As of Saturday 28th June 2025, the Commission on Social Security has emailed all MPs ahead of the upcoming vote on the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment bill and with our response to the government’s Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working Green Paper consultation. 

Ahead of the vote on Tuesday 1st July, we urge all MPs to vote against the bill in Parliament. There hasn’t been adequate time to consider the impact on disabled people, particularly the impact of 11th hour ‘concessions’ that will create an unfair system where new claimants will not see the same level of support as existing claimants.

In terms of the Green Paper consultation, we understand the detail of these proposals was closely guarded ahead of its publication in March this year. This means there cannot have been any attempt at co-production of the proposed policies with disabled people. Co-production has to be meaningful engagement, from inception. In the absence of this, we do not view the government’s proposals as serious reform of the social security system that can work for disabled people.

Since our project started in 2018, the Commission on Social Security’s work has been focused on setting out proposals for an improved social security system, one that is designed by and works for those of us who rely on it. After publishing The Plan: for a Decent Social Security System we could see further work was needed to develop detail around what an improved Personal Independence Payment could look like. While PIP has the capacity to work well, in reality it too often falls short in delivering fair, dignified and holistic support to disabled people. In January 2025 we put out our draft proposal for an Additional Costs Disability Payment for consultation through a series of focus groups and an online survey. We had high engagement with our focus groups and we saw over 5000 responses to our online survey. 

Such was the level of response to our own work we felt it was incredibly important our proposal was shared with the government through their own consultation to demonstrate this work can be done. It is possible to co-produce social security policies with disabled people at every stage of the process. The Commission on Social Security is a small project, working with a very limited budget and capacity, and despite this we have managed to deliver a proposal that has seen consultation with disabled people more rigorous than a government department was able to deliver. Every part of the draft proposal formed part of the online survey - there were no sections omitted from comment or criticism. We strongly believe that the government has gone about its proposals in the wrong way, ignoring the principles of co production entirely. We hope our approach can be a model for the government to rethink its plans. 

Our full response to the government’s consultation can be viewed here. Our email to MPs can be viewed here. Our proposal mentioned in both can be viewed here. If you have difficulty accessing these Google Docs, please email commissiononsocsec@gmail.com 

The Commission on Social Security will launch its proposal for an Additional Costs Disability Payment in August 2025.