Why Excluding Anxiety, ADHD and Autism From PIP Would Barely Cut Spending
Barring people with anxiety, ADHD or autism from claiming personal independence payments (Pip) would not deliver major savings, the Resolution Foundation has warned. The Guardian
Pip is the disability benefit in England and Wales that helps with extra living costs. It is not means-tested, meaning it does not depend on income. The thinktank described proposals to make certain mental health and neurodevelopmental conditions — conditions linked to brain development and function — ineligible for Pip as "crude changes" aimed at hitting unrealistic savings targets.
The Foundation said the arithmetic is tight. Most Pip claimants report multiple conditions, often combining physical, mental and behavioural conditions. A ban tied to a single diagnosis would therefore affect far fewer cases in practice.
Pip spending in England and Wales has risen in real terms by 183% since Pip was introduced in 2014. The bill is expected to reach £28bn this year, rising to £34bn by the end of the decade, according to official forecasts.
The Foundation argued the savings lie in better targeting rather than categorical bans. It estimated that one in six working-age Pip claimants, about 670,000 people, report having no extra costs as a result of their disability. Tightening assessment to support linked to extra costs could save about £4.4bn a year.
That prescription echoes its earlier position that reform should make Pip reflect how people actually experience disability, rather than pursue short-term savings. Resolution Foundation In July, it said an overhaul of Personal Independence Payments was needed because the Timms Review had found the benefit was failing disabled people and taxpayers.
The previous Labour administration under Keir Starmer attempted to push through £5bn of savings to Pip, and those attempts collapsed last year amid a rebellion of backbench MPs. Andy Burnham, successor to Keir Starmer, said renewed attempts to reform benefits would not involve "crude cuts". Welfare officials are understood to be considering proposals to exclude under-25s from the Pip system.
The broader context here is a fiscal problem colliding with an assessment problem. Pip is not means-tested and not tied tightly to measured extra costs, so caseload growth has driven expenditure even without changes in award rates. Condition-led eligibility would be administratively simpler to legislate than functional reassessment, which tests how impairments affect daily life, but overlapping conditions make it a blunt instrument.
Looking at what this means for policymakers, the choice is between visible restrictions that conserve the current assessment model and a slower rebuild of that model around extra costs and functional impact. The first path offers political clarity. The second offers the £4.4bn figure cited by the Foundation, but it requires new assessment capacity, appeals handling, and tolerance for the distributional disputes that derailed the £5bn package.
