LONDON—Reform UK Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick unveiled plans Monday to abolish Personal Independence Payments, the cash benefit paid to disabled people in the United Kingdom to cover the additional costs of daily living, and replace them with a new "Health Security Allowance" restricted to those whose conditions are deemed so severe they cannot reasonably be expected to support themselves through work.
The proposals drew sharp responses from disabled claimants who said the plans misrepresented how they use the payments. Sonia Maud, a beauty technician from Yorkshire diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2011, said the condition has forced her to reduce her working hours and left her unable to hold full-time employment. "I couldn't get a proper full-time job because of the MS because it affects my cognition, it affects my energy levels. Employers just wouldn't employ me, basically," she said. "I'd give up the PIP to be able to be the person I was five years ago."
Steven Morris, 43, who is deafblind and works as a campaigns officer for the disability charity Sense in Buckinghamshire, said PIP currently pays for taxis that allow him to reach his office. "Welfare benefits are a lifeline for disabled people. They enable us to participate in society, see people that we love, and also to seek and stay in work," Morris said. He added that PIP has covered therapies that kept him employed while he waited on National Health Service treatment. "Benefits like PIP actually help disabled people stay in work. If you remove benefits, then potentially people may drop out of the workforce and may end up needing to claim more support," he said.
The centrepiece of Reform's proposal is replacing PIP and the health element of Universal Credit with the Health Security Allowance, which Jenrick said would be means-tested under Universal Credit rules. Under that structure, qualifying claimants would lose 55 pence of disability cash for every one pound earned above basic income thresholds—meaning working disabled claimants could see direct cash payments reduced or eliminated by their wages, regardless of the severity of their condition.
For claimants who do not meet the severity threshold, or for non-severe cases, Reform proposes replacing direct cash payments with local council-run Disability Support Accounts. These accounts would reimburse only approved expenses rather than providing unrestricted cash, shifting spending decisions from individuals to councils.
Reform said existing non-mental-health claimants would be shielded from reassessment for three years after the policy takes effect. Once fully rolled out, the party's own projections estimate 2.89 million of the current 4.5 million PIP and Universal Credit health claimants would lose their entitlement—roughly half the total caseload.
The package also includes a Reform pledge to have long-term claimants clean up their high street, a requirement that employers cover benefit payments for the first two years of an employee's illness rather than the government, a ban on non-UK citizens claiming benefits, and the reintroduction of the two-child benefit limit that the Labour government scrapped last year.
Abdi Mohamed, head of policy at the disability equality charity Scope, rejected the framing that removing benefits would push disabled people into work. "Reform's proposals should be about creating opportunities, not pushing disabled people into poverty and calling it compassion," Mohamed said. "Life costs a huge amount more when you're disabled, and PIP goes towards covering those costs, whether or not you're in work. It's not an unemployment benefit." Mohamed called for greater ambition on accessible workplaces and employer adjustments instead.
Disability charities labelled the economic projections behind Reform's claimed £50 billion saving as "fantasy economics," questioning whether the structural reforms would generate savings of that scale in practice.
Reform's pledge to cut £50 billion from the welfare bill is the headline fiscal target underpinning the entire package. Jenrick presented the overhaul as a necessary correction to a system he said had grown unsustainable, with the current PIP and Universal Credit health rolls reaching 4.5 million claimants.
