LCN calls on minister to ensure meaningful co-production in disability benefit review

Along with 17 organisations, the Law Centres Network has written to the Minister for Social Security and Disability, Sir Stephen Timms MP, ahead of the Timms Review of Personal Independence Payment (PIP).

PIP is a benefit that helps towards some of the additional living costs arising from having a long-term physical or mental health condition or disability.

The Timms Review will look at how the PIP assessment process works in practice, and its outcome will generate proposals on the future of PIP.

During the Commons stages of the Universal Credit Bill, the government committed to co-production of the Timms Review with a group of disabled people and the organisations that represent them.

LCN and its sector partners welcome this step but have put forward four key recommendations to make co-production a success:

1. Ensure co-production reflects the diversity of the disabled community and involves other experts with a direct stake in PIP, such as welfare rights advisors

2. Monitor and evaluate the co-production process

3. Commit to full transparency by publishing a final report for the review that is available to MPs ahead of parliamentary debate

4. Ensure meaningful parliamentary scrutiny by inviting MPs to debate and vote on a substantive motion to approve the outcome of the review

What is at stake in this review is the future health, living standards and independence of disabled people. To ensure inclusive and representative policymaking, it is essential that the co-production process is conducted meaningfully. Only then can it bear out the spirit of ‘nothing about us without us.’

Read the full letter published by Turn2Us.

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