops, the DWP initially failed to provide any funding whatsoever.
After protests, the DWP agreed to fund some “Workshop in a box” events, but only “up to 50” organisations selected by the Timms review itself and “proactively contacted by the DWP”.
In other words, these were not even necessarily the organisations that had initially wanted to run the workshops. Instead, cash-strapped organisations not hand-picked by the Timms review were left to cover all the costs of organising and facilitating the events themselves - or not run them at all.
The Commons Work and Pensions Committee (WPC) has concerns about the degree of co-production by the review.
On 17 September 2026, the WPC wrote to the Timms review asking a series of questions. The WPC said they were concerned that the review’s approach to co-production “does not ensure, for example, disabled members of the Review have shared power in decision-making”.
In other words, MPs are worried that even Timms steering group members may not have real power to decide how the review is run or what recommendations it makes.
Tellingly, the letter also asks for information about “how many of the 63 UK DPOs were engaged in the review” and “when you will publish proposals on assessment criteria and descriptors”
Contact your MP
It is overwhelmingly clear that disabled people and their organisation did not “share ownership and responsibility for how the Review runs and what it recommends”.
It is also the case that no detailed proposals will have been consulted on – they probably won’t even have been published - prior to the final report being passed to the secretary of state.
You might want to raise some or all of the issues above with your MP.
Or you may just want to tell your MP that you don’t consider that there has been any real effort to consult with disabled people about the actually recommendations of the Timms review and you want your MP to be clear about this when the Timms review final report is published.
There’s more on how to contact your MP here
