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Benefit cuts for disabled people in hospital called unfair

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Benefit cuts for disabled people in hospital called unfair

In November 2022, we reported thousands of disabled people had had their benefits paused during extended hospital stays under a rule which charities said penalised the most vulnerable.

It came after a court case was withdrawn which had been set to challenge the lawfulness of the so-called "hospitalisation rule" through an application for judicial review.

Under this rule, a person's entitlement to the disability benefit Personal Independence Payment (PIP) was suspended if they had received care in a hospital or a similar institution for 28 days or more.

Affected families said they were needed to help care for their disabled relatives in hospital which led to extra expenses during this time.

The government said when somebody was in receipt of long-term NHS in-patient care, it did not pay benefits to stop the taxpayer from paying double.

Methodology

We provided figures for the total number of people whose PIP payments were suspended due to spending 28 days or more in a hospital or similar institution for each local authority for the quarter from 1 February to 30 April for the years 2020, 2021 and 2022, so we were comparing the same point in time. For a sense of proportion we also provided the total PIP claims for each local authority for each of those financial years.

As the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions was originally named as the defendant in the application for judicial review, we sourced figures from The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) only and they covered Great Britain.

The suspensions data were obtained through a request to the DWP under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI). The total claims data were the DWP’s figures too and they were obtained from the DWP’s online Stat-Xplore tool.

For each year and local authority, we provided the ratio of total suspensions due to hospitalisation, to total PIP claims to give a sense of proportion.

For each year and local authority, we also calculated which was the primary disabling condition for people claiming PIP which had the highest number of suspensions due to hospitalisation.

In some cases, several groups had the same number (because the DWP rounded its figures on suspensions) so in those instances, the conditions were presented in a list separated by commas. The number of suspensions for those groups was contained in the corresponding “Max” column for that year.

What we found

  • The total number of PIP suspensions under the hospitalisation rule in Great Britain increased from 30,860 in the quarter to the end of April 2020, to 45,850 in the quarter to the end of April 2022
  • The highest numbers of PIP suspensions were for people with mental health conditions

Get the data

We produced this story pack and this dataset.

We also produced this website allowing our regional news partners to easily access information for the local authorities' areas they covered.

Interviews and quotes

  • Nicola Clulow (she/her), mother and known carer for Cameron Mitchell (he/him), who had sought a judicial review of the so-called "hospitalisation rule" before the case was withdrawn
  • Dan Scorer (he/him), head of policy at Mencap, the learning disability charity
  • Jonathan Beebee (he/him), Royal College of Nursing professional lead for learning disability nursing
  • Carolin Ott (she/her), the solicitor at law firm Leigh Day which represented Cameron Mitchell in the [now-withdrawn] application for judicial review
  • Craig Mathieson (he/him), whose family won a legal battle over Disability Living Allowance in 2015 at the Supreme Court
  • Rheian Davies (she/her), head of the legal unit at the mental health charity Mind
  • The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
  • Ken Butler (he/him), welfare rights and policy adviser for the charity Disability Rights UK
  • Alex Kennedy (he/him), head of campaigns from the charity Rethink Mental Illness

Partner usage

The Shared Data Unit makes data journalism available to the wider news industry as part of the BBC Local News Partnership. Stories written by partners based on this research included:

The story featured online and as a bulletin piece across BBC local radio through 2 November 2022.

BBC Shared Data Unit senior journalist Alex Homer carried out two-way interviews to discuss the story on BBC Radio Wales, BBC Radio Somerset, BBC Radio Devon, BBC Radio Surrey and BBC Radio Cambridgeshire.

The report made bulletins for BBC Radio Bristol, BBC Sussex, BBC Radio Derby, BBC Radio Gloucestershire, BBC Radio Shropshire, BBC Radio Oxford, BBC Radio Solent, BBC Radio Merseyside, BBC Radio Leicester, BBC Radio Jersey, BBC Radio York and BBC Radio Cumbria.

Other usage

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Benefit cuts for disabled people in hospital called unfair

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63036042

benefitsbenefits-systemdepartment-for-work-and-pensionsdisabilitydisability-benefitsshareddataunitwelfarelearning-disabilities