Senior Labour MPs: Government cuts have left people 'housebound, alone and distressed'

More than 48,500 people have been stripped of their independence after their cars were removed under the Government’s misguided cuts to disabled benefits. Many of those vehicles were wrongly taken away and only returned after a lengthy and often upsetting appeals process by those disabled people affected. 

That is the harsh reality behind the government’s plans to cut £3.7 billion from disability benefits that all three of us have seen first hand as a stream of distressed constituents have turned to us for help after being told to hand back their Motability vehicles. For many of them, losing their car is a life-changing moment that means losing their independence, their ability to go to work or the shops and losing their freedom to visit friends and family. 

The three of us all first raised these cuts to Personal Independence Payments (PIP) with questions in the House of Commons in January.  It was not a planned intervention, just a reflection of how widespread and damaging the cuts are to disabled people across the country.

In 2013 the Government started to replace Disability Living Allowance (DLA) with PIP to assist people with extra costs arising from ill health or disability. When moving across from DLA to PIP, people have to go through an ‘assessment process’ to determine how serious their condition is and whether or not they are entitled to benefits. 

DLA and PIP recipients with severe mobility issues are entitled to ‘enhanced rate mobility’, and can choose to enter into the Motability Scheme, allowing them to rent cars, powered wheelchairs or scooters. This gives vital independence to people who would otherwise be housebound or seriously restricted in getting around and forms a vital component of our social security system.  

But under the new assessment process for PIP, huge numbers of people are losing this ‘enhanced rate mobility’ and, as a result, having their vehicles taken away.

The key change to this assessment process is the reduction in the qualifying distance to 20 metres, meaning that if a claimant can walk 20 metres they will not qualify for higher rate mobility support under PIP. The qualifying distance was previously 50 metres and has meant many former DLA claimants have been hit by this this unfair and ill-considered change. For example it no account of the reality of their disability, whether they can't get out of the house, use public transport or have no alternative to their Motability car.

So far, a staggering 45% of Motability Scheme users who were moved from DLA to PIP have been told they must leave the Motability Scheme and return their cars.

That’s around 48,500 people and rising with serious mobility issues who suddenly find themselves without the transport they have previously relied on.  In many cases it has left them housebound, alone and distressed. 

To add injury to insult, it frequently transpires that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has wrongly assessed people. Around 60% of PIP cases that go to appeal are successfully overturned because mistakes have been made – mistakes that remove thousands of peoples’ key to freedom.

But despite this high number - which suggests serious flaws in the assessment process - the government does not pay benefits to claimants while they are challenging a decision as part of a process that can take months. Almost unbelievably, their Motability vehicles are often taken away and sold before the appeals process has been exhausted. 

So, even if the appeal is ultimately successful, the claimant can be left for months without a car and forced to rack up further costs to reinstate specialist adaptations when they get a new car.

Then, there are undoubtedly those who are not aware of the appeals system or do not have the resources to appeal and lose access to a car to which they might well be perfectly entitled.

All three of us have been contacted by constituents who were stressed and upset after losing their vehicles. One constituent, a stroke victim with a young family, was told she no longer qualifies for her automatic Motability vehicle. The car she used to take her children to school and get to work was removed from her. She feared she would lose her job. Another one of our constituents was left housebound after her vehicle was removed following a DWP assessment. 

Following our questions in the Commons, we wrote a joint letter to Work and Pensions Secretary Damian Green in which we urged him to change his policy on the timing for removing the vehicles, so that the cars are only removed following an unsuccessful appeal. 

We also urged him to commit to a full review of the PIP reassessment process with regards to ‘higher rate mobility’ and Motability vehicles as the current system is clearly unfit for purpose. 

We pointed out that, given that the majority of appeals are successful and the proportion of successful appeals has increased in every quarter since the benefit was introduced, it is wholly unacceptable that many disabled people entitled to a Motability car are left for months without one. It is also proving to be a false economy, as people are less likely to be able to work without their vehicles. 

The response we received was evasive. The Government is trying to pass the buck onto Motability, the charity that leases the vehicles, by arguing the DWP is ‘not involved in determining scheme policy or operational issues and the decision as to whether to support the continuation of leases pending appeal is not within its remit’. 

This response is disingenuous and reveals a total abdication of responsibility, entirely without sympathy or compassion for the thousands of people hit by the planned cuts. It also shows a lack of compassion when it comes to helping the most vulnerable in our society. 

We have no doubt that MPs across the country will have dealt with similar cases and it is vital that they all come forward to put pressure on the government to make an swift U-turn.

At the very least, there needs to be an urgent review of the assessment process, as the high success rate for appeals suggests that many people are clearly being wrongly assessed and unfairly losing the cars on which they rely. 

Furthermore, the government announced changes to PIP last week without even consulting the Social Security Advisory Committee. Following two court rulings that said PIP assessments should consider “overwhelming psychological distress” when considering mobility and transport needs, the government decided that this expands eligibility beyond their original intent, which would end up costing them more. 

Restoring this “original intent” could affect more than 160,000 people, and will, according to Disability Rights UK, affect people who have a learning disability, diabetes, epilepsy, anxiety or dementia. It is now clear that the Government’s commitment to parity of esteem for mental health will be sacrificed to pursue a penalising austerity agenda.

The Tories have been very clear that they intend to spend far less on disability benefits. But it is time the Government got a grip and started taking note of the human misery that results from their mistakes and mismanagement, rather than viewing their cuts as just figures on a spreadsheet.

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