Personal Independence Payment (abbreviated to PIP and usually pronounced as one word) is a welfare benefit in the United Kingdom that is intended to help working-aged people 16 and over[1] with the extra costs of living with a health condition or a disability.
PIP was introduced by the Welfare Reform Act 2012 and the Social Security (Personal Independence Payment) Regulations 2013 (which have been repeatedly amended).
It began to replace Disability Living Allowance (DLA) for new claims from 8 April 2013, by means of an initial pilot in selected areas of north-west and north-east England.
The Disability Benefits Consortium (DBC) (comprising charities including Parkinson's UK, the MS Society and Mind) claimed about 160,000 people receiving PIP would be affected by proposed changes.
Charities that represent mental health and learning disability groups claim the changes do not recognise that the costs connected with those conditions are as severe as for other impairments.
Payments are varied according to the severity of disability as decided by the tests and relate to ability to carry out daily living activities and level of mobility.
In 2018 37% of the 220,000 face-to-face assessments conducted by Capita were rated by DWP auditors as of an unacceptable standard, to need changes, or demonstrating that the assessor had failed to carry out the role properly.
[17] In December 2017 the High Court of Justice ruled that restrictions to the mobility component which stated that psychological distress could not be considered in deciding if a person could walk discriminated against people with mental health problems.
[19] In April 2013 Iain Duncan Smith, the sponsor of the Welfare Reform Act, expressed his support for the changes to disability benefits brought about by the new law.
Iain Duncan Smith stated that, by requiring claimants to undergo periodic assessments, the system could be targeted at those most in need whilst preventing payments being made to people who had recovered from a temporary disability.
[21] In November 2021 it launched a campaign to give disabled people the right to request an assessor who is a specialist in their condition, after it was revealed that successful appeals were running at an average of more than 12,000 per month.
[23] In June 2014 the Public Accounts Committee expressed the view that the implementation of the PIP scheme had been "nothing short of a fiasco", a charge rejected by the Government.
In 2017 Member of Parliament Carol Monaghan said she would challenge four cases of patients with multiple sclerosis being called for reassessment despite their illness worsening.
"It's absolutely crucial that the DWP looks again at the broken PIP assessment to ensure people with long-term conditions get the support they so desperately need, rather than rigging the system against them," he said.
[28] Adult recipients of Disability Living Allowance will continue to receive it until the Department for Work and Pensions invites them to apply for PIP.