On Being Able to Walk Twenty Metres: The Introduction of Personal Independence Payments
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12170 |
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 46, NUMBER 3, SEPTEMBER 2019
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 448±75
On Being Able to Walk Twenty Metres: The Introduction of
Personal Independence Payments
Peter Alldridge*
The Welfare Reform Act 2012 introduced Personal Independence
Payments (PIPs), and in particular the enhanced-rate mobility com-
ponent (ERMC), with its twenty-metre test to replace the more flexible
fifty-metre test for the higher-rate mobility component of Disability
Living Allowance (DLA). The government objective was to reduce the
number of recipients of the benefits, which carry eligibility to the
Motability scheme. Rather than modify DLA so as to cure its perceived
faults, the government decided to ignore the past and start afresh. The
article examines the implementation of PIP, including the treatment of
the application of the author, and shows that the norms according to
which DWP operates the benefit, are radically at variance with those
in the Social Security (Personal Independence Payment) Regulations
2013. These developments have been central to the creation of a
`hostile environment' for people with disabilities.
INTRODUCTION
Of those who have suffered as a consequence of `Austerity', the reduction in
the United Kingdom's welfare state after the financial crisis, many are
people with disabilities.
1
Living with a disability tends to involve a higher
448
*Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS,
England
p.w.alldridge@qmul.ac.uk
This is a revised and extended version of the 2019 Queen Mary Law and Society Lecture,
delivered in February 2019. My thanks go to Lizzie Barmes, Tanni Grey-Thompson, Kate
Malleson, Ann Mumford, David Ruebain, Lucy Vickers, and Nick Wikeley; to those who
attended the lecture; and to the Journal's anonymous referees. Errors and omissions that
remain are mine.
1 M.M. Cross, `Demonised, impoverished and now forced into isolation: the fate of
disabled people under austerity' (2013) 28 Disability & Society 719; M. O'Hara,
Austerity Bites: A Journey to the Sharp End of Cuts in the UK (2015); F. Ryan,
Crippled: Austerity and the Demonization of Disabled People (2019).
ß2019 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2019 Cardiff University Law School
cost of living, including both costs of specialist equipment or appliances
2
and higher bills for energy, food, water, and (in the case of impairments
affecting mobility) transport. The costs arise in all sorts of ways:
3
if one
cannot easily leave one's home, utility costs are higher; if one cannot use
public transport or do work about the house, then additional costs are
incurred in those areas, and so on. In recent years the costs of living have
increased more rapidly than the indices by reference to which levels of
benefits are set.
4
If the thrust of public policy on people with disabilities in general, and
people with mobility impairments in particular, is to be a reversion to the
`warehousing' of the past, then transport is less important than had the
priorities been equality and inclusion. Benefits that provide transport for
people with disabilities are therefore one of the crucial targets of the attempt
to reformulate the duties of the state in relation to people with disabilities,
and the treatment of those benefits is a test of the sort of society we are.
Since 1975 the principal benefit available in the United Kingdom for help
with the transport needs of people with disabilities had been Disability
Living Allowance (DLA).
5
Under Part 4 of the Welfare Reform Act 2012,
DLA, was abolished and replaced by Personal Independence Payments
(PIPs). Implementation of the change has taken place in stages, starting with
new applications and moving to a reassessment of all those already receiving
DLA. The higher rate (mobi lity) component (HRMC) o f DLA was
superseded by the enhanced rate (mobility) component (ERMC) of PIPs.
DLA was not, and PIPs are not, contributory, means-tested or taxed.
6
Their
professed aims are to go some way towards making up for the additional
costs incurred by the claimant on account of his/her disability.
The new benefit was devised to make a complete break from the past, and
in particular it adopted procedures which assessed disability by reference to
functional limitation ± that is, assessing the claimant's ability to perform a
range of simple actions, rather than by a medical assessment (which had
been the approach for DLA) or one based on description of all relevant
dimensions of the person's life and disability, for example, work capacity,
including he alth conditi ons, impair ments, funct ional limit ations, and
personal and environmental factors.
7
449
2 A. Tinson et al., Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion 2016 (2016), New Policy
Institute Annual Report.
3 Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), Government's response to the consulta-
tion on Disability Living Allowance reform (2011; Cm. 8051) 13 and following.
4 A. Adams et al., `The squeeze on incomes' in The IFS Green Budget: February
2014, eds. C. Emmerson et al. (2014), at
gb2014_ch6.pdf>.
5 Created by Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992, s. 73.
6 Finance Act 1982, s. 30, Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1988, s. 617, Income
Tax (Employment and Pensions) Act 2003, s. 677. DWP, DLA Reform (2010; Cm.
7984), Ministerial foreword by Maria Miller.
7 Scottish Government, International Comparison of Disability Benefits (2019).
ß2019 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2019 Cardiff University Law School
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