It’s important that MPs are clear what they’re voting on tomorrow. This bill does nothing to protect disabled people from unnecessary and intrusive reassessments – it just substantially cuts their support. (7/7)

The government is not proposing to change this either. The green paper made this explicit – it simply says that the government will ‘improve communication’ around ongoing awards. (6/7)

In my experience ‘ongoing awards’ are very under-used. I’ve repeatedly seen disabled people being given fixed-term awards even though it’s clear their needs won’t change. (5/7)

What about PIP? Again, there is already a process for people whose needs are not likely to change or with progressive conditions to be given ‘ongoing awards’, meaning they do not have to undergo regular assessments to continue receiving support. (4/7)

The government is not planning to make any changes to this – except to substantially cut the level of support given to all new UC Health claimants who don’t meet this narrowly defined ‘severe conditions’ criteria. (3/7)

The work capability assessment has had a process for exempting people with the most severe conditions from reassessments for a number of years. The available data suggests this is only applied to very small numbers of claimants. (2/7)

Suggestion is it will apply to all claimants, not just new ones, but the work capability assessment won't be scrapped until 2028/29, and the green paper says the government is 'considering' ways to mitigate the impact on people who lose support. Expect we'll get more details closer to the time

My reading of the green paper is that nothing will change on PIP assessment frequency. Even the measure about giving ongoing awards to people whose condition will not change is already DWP's practice, all they are proposing to improve communication about it