News

Hello all

Don't really listen to the media but been thinking this to without reading about it  wonder if others have been thinking  labour will lose seats if they don't stop being cruel think it will happen .

Thank you for your email. I am grateful you have taken the trouble to get in touch to tell me about this.

This is my Parliamentary email address which I use with residents in my constituency of East Ham. Given your email relates to my role as Minister for Social Security and Disability, please can I ask that you re-send it to Ministers@dwp.gov.uk?

You may wish to copy your local Member of Parliament into the email too. You can find out who this is by entering your postcode here. In the interim, I will tell the team in the DWP to look out for your email.

With all best wishes

Rt Hon Sir Stephen Timms
Member of Parliament for East Ham
House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA

Phone: 020 7219 4000
Web: www.stephentimms.org.uk

Things have moved rather quickly for me tonight.  Some of you will remember the open letter that I wrote to Stephen Timms a day or so ago.  I put it on my personal account on X this afternoon (Sunday)  and it has gone nuts.  It has had over 525 reposts, and, as I write this, it has had over 13,000 views.  This is far beyond what I expected - or anything has happened on Twitter/X before when I have posted something.  The only person who hasn't read it is Stephen Timms!

For those that didn't see the letter, it can be found here:
https://silentmovieblog.wordpress.com/2025/04/12/needing-help-to-eat-dress-wash-cook-and-use-the-toilet-are-not-low-level-functional-needs-an-open-letter-to-stephen-timms-mp/

I watched a comment  recently no names mentioned and it was implied that unless you go through the UK  Government website other petitions wont be recognised. Do not quote me on that. There is a government petition just short of 10,000 signatures. If that is reached the Government has a duty to respond. Hopefully just the first step.  More  it is important  for all disabled people to stand together and unite as one. We will all be impacted if it comes to pass and I wish with all my heart by making quiet peaceful demonstrations like some members of the disability rights movement or the crucial work done quietly in the background by the Benefits and Works Team who work tirelessly to support and reassure all disabled people of  the reality of the situation. We all have a voice, with important views that need to be heard. I am disabled myself so I empathise with everyone and what they may be going through. We need to stick together and support each other in these uncertain times of adversity. Thank you Benefits and Work and all that contribute to this forum. Your opinion , views always matter and are sincerely appreciated by one and all.

Dear Mr Timms,

I write to you in dismay that you are supporting the green paper proposals on Welfare.

My husband has a genetic neurological condition which causes his muscles to waste and affects his daily life very significantly in a myriad of ways. I am his carer, as he risks choking or falling when he is alone. I work part-time from home as my current NHS employer is understanding and flexible, but my income is very modest and my role is at risk due to restructuring, so I am likely to end up having to take a job away from home in the near future. As a household, we receive PIP standard daily living and mobility, LCWRA and UC Carer’s Element.

The current PIP system is designed to exclude rather than include even people with significant health issues like my husband. Despite the picture being carefully and deliberately painted in the media, it is not easy for even my husband’s level of illness to be recognised by this system, and we had to appeal the initial assessment. Introducing the 4 point rule will make it even harder for people who have to fight tooth and nail for the least support. These are courageous and resilient people - they would have to be to overcome a system that is against them whilst doing the full-time job of managing their symptoms. I have seen so many stories of people who score across a wide range of areas but would not score 4 in any. They are severely ill, but under the proposed system would not be deemed to be so.

This leaves these people in a position where their financial support would be withdrawn, but they would remain unable to work. Access to Work was in BBC News just last week, as companies are owed vast amounts by the government and are at threat of going under. Even sympathetic employers would think twice about employing people like my husband in this context.

How can it be humane or just to remove financial support from people like my husband in such times as this? Look at the state of the economy and the jobs market. What will people like us do? If I take a full time job, who will care for my husband when there are no carers to be had? Indeed, with Carer’s Allowance being removed from thousands of previously eligible households, professional carers will lose their jobs too.

If your government were serious about ‘putting disabled people at the heart of everything’ you do, you would 1) want to listen to disabled people’s opinions about the most important elements of the proposals (the elements that are excluded from your consultation) and 2) you would only consider such drastic changes when you were sure there were viable jobs for such people to do (which I cannot forsee in any case, given the myriad of health issues faced by many disabled people like my husband). You and your government can say until you’re blue in the face that you’ll provide support for people like my husband to work. He’ll still fall and he’ll still choke, and he’ll still suffer chronic daytime fatigue.

We are a Bible-believing, Christian household. You will know that God instructs us to care for widows and orphans - Bible talk for the most vulnerable. What your government is doing is to scapegoat and demonise the long-term sick - among the most vulnerable - and belittle their need for support. As a Christian, how can you support and promote this? I am completely appalled and disappointed.

Please stop repeating in the media that you care about the views of disabled people. I simply cannot believe it. At every turn, their voices have been silenced. I can only hope and pray that your conscience can be revived.

Yours sincerely,

Reminder that Labour, the Tories or Reform are NOT friends of the disabled. They will do everything to downplay disabilities, to mock the mentally ill, to propagandize lies about the disabled in order to save money. 

Apparently the government might have to revisit benefit cuts at a later stage,supposedly the cuts won't stop the spiralling costs.

The pip changes won't include those with Terminal illness. 

This whole getting back to work and 'changing behaviour' rhetoric completely overlooks how substantial earnings would have to be to replace what was being cut. Awards such as lcwra and pip are already there to support work, to allow the disabled to participate in the workforce and earn a little on top of their incapacity and disability benefits before earnings are deducted, bringing the dignity the government hammers on about and and the opportunity to afford small luxuries not covered by benefits.

Removing the incapacity and disability benefits is actually a disincentive to work because apart from the practical difficulties, work becomes unaffordable when earnings reach a threshold where they are deducted from means tested benefits and is profitable only when a threshold largely unachievable for the disabled is reached. I know people who already pay to work, especially where child care costs come into play.

So yes, let the disabled try work without risk of losing their benefits, but forget the green paper cuts and tinkering with eligibility. As for assessments, capability for work and eligibility for pip cannot be tested in the same assessment, when the costs for personal independence are distinct from, and additional to deciding whether someone can work.

Is it worth as many of us as possible emailing Stephen Timms as SLB has done? I’m also going to keep emailing my own MP. She’s Lib Dem and supportive of us but. I don’t know how high this issue is on her agenda and I don’t want the pressure to fall away 

I was working with the Shaw trust voluntarily to get into work but have stopped this week. I do get enhanced PIP and was using it to pay for physio and counselling but am trying to save most of the money now to give me a small safety net in time for 2028

I had a question with regards the descriptors in PIP and also the ESA and UC forms. Who decides on weighting the questions and answers ? Is there a medical board deciding on these or are these being decided by bureaucrat and/or politicians? In other words who are the experts and how do they decide on the questions and the points ?

I saw this news story today and literally has made me very angry that this can happen in Britain 

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/nobody-knows-what-to-do-with-me-what-happened-when-chloe-asked-for-help/ar-AA1C2o87

Seen something about access to work some employers are not given the money from government  and their being forced to pay for it proof their that alot of companies can't afford to take on disabled people because readjustments cost alot of employers would be forced to pay high insurance aswell as ni that's red flag  if there's no employers willing to hire disabled people where are jobs the government want to push people into also access to work applications taking to long for people even if these cuts go through primary legislation they can still be challenged and they will be these changes may get put on hold think they will go to court and  watered down could see another consultation next year  labour councillors have resigned in some places and some have voted against the cuts elections next month could lose labour loads of seats people shouldnt vote reform Tories or labour they only want power it's expected reform will win next general election that would be bad for this country to.

Just wondering if there are any countries offering asylum to British benefit claimants being persecuted by their own government 

"Rachel Reeves under fire as UK job market suffers worst downturn since the pandemic."

Over the weekend, I will be sending the following letter to Stephen Timms, and making it public online:

Dear Mr. Timms,

Following the furore over Darren Jones and Rachel Reeves’s comparison of the forthcoming disability benefit cuts to “pocket money,” it is with astonishment that I see that you have referred to being unable to cut up food, needing assistance to wash or shower, and needing supervision to use the toilet as “low level” problems that can be dealt with by “small interventions” on April 7. At the same time, you defended the decision to change the eligibility for the Daily Living element of PIP to require 4 points in at least one category.

The problem with the approach to disability benefits that you, your department, the chancellor, and the Prime Minister are taking is that you appear to be wilfully using provocative language, misinformation, and downright lies in order to persuade the public at large that those of us with problems that are spread over a wide range of daily tasks are somehow not disabled enough to be worthy of a benefit. With this in mind, I have to ask the question of why you have only come to this conclusion since you have been in the party of government. After all, on June 8th, 2016, you voted against reductions in disability benefits when you were in opposition.  The rules were the same then, so perhaps you would be good enough to tell us what has changed your mind?

But let us return to those “level level” problems, those tiny inconveniences, of not being able to wash, cut food, or go to the toilet. I am sure that I don’t have to remind you that the dozen questions on the PIP form are there for the purpose of deciding whether we should get the benefit or not. Those questions, and the answers we give to them, are not the sum of the problems we have to deal with on a daily basis.

If we need help with those basic things, it is highly likely that it is because of pain and discomfort. That does not start and end with dressing and washing. It is there for every moment of every day, from the time we get up in the morning until the time we go to bed at night. What is more, you appear to ignore the costs associated with that.

Let us look at just one example: If we can only use a microwave to prepare meals, one would assume that means eating ready meals. Two ready meals a day is around £8-10. We know that cooking from scratch is considerably cheaper than that (just ask Lee Anderson MP). So, yes, using the microwave is a “small intervention,” but it costs anyone who does that every day probably 50% more than those who don’t have to.

That’s an extra £28 a week. But you don’t want PIP to cover that? Why? THAT is what PIP is there for – to pay for the things that cost us more because we are disabled.

I might have some respect for your position if I thought that it was one that you actually believe in, but your previous voting record suggests that it isn’t. I have psoriatic arthritis. I am in pain from the moment I get up in the morning until the moment I go to bed. I suffer from fatigue, as many do who have inflammatory conditions of this kind. Beyond that, I’m taking extra strong codeine three or four times a day that makes my brain foggy and makes me generally tired. And you want me – and others like me – to go to work. My biologic medication costs the NHS £650 every four weeks. Do you really think I would be given it by my consultant if my condition wasn’t severe?

And my consultant says I shouldn’t work. But you say I should and, either way, you’re going to take my PIP away from me because I’m just not disabled enough. Oh, and when you take that, you’re also going to take my LCWRA UC when the WCA is scrapped because it’s somehow going to cause a “behavioural change” (according to Keir Starmer) and I’ll be able to go to work. What’s more, you are not even allowing those who only get the mobility element of PIP to get that higher element of UC.

Are you REALLY of the belief that those who can’t walk more than one metre are not disabled enough to get the health element of UC?

What you are suggesting is insane. It has no basis in reality. The disabled community knows this. The medical profession know this. And the worst of it all is that YOU know this. So does Liz Kendall, and Darren Jones, and Rachel Reeves, and Keir Starmer, and every member of your party who doesn’t have the guts to stand up for those of us that need their help right now.

What you are suggesting isn’t just insane, it’s insulting. It is patronising, pathetic, and puerile, and it is trivialising what we, the disabled community, have to go through every day of our lives, and through no fault of our own.

How dare you tell us that what we have are merely “multiple low-level functioning needs” that need a “small intervention,” just because your government has decided that we are collateral damage for your budgetary failures.

Your position is no better than that of Boris Johnson who thought that Covid was “nature’s way of dealing with old people.” In the future, people will look back and view what you are doing as the Labour government’s way of dealing with the disabled. The results will be the same. People will die. 

"The most harmful proposals are being introduced instead in the new government bill, without any consultation." - From DNS. Legal action against primary legislation leads into mirky waters, most of the main legal actions will be taken against the Green Paper/White Paper.

Can we oppose this green proposal