New Green Paper Discussion - now includes accessible formats and consultation event sign up links!

Thanks for sharing @YogiBear

Here’s my opinion on the interview between Stephen Timms (Minister of State for Social Security and Disability) and Emma, the host of the BBC’s weekly disability and mental health podcast.

Stephen Timms’ interview disappointingly echoes the same scripted rhetoric we’ve been hearing from Starmer, Reeves, and Kendall over recent months - a technocratic narrative dressed up as consultation, with no real intention of addressing the lived reality of disabled people.

His reassurance that the Pathways to Work green paper opens up “consultation” falls flat when key decisions -including the tightening of PIP eligibility, the halving of the Universal Credit health top-up, and age-based exclusions -were already heavily trailed in the press before any accessible consultation documents were even available. The truth is: the most impactful and controversial proposals were pre-determined, making the so-called “consultation” little more than political theatre , merely a tick box exercise . This raises a fundamental question: How can a consultation be genuine when the core outcomes appear locked in before disabled people could even meaningfully engage?

Nowhere in the interview was there a satisfactory answer to:

   •   Why no full Equality Impact Assessment  and Analysis (EIA) was conducted prior to proposing cuts that could strip benefits from hundreds of thousands of disabled people.

   •   Why the impact on carers, families, and children was ignored in both rhetoric and planning.

Timms tries to justify the cuts by saying they are necessary to make PIP “sustainable.” But this framing is misleading. The rise in PIP costs reflects rising need -more people are disabled or chronically ill, especially post-pandemic, amid collapsing NHS services, long waiting lists, and deepening health inequalities. You don’t “solve” the problem by cutting support to those who need it most - that’s not fiscal responsibility, it’s social abandonment.

-DWP’s own impact assessment predicted that 250,000 people could be pushed into poverty under these reforms. That figure was barely acknowledged, let alone defended with compassion or seriousness. In Timms answer,the claim that this will be offset by “employment support” is disingenuous at best. We’ve heard versions of this for 25 years - from New Deals to Work Programme to Access to Work -yet all consistently failed to bridge the structural barriers disabled people face in employment, especially in a labour market now even more precarious, inflexible, and hostile to those with fluctuating or hidden disabilities.

-To offer “employment support” while withdrawing financial lifelines for people with long-term conditions and disabilities is not support - it’s pure coercion. It is moralising poverty, punishing those of us whose disabilities aren’t easily boxed into what this government deems “workable.”

-Timms failure to answer Emma’s question about young people under 22 being denied the health top-up of Universal Credit was particularly revealing. His response was slippery: citing “scarring effects” of worklessness while ignoring the obvious truth — disabled people don’t choose to be disabled, and cutting support will not miraculously cure them. It will, however, push young disabled people into deeper poverty, social isolation, and mental health crises.

And to top it all off, he falls back on the Treasury line - that the cost of PIP has “doubled” in five years. But this ignores:

   •   The explosion of unmet health needs due to NHS underfunding;

   •   The growing burden of long-term conditions like Long COVId and the closure of Long COVID NHS services

   •   And the widening disability employment gap, which makes economic independence structurally impossible for many.

There’s a glaring absence of nuance in how “inactivity” is being weaponised here -as if being out of work is purely a choice or the result of a broken benefit system, rather than the cumulative outcome of societal failure, austerity-driven public health collapse, and ableist workplace practices.

To claim this is a Labour government “putting disabled people’s voices at the heart” is, frankly, insulting. Real inclusion would have meant co-designing policy, not inviting us to comment after the fact. It would have meant conducting independent evaluations, not pushing ideology under the banner of reform with the sole intent of cutting costs from the welfare budget.

Ultimately, this interview confirmed what many of us feared: this is not a plan to empower disabled people it’s a cost-saving exercise wrapped in a progressive disguise. It is austerity with better PR. And the consequences, unless challenged, will be devastating for hundreds of thousands of lives.

Let’s continue building on the excellent progress we’ve made-supporting and empowering each other within SCOPE and in our wider lives to stand firm against these devastating cuts. Our collective voice matters. By actively responding to the consultation,backing likeminded petitions, campaigns, and open letters, we can shape the narrative and demand the dignity and justice every disabled person deserves. Let’s not be disheartened; 

solidarity is our strength.