Leading disability charities have urged the government to pause Conservative plans for “worrying” and “dangerous” changes to disability benefits.

The previous government opened a public consultation into a major overhaul of Personal Independence Payments (PIP), which could involve replacing monthly cash payments with a vouchers system or one-off grants towards particular costs.

New Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall has not said whether she supports or opposes the thrust of her Tory predecessor’s proposals, but has kept the consultation open.

A Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) spokesperson told the BBC it would “rebuild a [welfare] system that works for everyone and fuels growth”.

PIP payments, worth between £290 and £737 per month for about 2.6 million recipients, are aimed at helping with the extra costs associated with having a disability.

The payments are available to people with a long-term physical or mental health condition who have difficulty carrying out everyday tasks, even if they are working.

The Conservatives raised concerns that spending on the benefit is expected to grow by 52% from 2023-24 to £32.8bn by 2027-28, driven in part by a rise in claimants with mental health conditions.

Launching a public consultation on a proposed overhaul in April, then-Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said he was concerned about PIP’s “sustainability”, arguing it was unclear that it was effective and providing value for money.

His consultation suggested the reforms could involve removing cash payments for those with mental health conditions, while offering improved access to mental health treatments as an alternative.

However, charities say replacing regular cash payments would create further barriers to support, risking pushing more disabled people into poverty.

Bryony Moss, who has cerebral palsy and serious problems with her mental health, said she was “anxious” and “really nervous” that she could lose hundreds of pounds a month as a result.

The 26-year-old from Buckinghamshire, who needs help with most daily tasks, told the BBC: “I use quite a large chunk of that money to pay for my support worker to help me.

“But I also use it to help me with going to my horse riding. So I ride with Riding for the Disabled and I do that because it’s a form of physio for me, it keeps me active but it’s also a safe space where I can be myself.”

Bryony said her independence would be severely impacted by losing her support worker, because she would be forced to rely on her parents whenever she wanted to go anywhere.

Bryony’s mother, Sasha, 64, said ministers should also consider the reasons why a rising number of people were claiming PIP because of problems with their mental health, suggesting that it was partly down to insufficient access to early interventions, including a lack of counsellors in schools.

She recalled that her daughter had suffered with her mental health while being bullied at school for her disability, but received “very little support” from overstretched NHS services, contributing to Bryony’s struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and severe depression in adulthood.

Five leading disability charities – Disablity Rights, Scope, Mencap, Sense and the National Autistic Society – have suggested to the BBC that the proposed reforms are harmful and should be paused.

Mikey Erhardt, campaigner at Disability Rights UK, said he was “shocked and frustrated that the government has not taken the opportunity to stop this consultation”.

David Southgate, policy manager at Scope, said the government should scrap the “dangerous” proposals and put forward “a more positive” way of making PIP “better work” for disabled people.

A DWP spokesperson said: “Disabled people and those with health conditions deserve equal rights to live a fulfilling life just like everybody else.

“Welfare is a key part of helping those who want to work to do so which is why we will rebuild a system that works for everyone and fuels growth.”

The consultation closes on 23 July.

Thousands more ex-servicemen and women will receive compensation for hearing loss suffered during training or combat, the BBC has learned.

Military personnel are repeatedly exposed to loud noises, such as gunfire and bombing, during their careers.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has opposed many claims made by veterans experiencing hearing loss, arguing other sources of noise were to blame, individuals should have worn protection or their claims were too late.

Now it has accepted exposure to noise in the military has been a cause of hearing loss and that people discharged after 1987 could be eligible for compensation.

The MoD has been approached for comment.

Between 2012 and 2020, the MoD paid £72m in compensation for military hearing loss, settling more than 9,000 cases.

But it is likely this new court agreement will result in many more service people receiving payments, with up to 10,000 currently making claims.

Simon Ellis, from Hugh James solicitors, who is representing nearly 5,000 military personnel, called the development “ground-breaking”. His firm expects many more claimants to come forward.

“[Veterans] have had their careers prematurely ended, other employment opportunities denied to them, and their personal lives irrevocably changed,” he said.

“People who put their lives on the line in the service of our country should expect that they are not put in additional unnecessary danger by their employer.”

In a case last year which paved the way for the new scheme, James Barry, who is in his 30s, was awarded £700,000 after developing hearing loss and tinnitus.

The MoD accepted it had a “duty of care” to veterans and abandoned its argument that claims should have been brought sooner.

Barney Barnett, a 44-year-old ex-commando who joined the Royal Marines aged 16, also suffers from tinnitus and finds it hard to understand people when there is background noise.

“It affects me every day, I tend not to moan about it, I just get on with it,” he told the BBC.

Mr Barnett served in Iraq and Afghanistan where he went on patrols from forward operating bases and was repeatedly involved in combat, sometimes as a sniper team commander.

He told the BBC he had fired or been attacked with weapons including rifles, grenades, general purpose machine guns, light machine guns, 50 calibre machine guns, anti-tank missiles, mortars, and bombs.

Videos he shared from conflicts abroad capture the roar of armoured vehicles or helicopters landing, punctured by constant gunfire.

In one picture he can be seen wearing small earplugs, but he said that was a rare occurrence. He says he was either not given hearing protection or he was not able to wear it for operational reasons.

“If you get engaged by the enemy, whether that’s an IED, whether that’s indirect fire, whether it’s a burst of automatic fire, the last thing you have time to do is think about your hearing,” he said.

“Your main concern is those on the ground with you. Staying alive.”

In 2014, Mr Barnett went before a military board and it was decided he was medically unfit to continue in the Royal Marines because of noise-induced hearing loss.

He struggled to find work in civilian life and served with MI5. Later an online assessment for the security service deemed him unsuitable due to his poor hearing.

He is now an operations director in a security firm but must avoid loud environments such as concerts.

Mr Barnett’s attempts to claim compensation began seven years ago and he hopes the new legal agreement with the MoD means it will now be resolved quickly.

He says compensation would help him buy more advanced hearing aids and allow his life to move forward.

“People don’t see what we’ve been through,” he said.

“We’ve done our battling, we’ve been on operations, we’ve come home.

“The government speeding this whole process up, as opposed to battling it out in court, will mean the world to people.”

The military introduced hearing protection in the 1970s but Nicholas Hill, an acoustics engineer who has given evidence in many cases, says it was difficult for soldiers to wear all the time.

He said “every firearm ever made, if you fire it with unprotected ears, just once, can damage hearing”.

A handful of cases will go to trial next year, to determine the level of compensation veterans should receive.

Hugh James solicitors said after this is decided, any claimants will be able to resolve their cases without the need to go to court, if they can show their hearing loss resulted from service in the military.

They must have served at some point after 1987 when a change in the law suspended legal immunity for the government in cases involving service personnel.

The MoD agreement follows negotiations led by Hugh James solicitors and allows the government to continue fighting cases brought by other law firms, although sources close to the case believe this is unlikely to happen.

The agreement was reached at the High Court on Monday and lawyers said it would not change with the incoming Labour government.

Conservatives

The Conservatives want to “reform disability benefits” and tighten up what it calls a “sick-note culture”, saying people are now three times more likely to be assessed as not fit for work than a decade ago.

The party’s manifesto says it would create 60,000 new school places and 15 new specialist schools for children with special educational needs (SEND).

It says “mental health should have parity of esteem with physical health” and, as such, it plans to increase the number of clinical placements for those experiencing severe mental illness by 140,000 places.

The Conservatives want to cut £12bn from the UK’s £69bn welfare bill. Disability benefits alone are expected to rise from £39bn to £58bn in 2028/29.

Around £14bn of that is due to increasing Personal Independence Payment (PIP) costs, paid to people with long-term physical or mental health conditions who need support with everyday tasks.

The manifesto gives little detail on the changes beyond pledging a “more objective” assessment and restrictions on claims from people with mental health problems.

There is currently a 12-week consultation on changes to PIP which proposes using medical diagnosis over assessments and replacing PIP cash payments with vouchers and catalogues.

Launched on 29 April, it will be concluded come what may on 4 July, although any changes would require a law to be passed under the next government.

Mims Davies, Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, says: “I think it’s very reasonable post-Covid, when you see a two-thirds increase, in spending to look at what’s happened. We have a responsibility to make sure that taxpayers’ money is well spent.”

More or Less: Ms Davies says there has been a two-thirds increase in spending since the pandemic. However, if we look at incapacity and disability benefits together with carer’s allowance and housing support in real terms in 2019/20, and we compare that to current spending on the same things in 2024/25, the rise is actually around 40%, not more than 60%.

• Conservative manifesto: 12 key policies analysed

Labour

Labour wants to improve access to mental health care with specialist professionals in every school and a recruitment drive for an additional 8,500 NHS mental health staff. It also wants special educational needs (SEN) expertise in mainstream schools.

The party wants to get disabled people into work by reforming the Work Capability Assessment, although it has not given details, and by introducing mandatory disability pay gap reporting.

Deputy leader, Angela Rayner says: “Small changes in the workplace can really mean that you have great assets in the people that work for you who can bring around those profits.

“By making sure that employers have to report their disability pay gap, that should reduce, as we have seen in the gender pay gap.”

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the pay gap between disabled and non-disabled employees is 13.8%.

There are strong phrases in the manifesto like “there will be consequences for those who do not fulfil their obligations”.

Ms Rayner says the emphasis is on those who “can work” and “helping people to reach their full potential”.

More or Less: Mandatory gender pay gap reporting was introduced in 2017 for employers with 250 or more employees. They have to submit the average difference in hourly pay between men and women. Since then, the gap has fallen from 9.1% in 2017 to 7.7% in 2023.

Although this might look like a success, closer inspection of ONS figures shows the gap had already fallen significantly before this regulation was introduced. This has led some to question how significant the policy was.

Liberal Democrats

Social care is at the heart of leader Sir Ed Davey’s plans. The Liberal Democrats want to reform PIP to stop “unnecessary reassessments” and give disabled people the right to work from home.

It wants to have a mental health professional in every school, bring an end to “out-of-area” mental health placements so people can be treated near home, and introduce one-hour targets for police to hand over someone experiencing a mental health crisis to the relevant service.

Many disabled people have care packages but report a lack of carers to employ. According to the King’s Fund think tank, in 2022/23 there were 152,000 vacancies, or 9.9% of available roles.

As well as providing free personal care (Scotland already has this), the Lib Dems want to introduce a minimum wage for carers, £2 an hour above the national minimum wage, and establish a Royal College of Care Workers.

Sir Ed says this will total about £3.7bn annually. He plans to pay for it by promising to reverse tax cuts the Conservatives have given to the big banks since 2016.

More or Less: Sir Ed’s plan includes spending an extra £2.7bn a year on free personal care by 2028/29. That sounds like a lot but the Health Foundation, the independent charity, estimates it would cost more than twice as much.

The party says it would take into account other money in the system, referring to the Conservatives’ delayed plan to introduce a lifetime cap on personal care of £86,000, due to be introduced next year.

That hasn’t stopped the Lib Dems using it as a building block for their proposed upgrade, and have suggested it will provide £3.6bn a year towards their plans.

The Conservatives are still committed to this cap, but the Institute for Fiscal Studies says the funding set aside for this has already been absorbed into the current care system.

• Liberal Democrat manifesto: 11 key policies analysed

Scottish National Party

The SNP manifesto contains one sentence on disabled people: “Scrap proposed punitive welfare reforms for sick and disabled.”

This most likely relates to the Conservative plan to tighten up the criteria for Work Capability Assessment, which looks at how capable people are of working. The Tories want to reduce those being assessed by 424,000 by 2028/29.

Some benefits including both child and adult disability payments are devolved to Scotland.

“We look at benefits as something people are entitled to,” Marion Fellows, the party’s disabilities spokesperson says.

“We also fund free prescriptions, we’ve introduced a child payment for impoverished families where 100,000 children have been lifted out of poverty.

“The only way to get anything done in the UK parliament, if you are not in power, is to work with other parties and to push the agenda forward.”

More or Less: Ms Fellows mentioned 100,000 children have been lifted out of poverty due to the Scottish Child Payment. This claim comes from a Scottish government report, which predicted the future impact of policies compared with what might have happened without them – the difference between them is the number we’re interested in.

The report acknowledged it relied on a lot of assumptions and, while the report predicts Scottish government policies as a whole will keep 100,000 children out of relative poverty, the Scottish Child Payment related to 60,000 children.

• SNP manifesto: 11 key policies analysed

Green Party

The Greens want to put mental health care on a “truly equal footing with physical health” by offering therapies within 28 days and providing trained counsellors in every school and sixth form college.

The party wants to create a “career structure for carers” and offer free personal care with an investment of £20bn per year.

The Green Party’s Mags Lewis says it wants to “restore the value of disabled benefits” with a 5% rise “immediately”. A bill paid for by a windfall tax on some fossil fuels and “taxing the billionaires“.

The Greens also want to provide another 150,000 social houses a year, with “a good proportion” being accessible.

More or Less: The current government has consistently missed its targets to build 300,000 homes annually since 2019.

The Green Party doesn’t promise to build 150,000 social homes a year, just provide them. It proposes local authorities could buy or refurbish older housing stock, which were likely built before accessibility regulations came in.

• Green Party manifesto: 11 key policies analysed

Plaid Cymru

Plaid wants to adopt the UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled People into UK law, which protects the right to live independently and reform the Mental Health Act.

Liz Saville Roberts, the Westminster leader of the party, wants to reduce waiting times for people waiting for neurodiversity assessments, such as autism and ADHD, but says Wales needs more funding.

“We’re always being told that Wales is funded to a greater level per head than England, this is true, but we’re not funded [per head] as highly as, say, London is.”

She wants the patient to be at the centre of their care with greater control and access to their personal information.

More or Less: Government figures show Wales receives £13,967 per head, which is lower than Scotland and Northern Ireland, but 11% above the UK average. London gets £14,486 per person.

Part of London’s high figure is because the capital also receives the highest capital spending in the UK, largely driven by spending on transport, which is used by those who live and visit.

If we excluded that and only looked at current expenditure on services, then Wales has higher funding per resident than London.

• Plaid Cymru manifesto: 11 key policies analysed

Reform UK

Reform’s manifesto says “the benefit system is broken” and would be changed within 100 days.

Assessments for PIP and Work Capability would be face-to-face and include an independent medical assessment “to prove eligibility for payments”.

Those with severe disabilities or serious long-term illnesses would be exempt from regular re-assessment.

Reform UK declined to take part in Access All’s election interviews. However, on the recent BBC Question Time leaders’ special, Nigel Farage said 9.2 million people of working age are not in employment, adding: “They’re not all layabouts, there are many people, I bet we all know people on benefits who’d love to get back to work.”

More or Less: On the latest figures, economic inactivity has actually increased to 9.4 million – 27% are students, 18% look after the family home, and 30% are long term sick. That’s 2.8 million people. That number has increased significantly since the pandemic, up by 33%, far outstripping growth in the working age population, only 2% over the same time.

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

Figures produced by the DWP show that, at present rates, it will take almost ten years to work through the backlog of outstanding personal independence payment (PIP) planned award reviews.  This means that over 74,000 claimants are likely to be getting a lower award than they are entitled to.

A Freedom of Information request by a Benefits and Work member asked the DWP to provide the outstanding number of PIP reviews, the cause of the backlog and how long it would take to clear.

The DWP responded that “As of 31st May 2024, there were 392,000 Award Reviews outstanding in England and Wales.”

The department said there was no timeline for clearing the backlog and that:

“The main reason for the length of time to complete PIP award reviews is very high demand for PIP. We are seeing unprecedented numbers of new claims being made. To manage this demand, and ensure cases are put into payment as soon as possible, we are prioritising these claims.” 

 The DWP claimed that it is recruiting additional case managers and that assessment providers are “taking steps to increase the number of Healthcare Professionals they employ”.  However, they also stressed that “it takes time to train and consolidate new entrants”.

However, the latest quarterly PIP statistics published earlier this month, show that in the last quarter the DWP only managed to reduce the backlog of outstanding award reviews by 10,000.  The figures show that 120,000 new award reviews were registered and 130,000 were cleared.

So at the current rate it would take just short of 10 years to work through the entire backlog.

And, in fact, the most recent quarter was the only one in the last year that the backlog was actually reduced. In preceding quarters it either went up or remained the same.

Given that the number of PIP new claims is continuing to rise month on month, with the last quarter seeing a record breaking quarter of a million new claims, it is doubtful whether new recruits will be able to do much to cut the review backlog.

Also according to DWP statistics the outcome of planned award reviews over the last five years has been:

• Increased  19%
• Maintained  54%
• Decreased  7%
• Disallowed  20%

On this basis, the backlog includes:

• 74,480 claimants getting a lower award of PIP than they are entitled to
• 27,440 claimants getting a higher award than they are entitled to
• 78,400 claimants who are no longer entitled to PIP, in the view of the DWP.

It is hard to see how this situation can be resolved in the near future.  In the meantime, tens of thousands of claimants will continue to receive yet another annual communication from the DWP telling them that their review has not yet taken place and that their current award will remain in payment.   

A special election debate will take place to allow the deaf and disabled community to be heard by key political candidates.

The event, hosted by the Cambridgeshire Deaf Association (CDA), will be in Peterborough on Thursday and feature British Sign Language interpreters and captions.

It is the second accessible debate to be hosted by the CDA and aims to help attendees ask candidates questions about the issues faced by people with disabilities or hearing impediments.

Andy Palmer, chief executive of the CDA, said it was difficult to decide who to vote for, when the issues “are not actually in a language that people can access.”

He told the BBC: “People want to go into a voting booth knowing who they want to vote for.. I think it’s hard to build up that idea unless you’ve had some of your questions answered.

“Unfortunately, it’s difficult for people to work out what they want to vote for when the issues they’re interested in aren’t spoken about.

It’s even worse if they are being spoken about but they’re not actually in a language that people can access.

“It’s really important, especially during an election, that people have as much information as possible before they make their decisions.”

Organisers hope to live-stream the event and expect the topics discussed to include hate crime, benefits, employment, the proposed changes to Personal Independence Payment (PIP), education health and care.

The Conservative, Labour, and Liberal Democrat candidates will take part.

It will be held on Thursday 27 June at 18:30 BST at the Allia Future Business Centre, Peterborough.