The interim report of the Timms review of Pip is a walking contradiction. With the cost of the Personal Independence Payment expected to rise by £41 billion by 2030, the review by Stephen Timms, a minister at the Department for Work and Pensions, was supposed to establish whether the disability benefit was ‘fair and fit for the future’. But rather than examine ways of reducing the cost of Pip, every part of the Timms review points in the same direction: expanding eligibility and expanding entitlement. Taxpayers are footing the bill for a system that is unable to say no.
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Across 240 paragraphs, the enormous cost of Pip is mentioned just four times. And what’s Timms’s response? Nothing. ‘The current level of spending is not a great concern’, he told Radio 4 after the report’s launch. ‘What would be a concern would be if it carried on going up forever more.’ Despite acknowledging that Pip spending is rising every year and that more people are claiming the benefit, the system is still repeatedly denounced for being too tough.
