Sir Stephen Timms, Labour’s minister for social security and disability, is widely acknowledged to be a parliamentary expert on welfare. He has seen the system from almost every angle: as a pensions and Treasury minister under New Labour, a shadow welfare spokesperson, a select committee chair, and now as a government minister. After Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves’s ham-fisted attempt to balance the books on the backs of disabled people sparked a backbench revolt, the pair retreated behind Sir Stephen.
His interim review into personal independence payment (Pip), the main non-means-tested disability benefit for working-age adults, is an attempt to clean up the mess. The deeper problem was Labour’s fiscal rule: that the current budget should be on course to be in balance or surplus. That rule disadvantages spending on the “current” side of the ledger, including welfare, because it is treated as expenditure to be “paid for”.
