Universal Credit, Personal Independence Payment, Jobseeker’s Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance (Decisions and Appeals) (Amendment) Regulations 2026
House of Lords · Lords Chamber · 22 Jul 2026 · 15 speeches · Official Report
Motion to Regret
Moved by
That this House regrets that the Universal Credit, Personal Independence Payment, Jobseeker’s Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance (Decisions and Appeals) (Amendment) Regulations 2026 will result in claimants receiving payments without the appropriate reviews having taken place and fail to reduce the overall benefits bill. Relevant document: 2nd Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee
May I start by saying how delighted I am to see the Minister in her place? My Lords, these regulations make a significant change to the way in which personal independence payment awards are reviewed. They allow the Secretary of State to extend an existing fixed-term PIP award whenever Ministers consider that necessary to safeguard the efficient administration of the benefit. The department’s stated intention is that, for most claimants aged 25 and over, initial awards should generally last four years and subsequent awards six years, with reviews taking place after three and five years respectively. Formerly, according to the department, 77% of awards were made for periods of two years or less. The effect is therefore not simply to prevent awards expiring during an emergency, but to make substantially less frequent reviews the normal approach for a large proportion of the PIP case load. That is why I have tabled this regret Motion. A properly functioning welfare system must ensure that people receive the right support at the right level and for the right length of time. Reviews should never be treated merely as an attempt to remove support or catch claimants out. They provide an opportunity to establish whether somebody’s needs have remained the same, improved or deteriorated. Indeed, I might say to some of those noble Lords on the Labour Benches that fewer reviews will not only mean that some people whose functional capacity has improved continue to receive an award that no...
My Lords, I speak in favour of these regulations. Despite the case made by the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, there was much in what she said about the purpose of reviews with which I agree: they are in the interests of the claimants and of the public, in that they fund these payments. They are clearly an important element of the system. What was not mentioned is the reason for the backlog. Of course, we know about Covid, and that was out of our hands, but the problem with the number of assessments being undertaken at the moment is because of straightforward capacity constraints, which are a result of decisions made by the previous Government: they let contracts with an inadequate number of assessments, whether face to face or online, and they sold off too much of the estate needed for face-to-face assessments, which most people seem to prefer. To complain about the backlog takes a bit of nerve, to be honest, when it is very much their responsibility: it arose on their watch. I also fundamentally disagree with the weight placed on the significance of these changes. Given the physical situation of the ability to undertake assessments, something needed to be done. There was a problem. It is possible to highlight potential problems with allowing the Secretary of State the discretion, but there was a real problem that needed to be addressed and was causing problems here and now. To me, this is a relatively narrow and sensible change to the process so that the problems faced...
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and to join the, I am sure, widespread view around the House in welcoming the continuing presence of the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, in her position. Personally, I consider that a delight, even though I am often pushing her on the departmental decisions for which we hold her responsible. For the second statutory instrument in a row, I find myself thanking the Conservative Benches for securing this debate while disagreeing by 180 degrees with the position they are taking.
What is new?
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle
If Hansard did not catch that, the comment from the Opposition Front Bench was, “What is new?” I begin by making a very simple point. The way in which the outcomes of the reviews of all the payments we are discussing have been conducted, particularly the personal independence payments, are causing a great deal of unnecessary distress, fear and the wrongful withdrawal of essential benefits. As the noble Lord, Lord Davies, set out, this is a modest, short-term, limited measure. But we cannot discuss this situation without looking at the broader context, which, indeed, is what the Conservative Front Bench did. I make a call here for realism. We have an ageing population, healthy life expectancy that has declined by two years in the past decade and one in 10 local areas where the healthy life expectancy is less than 55 years. We have a mental health crisis and a lot of focus on benefits for mental health issues. We need to tackle the issues behind that: schools forced to become exam factories; inequality; insecurity; and child poverty. We need to take the focus away from individuals, and trying to crack down on individuals, and acknowledge that we have a societal problem that we need to tackle as a society, and the Government need to tackle as a Government, rather than continually pounding away rhetorically at individuals. In that context, I do not think there is enough awareness that the Timms review, to which the noble Lord, Lord Davies, referred was given guidance that it had...
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. I support the regret Motion tabled by my noble friend Lady Stedman-Scott for the reasons that she set out so clearly in her excellent introductory speech. But before I go into that, I too want to say what a delight it is to see the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, on the Front Bench. As has been said already, these regulations look like they are just simple administrative regulations. They look like they might be just fixing the backlog and look like they might be benign. Of course, nobody wants vulnerable claimants to lose their entitlements to those really important benefits because the department has not conducted a review on time. But that is not what we are debating here today. What we are, in effect, saying, is that it is acceptable for the Government to respond to a system that is failing by suspending one of the few safeguards that exists within it. If we all cast our mind back to when the personal independence payment-or PIP-system was introduced, it was never intended to be a benefit that just rolled on indefinitely after it had been awarded. When Parliament debated and agreed the PIP system, the whole point of it was supposed to be based on the fundamental understanding that conditions can change over time and can get worse but can also get better, so you should not just lock somebody into a system of benefits and never look again. That is a fundamentally pessimistic way of looking...
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle
Does the noble Baroness acknowledge that we should look at our society and ask why we might be suffering from higher levels of those conditions, and why people are not able to find a place in our society, as well as looking at biology?
I am sure the noble Baroness is right, and I thank her for that point. She has posed a very broad question, and I fear I would detain the House for much too long if I tried to answer it with the seriousness it definitely deserves. I want to touch on a few themes. I have spoken in this House on a number of occasions about what I and a growing number of others regard as the growing medicalisation of ordinary human experiences-just life experiences. We do not do people any favours if we do not distinguish between severe and enduring mental illness, and the very broad spectrum of distress and difficulty that finds its way into our welfare system in one way or another. This is at the root of my worries about these regulations, because every change that reduces scrutiny or delays reassessment sends a signal that says to that person, “Now you are in this system, we expect you to remain there. Just carry on. You are getting the benefits. We have decided that this is the thing that is making your life difficult, and we are going to support you”. It is not saying. “We are looking at you through an optimistic lens about what we can do to help you move off this system”. Reviews are not just a mechanism for saving money, but that is important. People have mentioned the Timms review, and I am sure it is an excellent piece of work. There are many good points in it. My real worry is that the Minister, when interviewed about this, said that he did not have any worries about the level of...
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lady Maclean of Redditch. I want to take a slightly a bigger picture view to explain why I support the Motion. My greatest fear, as a severely disabled person, is that the overall benefits bill, particularly the cost to the taxpayer of those benefits mentioned in the Motion, becomes so big that the welfare system itself collapses. That would be catastrophic for the most disabled people in our society. I recently asked the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, what advice the UK Government were giving to the Scottish Government about managing the growing devolved benefits bill in the event of our being at war by 2030, which is what many commentators are saying is likely. In his reply, the noble Lord said that he did not agree with the assumption underlying my question and that while, of course, we must spend more on defence, we must also continue to support those who need that support the most. I say to the Minister, whom I, too, welcome back to her place, that I do not criticise her noble friend for the well-meaning desire underlying his answer, but I also say to her that the current level of benefit spending would not survive contact with the enemy. One only has to read the fascinating wartime diaries of Chips Channon, edited by my noble friend Lord Blackwater, who is no longer in his place, to realise how much taxes would have to shoot up overnight were we to find ourselves in a wartime situation. It is worth noting that Chips...
My Lords, we all recognise that the control of public spending matters. It is right that Governments examine whether money is being spent effectively and whether benefits are achieving the purpose for which they are intended, but that must not be the starting point for today’s debate. It is about not simply whether the Government can reduce expenditure but whether the Government can use the system to better and more effectively support those who genuinely rely on it. I do not recognise the negative views expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, and some of her colleagues. The personal independence payment is a lifeline, not a luxury. It exists because disabled people face additional costs in their everyday lives-costs that most of us never have to think about. It was never designed as simply an employment support payment, yet in practice it often enables disabled people to remain in work, maintain their independence and contribute to society. Surely that is an outcome we should all welcome. It follows that any changes to the way in which PIP awards are assessed or managed must place the needs of the claimants first. Administrative convenience for the department can never be the overriding objective. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, gave examples of appeals, which are probably an example showing that the system does not work. It is about administrative convenience, which should not be the overriding objective. Does the Minister, whom I welcome to her position,...
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, for introducing her Motion. I am also grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions, and I appreciate their many kind words. If I had even a moment’s thought that they meant I would get away with anything at all, this debate has made clear that I definitely will not-but I would not expect to. I enjoy our discussions too much, and they are too important, for me to expect to get away with anything. I am going to do my best, but we have had a pretty broad debate that has taken us from the nature of our society and demographic changes through to Chips Channon’s experience of wartime. I am not convinced that I will manage to cover the whole territory-it is a lot of weight for a relatively small measure to bear-but let me see what I can do. The measure we are discussing today relates to how we assess eligibility for benefits, but the context of this change does matter. The fact is that the system of sickness and disability benefits that we inherited was simply not fit for purpose. This Government have begun taking steps to address the structural problems. We have legislated to rebalance the support provided in universal credit. The Timms review, which was mentioned, is looking in detail at the way in which the personal independence payment, or PIP, works; its final report is due in the autumn. In the short term, we need to take steps to help repair the system we have. This measure grants the Secretary of...
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken, and I thank the Minister for her response. I agree completely with the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, that disabled people need to be treated with dignity and respect. On these Benches, we completely sign up to that. My noble friends Lady Maclean and Lord Shinkwin rightly raised the cost of the current welfare system. A welfare system has to be affordable, sustainable and effective. I say this with a heavy heart: it may not worry this Government how high the costs go, but believe you me, it worries the public and it worries us. That does not mean that we would not be prepared to spend money to do the right thing by people. I also agree that the priority is to help people into work. It would be helpful if the Government took action to reduce the cost of employing people, because that has had the single biggest impact on there being no jobs about. As I have said, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate, but the central concerns remain the same. These regulations reduce the frequency of reviews, place greater reliance on self-reporting and grant the Secretary of State a broad power without sufficient safeguards or parliamentary oversight. They risk leaving some claimants on the wrong award, whether too high or too low, and do nothing to address the underlying growth in the benefits bill or the urgent need to help more people towards independence and employment. For those reasons, I am not content to...