Reform’s new would-be chancellor Robert Jenrick has begun his tenure with a speech calculated to stir up hatred against claimants.
In a press conference yesterday, he told supporters that “Reform will always protect the vulnerable” but went on to define vulnerable people as “those who worked hard but have fallen on hard times.” No mention of those who have never been able to work.
He went on to attack claimants with conditions like ADHD, saying:
“The number claiming benefits for an attention disorder has more than doubled since covid. We all know a significant number of these claims are spurious and that we’re now just giving up on over half a million young people who are being discarded as unfit for work.”
In fact, according to the NHS, ADHD is “under-recognised, under-diagnosed and under-treated”.
Jenrick then turned to claimants with mental health conditions:
“We will stop those with mild anxiety, depression and similar conditions from claiming disability benefits and instead do everything we can to encourage them into the dignity of work. We will reinstate in-person assessments and require clinical diagnosis to weed out those who are choosing a life on benefits.”
And no attack on disabled claimants would be complete without denigrating users of the Motability scheme:
“We will end the abuse of the Motability scheme where expensive cars are handed out for conditions like tennis elbow and paid for by working people who could never afford those same cars themselves.”
In reality, nobody gets higher rate mobility for tennis elbow.
Somewhere between 275,000 and 480,000 people in the UK develop tennis elbow each year and in a tiny proportion of these cases it can develop into a serious condition. And in an even tinier number of cases it will be serious enough to give rise to a claim for benefits.
At October 2025 there were 1,997,967 claimants in receipt of the enhanced rate of the mobility component, making them eligible to join the Motability scheme if they choose.
Of these, just 116 are listed by the DWP as having tennis elbow as their main disabling condition.
But every one of those 116 claimants will have at least one other condition which actually affects their mobility. It’s just that a DWP case manager – not a health professional - has chosen to list lateral epicondylitis (tennis elbow) as the main disabling one.
It’s worth noting that 112 claimants get standard PIP mobility for tennis elbow. But the standard rate isn’t awarded for physical health. Instead, it is for people with sensory, mental health or neurodevelopmental issues. So, clearly some DWP case managers are selecting tennis elbow as the main disabling condition even where other – probably more serious - issues are present.
But Jenrick isn’t interested in accuracy or fairness. And there were no concrete proposals in this speech. No indication of how Reform would change the Motability scheme or reduce the number of claims for ADHD or mental health issues.
Instead, this was just more disabled claimant bashing, with the aim of picking up a few more votes in this month’s by-election and May’s local elections.
We just hope that the 10,000 PIP claimants and the almost nine thousand UC health claimants in Gorton and Denton get to hear what Jenrick has to say about them, before they decide how to cast their votes.
