Taxpayers are paying £800 per minute in disability benefits to people claiming to suffer from anxiety, with costs soaring from under £100 million in 2019 to nearly £427 million last year. Sir Keir Starmer abandoned plans to tighten Personal Independence Payment rules 90 minutes before a Commons vote after facing the biggest rebellion of his premiership. Total PIP spending is projected to rise from £26 billion per year to £38 billion within five years.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a boom in PIP payments for psychiatric disorders, which now account for over 40% of claims. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said mental health conditions accounted for 55% of the rise in disability benefits. PIP can be awarded based on a personal diary or a letter from a friend describing how anxiety affects daily life, without requiring a doctor's visit.
Ministers wanted to change PIP rules to require claimants to prove significant struggle in at least one area of daily life, rather than accumulating small difficulties across several. The plan collapsed after 126 Labour MPs threatened to block it, arguing it would push disabled people into poverty. 90 per week.
PIP payments are not means-tested and do not require recipients to stop working. Unregulated no-win, no-fee firms coach PIP applicants, taking up to 60% of any backdated payment secured. Benefit claims companies face no fee limit and no regulator, unlike PPI firms limited to 20% of payouts.
On TikTok, accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers coach people on how to describe symptoms for maximum effect in PIP claims. It remains unclear what specific evidence supports the claim that PIP is being awarded without proper medical verification, or how many people are currently receiving PIP for anxiety and their demographic breakdown. The accuracy and source of the £800 per minute figure, and how it was calculated, have not been detailed, and the impact of reported coaching tactics on PIP approval rates is unknown.