Adam Gabsi is unequivocal on the subject of his personal independence payment: “It really is an essential lifeline. I don’t feel that I would be able to function without it.”
Gabsi receives his Pip disability benefit for multiple sclerosis, with which he was diagnosed 18 years ago, when he was 21.
“It’s supposed to cover the costs you incur due to being disabled. My powered chair that I’m currently travelling on and my bed are powered by electrics – so increased electricity and travel costs. Some disabled people, myself included, have to travel quite frequently by black cab because not every Underground station is accessible.”
Gabsi is one of the nearly 3.7 million Pip claimants, mostly in England and Wales, who are waiting to hear this week’s expected announcement of Labour’s plans to cut around £5bn from disability benefit spending.
One move reportedly being considered would affect current claimants – a freeze in the cash value of payments in the 2026-27 financial year, meaning they wouldn’t keep pace with inflation: a real-terms benefit cut.
“Some of the costs of needed equipment are very high, and that’s now, without even adding the inflation that could potentially be coming,” says Gabsi. “It’s essential payments that cover costs disabled people cannot afford to live without. As a wheelchair user, how can I not charge my chair?”
Plans to impose a real terms cut to Pip were floated last week, but after a backlash across the Labour party neither Downing Street nor the DWP were this weekend prepared to rule out a U-turn.
If a freeze were applied without exemptions, it could hit the roughly 30,000 people who receive Pip under end-of-life rules because they are thought to have less than a year to live.
The government could exempt end-of-life claimants from a freeze – they make up 1% of Pip claims – but that leaves everyone else, those who are not dying but whose disability makes employment an unrealistic expectation.
“The jobs are not there,” Gabsi says. “For someone who has a serious stomach issue, such as myself, what is being suggested? Because working from home, the amount of jobs that are offered that are [fully] work from home is just not even viable.”
Even if the mooted freeze is dropped, many of these claimants would be hit by another leaked proposal – real-terms cuts for universal credit (UC) claimants judged too ill or disabled to either work or prepare for work.
Unlike with Pip, the health element of UC is limited to those out of work, but while the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) publishes much less data on the disabilities of this caseload than it does for Pip, severely disabled Pip claimants such as Gabsi are likely to be out of work and receiving the UC health element too.
Many of the government’s plans appear to be based on the notion that Pip is too easy to claim. “Have they ever tried? Claiming benefits is one of the most difficult ordeals I’ve ever been through,” says Gabsi, who before winning his appeal saw his application for old-style disability benefits rejected when he first applied.
“What the DWP doesn’t take into account is the anxiety caused even by receiving a brown envelope. So when you receive a brown envelope, you know what is inside is going to be an assessment – that they’re coming for my money, which essentially I need to live a life.”
Gabsi is now co-chair of disabled people’s organisation Inclusion London. “Since Labour got in, I’ve had to ease concerns because there’s been talk of ‘The cuts are coming, the cuts are coming’, which then increases anxiety, and anxiety then causes stress, and stress causes relapses. And the real-time effect on disabled people is very clear.”
