SOCIAL Security Minister Sir Stephen Timms has said that the government’s proposed changes to disability benefits are intended to “fix a broken system”.

He told GB News: “What we set out yesterday with a plan to fix a broken system proper employment support for hundreds of thousands of people out of work at the moment on health and disability grounds who would love to be in a job, if they had the support to get into a job. We’re going to be providing that support.

“We’re going to be dealing with the big discouragement to work that’s prevented by changes in the benefit system over the last 15 years.

“At the moment, there’s significant premium if you can persuade our department that you are never going to be capable of working, whereas what we should be doing is supporting people on a pathway back into work, even if that’s going to take some time.

“And we’re making changes to ensure that the Personal Independence Payment system is financially sustainable for the long-term. I think that’s the right thing to do.

“There’s been a big increase in the cost of that benefit over the last five years. It’s almost doubled since the year before the pandemic. But it’s got a really important job to do, Personal Independence Payments. We want to make sure it’s going to be there for the long-term.”

He added: “If you look at the Personal Independence Payment system, the year before the pandemic, that was costing the government £12 billion. This year, it’s going to be costing £22 billion.

“If we simply allowed that rate of increase to continue, there would be a serious question mark about the future of that system.

“We want the system to be there for the long-term, because hundreds of thousands of people depend on it.

“What we’ve announced yesterday will be very reassuring to a very large number of people who were worried, for example, about the proposal the previous government made to convert PIP into vouchers that really alarmed a lot of people.

“We’re not going to be doing that. We’ve set out yesterday the plan to make this benefit sustainable.”