Restricting eligibility for the Personal Independence Payment Daily Living part

Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall has announced reforms to the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) that would reduce benefits by £5 billion by 2029-30. The reform restricts eligibility for the daily living (DL) part based on severity.

Using the open-source PolicyEngine microsimulation model, we simulated the impact of two potential realisations of this policy:

1. Assign each PIP DL participant an equal chance of losing eligibility
2. Assign only non-enhanced PIP DL participants an equal chance of losing eligibility

We then calibrated each potential realisation to reduce benefits by £5 billion by 2029-30.

DWP qualifies people for PIP based on a points system. Daily living and mobility parts each require at least 8 points for the lower (standard) amount and 12 points for the higher (enhanced) parts. Daily living has 10 activities; mobility has two. PIP does not have an income or asset limit.

Table 1: PIP amounts (2025)

Component	Lower weekly rate	Higher weekly rate
Daily living part	£72.65	£108.55
Mobility part	£28.70	£75.75

We uprate these elements with inflation, projecting that by 2029, the daily living part will be £80.31 (lower) and £119.99 (higher) per week.

The green paper states:

"We will introduce a new, additional eligibility requirement so that a minimum of 4 points must be scored on one PIP daily living activity to receive the daily living element of the benefit. This means that people who only score the lowest points on each of the PIP daily living activities will lose their entitlement in future."

The reform may affect both non-enhanced and enhanced PIP DL enrollees, so we simulated realisations that remove both non-enhanced only and all PIP DL enrollees. For each realisation, we adjusted the removal share of the affected population to result in £5 billion in reduced benefit payments.

Table 2: Total impacts of PIP DL reforms in 2029

Realisation	Cut to PIP DL non-enhanced	Cut to total PIP DL	Poverty	Deep poverty
Only cut non-enhanced	62%	35%	134,000	28,000
Cut all	25%	25%	119,000	63,000

In the realisation that cuts both enhanced and non-enhanced, the reform increases female poverty in greater absolute numbers than male, but the reverse is true for deep poverty.

Table 3: Poverty impacts by gender of PIP DL reforms in 2029

Realisation	Male poverty	Female poverty	Male deep poverty	Female deep poverty
Only cut non-enhanced	29,000	28,000	8,000	3,000
Cut all	55,000	64,000	34,000	28,000

Our model and analysis code is open-source. All poverty statistics represent absolute poverty before housing costs. We invite users to explore other PIP reforms at policyengine.org/uk.