Swapping benefits for vouchers is just another way for the government to infantalise us

During a routine Personal Independence Payment (PIP) claim in late 2020, I committed the relatively minor offence of forgetting to provide my new address quickly enough.

The reason for my forgetfulness? I’m on meds for my disabilities and the side effects of this treatment is that it hugely impacts my memory.

But as a result of this slight oversight, I was slapped with a huge sanction where all my payments immediately stopped.

It meant that I had to reapply for PIP from scratch. In early 2021, I eventually got backdated payments equivalent to three months – despite the process taking eight.

This negative impact on my life put me in debt that – three years later – I’m still not close to climbing out of. It also instantly shattered any progress I’d made with my mental and physical health. 

Traumatic experiences like this are common to hear in disabled circles, where PIP’s reputation is fearsome.

Unfortunately, all that looks set to get worse as – in a pre-election attempt to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks – the Government has revealed it is considering plans to substitute PIP disability payments with vouchers. 

It’s all to do with tackling a so-called ‘worklessness crisis’, but PIP isn’t supposed to be an out of work benefit – it’s supposed to account for the extra costs of disability and put us on a level footing with our able-bodied counterparts.

The system already feels stacked against us – and I fear this cracking down on PIP will only exacerbate that.

Unfortunately, I’ve never had a good experience with getting support from PIP for my disabilities.

In 2017, my first assessment booklet took two weeks to complete due to the amount of information and medical evidence they requested. Once submitted, what followed was nearly two hours of deeply invasive questions by an assessor.

I had to explain in-depth my diagnoses and traumas and how they affect my day-to-day to somebody who had never even heard of half of them. Yet, this person had the power to decide whether they made me worthy of support.

I left the assessment shaking and feeling incredibly vulnerable, with a Complex-PTSD (PTSD that stems from multiple events) flare up, and subsequent physical health flares to navigate that left me 7kg lighter and in bed for weeks. 

I was eventually granted PIP, but still believe I was given a lower award level than I deserved. If the appeals process wasn’t even more daunting than the initial assessment, I definitely would’ve challenged this ruling.

Then came the incident involving my new address, which only made me feel even more frustrated with the PIP process.

So a change in the system could theoretically streamline the process, but I believe it’s more likely to make it much harder.

With little clarity on what these vouchers could be spent on, where they will be accepted, or how much money they will be equivalent to, disabled people like me are panicking.

For instance, a relative is scared she won’t be able to afford the heating bills, made steep by her heart failure and inability to regulate her own body temperature. A friend is terrified that her carers and landlord won’t accept the vouchers and that she’ll end up evicted with no support at all.

The stress of what this new policy could be is already causing untold problems.

I believe that it’s cruel, infantilising and patronising and will increase reliance on other state benefits and NHS services. In reality, scapegoating disabled people for some apparent worklessness crisis will not improve the lives of the non-disabled masses either.

Make no mistake, no matter how many benefits we receive – whether earning a wage or not in work – being disabled costs money. 

Disability charity Scope calculates that disabled households need, on average, an extra £975 every month just to have the same quality of life as non-disabled households. 

For me, this extra cost is through increased heating bills, accessible housing with safety rails throughout, pre-prepared food, heavy reliance on my car, petrol and parking costs to and from appointments, supplements, lots of over the counter painkillers, and prescription charges.

The disability tax applies everywhere and payments like PIP – which are already inadequate – are supposed to help address the imbalance. You don’t address that by replacing money with vouchers.

Any switch to a voucher-based system would imply to me that the Government knows better than we do about what we need money for. I feel like they’re treating us like children who need someone else to budget for us. 

It removes even more of our autonomy, which is very ironic for a benefit with ‘independence’ in its title. 

It’s yet another way for them to imply that we are untrustworthy and are spending our PIP frivolously. I believe this is an attempt to advance the ‘shirker vs worker’ narrative, which only causes harm to disabled people like me.

I hope that the Tories won’t enact this before the election in an attempt to brag about cutting the benefits bill.

I believe that putting an arbitrary number on the ‘correct’ amount to spend on benefits is ridiculous. The correct amount is the one that provides everyone with a safe and dignified quality of life.

It seems to me that the Government can always find money for defence or tax cuts, so it is odd that vital support like benefits can be seen as ripe for slashing.

Another cruel irony is that one of the reasons Britain has such high sickness rates is the state of our NHS and social care systems. People rely on PIP to get by precisely because preventative and early stage care has crumbled under austerity.

For instance, I’ve found long term therapy (both physical and mental) and chiropractic care impossible to get on the NHS, and I cannot afford the private route.

All of these would help decrease my pain levels drastically, enabling me to work more, rely less on pharmaceuticals and be more independent.

I believe that changing PIP from money to vouchers would only increase people’s reliance on other state benefits, such as Universal Credit (UC) to plug the shortfall. It’s false economy.

Knowing the system as intimately as I do, any further cruelty laced into it will prove lethal. The stakes are that high.

The consultation period for this reform is now open, and I urge you to have your say while you can. For all our sakes.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. 

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