The Work and Pensions Secretary has signalled a shake-up of disability benefit assessments for people with ADHD, autism and other conditions that were far less widely diagnosed when the current welfare system was designed.
In an interview with The i Paper, Pat McFadden said the current system was struggling to keep pace with a surge in diagnoses of conditions that barely registered when it was built 13 years ago.
More than 100,000 people with ADHD are now claiming Personal Independence Payment (PIP) – the disability benefit designed to help cover the extra costs of living with a long-term health condition or disability – a 40 per cent rise since Labour came to power.
Overall, more than four million people now claim PIP and real-terms spending on it is due to rise from £26bn in 2024-25 to £45bn by 2031, according to government forecasts.
The figures were released just days before Sir Stephen Timms, the disability minister, is due to publish an interim report on the disability welfare system.
“These numbers tripled… between 2020 [and] 2024 and they’ve continued to rise,” McFadden said. Asked directly whether the trend was sustainable, he said he had already raised the issue with the panel conducting the Timms review.
“I spoke to the Timms review panel… a few months ago and I said one of the things to consider from a system that was designed 13 years ago is whether the assessment process is really fit for the range of conditions and the rise in the reports of some conditions… and also to be ambitious about if they conclude that it hasn’t taken into account those things enough about what the future might look like now,” he said.
McFadden added that he expected “that whole question of the assessment and different conditions will be quite central to their work,” giving the clearest indication yet that eligibility rules for conditions such as ADHD and autism are set to be tightened or reworked.
Youth benefits also likely to be restricted
McFadden also gave the strongest hint so far that Alan Milburn, the government’s youth unemployment tsar, will recommend restricting access to benefits for 16- to 24-year-olds or attaching new work-related conditions to their payments – as The i Paper has previously reported.
He did not distinguish between “restricting access” and adding conditionality when pushed on whether he would support such a move, telling the event that the current lack of any requirement to seek work for those signed off sick was “a design feature of the system” built around a binary fork – fit for work, or not – that no longer reflects how people actually experience illness or disability.
McFadden said Milburn, who is the leader of the review into why so many young people are economically inactive, was likely to take a “broad view of the issue.”
He added that he had deliberately chosen Milburn because he would look at the system “right from A to Z” and “get above the departmental boundaries” between the Departments for Work and Pensions, Education and Health.
His comments build on the message he delivered in a speech Tuesday morning to the Good Growth Foundation, in which he argued the welfare system had for too long asked “what benefit are you entitled to?” rather than “how can we help you live the fullest life?” – a reframing he said should apply “particularly for the young.”
He told the audience in central London that a 20-year-old who signs on for long-term sickness benefits today is more likely to still be claiming them at 30 than to have held down a steady job at any point in the intervening decade, and that under-25s on long-term sickness benefits are now less likely to come off them than claimants over 55.
Rebellion fears over cuts remain
McFadden said that legislation was “likely” to follow once both the Timms and Milburn reviews have concluded. He was careful, however, to insist any changes would preserve unconditional support for those who “can never work” – a nod to the backbench unease that forced Sir Keir Starmer to abandon his own welfare reform bill last year after a Labour revolt.
Any fresh attempt to limit PIP and benefits more widely is likely to prove as much of a headache for likely incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham, as it was for Keir Starmer, however. The welfare rebellion that forced Starmer to U-turn over cuts is thought to have substantially undermined his authority.
While some of the more senior rebels are backers of Burnham, backbench opposition is likely to be strong.
McFadden struck a more overtly political note when it came to how his own MPs would react this time, arguing the conversation inside the party had shifted: “I think we are having a different conversation about this now compared to a year ago, one which puts work and opportunity and participation at its heart… I believe this is a Labour cause as well as a national cause.”
However, he declined to rule out the possibility that savings from welfare reforms could help close the roughly £5 billion budget shortfall reported in the wake of the government’s Defence Investment Plan (DIP). Perceived cost-cutting by the Treasury – rather than genuine reform – was blamed by some Labour MPs for last year’s welfare rebellion.
“I don’t think cost is a dirty word; the cost of the system matters,” he said, before pivoting to insist the driving purpose was different this time. “I’m not saying cost doesn’t matter, but I want to get the cost under control and down by putting work and opportunity at the heart of the system.”
Reflecting on a recent visit to the Netherlands – which he said in his speech has the lowest Neet [Not in Education, Employment, or Training] rate in Europe – McFadden argued the single biggest lesson for Britain was the Dutch system’s insistence on repeated intervention points, at 16 and 18, to stop young people drifting into inactivity, describing local officials who would “go around and knock on their door” rather than waiting for people to come to them.
‘Stickiness effects’ keep young people on benefits
He warned that once young people fall onto long-term sickness benefits in the UK, “stickiness effects” make it very difficult for them to come off.
Part of the answer, McFadden argues, is the £2.5 billion Youth Guarantee programme, which is launching nationwide this autumn and includes 300,000 additional work experience and training placements, 50,000 more youth apprenticeship starts – intended to reverse a 40 per cent decline over the past decade – and a jobs guarantee offering six months of fully subsidised paid work for long-term unemployed younger people.
He also revealed that his department is examining a targeted bursary to fix a “cliff edge” in the benefits system that can penalise families financially when a 16- or 17-year-old takes up an apprenticeship.
Because apprenticeships can trigger the loss of the Universal Credit child element, he said “there are a small number of circumstances” where a family ends up worse off overall, even though an apprenticeship is a paid job. “I can’t completely promise this today,” he said, but confirmed he had “asked the department to look at and work up” the cost of a bursary for those specific cases – a commitment he also flagged in his speech as something he would “like to look at.”
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