Campaigners call government’s climbdown on personal independence payments ‘desperate’ and vow to fight on

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When Tim Boxall went to the protest outside Westminster on the eve of the welfare bill vote, he knew the 32C heat would exacerbate his multiple sclerosis. But he felt he had to be there.

“The hour train here and the heat will cause me spasms, pain, fatigue, and set off motor and vocal tics,” he says. “It’ll take days bedbound to recover, but if we don’t fight our own corner, who will?”

Boxall, 50, has received the personal independence payment (Pip) for a decade and calls it a “lifeline”, particularly since he had to give up work as a credit controller for a high street bank. The benefit bought the wheelchair he’s using today. “It pays for care but also things that give me a life, not just an existence.”

When news of the government’s win off the back of a major climbdown on Pip reached him, Boxall felt “disappointed” but “not disheartened”. “The patchwork of desperate, last-minute face-saving concessions, legislating on the fly, is an absolute embarrassment,” he says.

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