Lana Hempsall: The great disability rip off | Conservative Home

Lana Hempsall is an entrepreneur and business coach, Conservative councillor, the CPF National Discussion Lead for Transport, and the co-founder and director of Conservatives in Energy. 

It is often said that the way a society treats its most vulnerable is a measure of its moral character. That is certainly true for disabled people who now have help and support in a way that was unthinkable even a decade over. I know that because I have been blind since my teenage years.

Part of the support for those with disabilities is the assortment of benefits now available. But there is a serious problem. The benefits system, created with the best of intentions, is no longer working. As a result, tens of thousands of people are receiving benefits they are not entitled to and thousands are earning money advising people on how to exploit the system. And because that means huge numbers of benefit recipients are receiving more than they could earn in employment, it is acting as a disincentive to people getting a job.

What has developed – and has been supercharged since the pandemic – is a shadow network of influencers and businesses that profit from advising people on how to get benefits they are not entitled to receive. It treats disability as a gateway to perks and entitlements. Social media influencers offer coaching on how to game benefit applications. For a subscription fee, platforms promise you better odds at securing benefit payments. Even government-recognised disability cards that provide discounts from retailers are being abused.

The impact of this shadow network is not marginal either. It feeds off the scale of the disability welfare budget, which is already £70bn a year and is set to hit £100bn by the end of the decade. Every day, there are 1,000 new claimants for Personal Independence Payments (PIP). Right from the origins of the creation of the welfare state, the fundamental premise was that generous support should be provided to those with genuine needs, particularly those with severe disabilities. But that is being undermined by millions of people gaining access to benefits that, in truth, were never designed for them. More importantly, every pound mis-spent on someone who does not need financial support is a pound less for those with the most severe disabilities.

The National Disability Card is an example of how something designed with the best of intentions is now open to abuse. For a small fee, cardholders are given discounts at Starbucks, Tesco, Boots, Primark and even Disneyland Paris. But eligibility for the card is not just for those with severe mental or physical disabilities. It is now available for those with the most minor of mental health conditions such as ADHD and anxiety. Because the card has the government stamp of approval, retailers treat it as legitimate. Worse still, as social media promoters of the card have explained, you do not even need to qualify for disability benefits to qualify for the card – you can simply use a note from your GP as evidence.

So why is this a problem? Because a discount on coffee or new trainers clothing does nothing for someone genuinely suffering from a serious mental health condition – that requires medical intervention. It also acts as another deterrent to seeking work and makes welfare status itself attractive.

The scheme trivialises disability, equating it with a student discount. And, most concerningly, it risks encouraging people to view entry into the welfare system not as a last resort but as a route to everyday savings, a distortion that undermines both the meaning of disability and the purpose of welfare.

This is only magnified when you look at Motability. Whereas the Disability Card is a small perk, Motability is a vast operation. Created in the 1970s to help people who could not otherwise travel, it has grown into one of the largest purchasers of cars in the country, supporting more than 800,000 vehicles. It is difficult to reconcile this scale with the scheme’s founding vision of adapted vehicles for those with no alternatives. In fact, only a fraction of cars leased are wheelchair accessible. The vehicles provided are new cars, replaced every three years, and sometimes even from luxury brands. The package includes insurance, servicing and tax, with electric vehicles worth up to £55,000 on offer alongside a free charging point.

The sums involved are enormous. Annual revenue approaches £7 billion, and reserves exceed £4 billion. That financial firepower reflects a scheme that has outgrown its purpose, drifting from essential provision into lifestyle subsidy. Because eligibility depends only on receiving the higher mobility component of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) or Disability Living Allowance, with no means testing or checks on financial need, people whose mobility is unaffected, including those with conditions such as ADHD or depression, can still access what is in reality a heavily subsidised vehicle.

The same pattern of drift is visible in the benefit system itself. Personal Independence Payments were designed to support people with the extra costs of disability. Yet the process has become so complex that a parallel guidance industry has now been created, with advisers profiting from their advice. Around 3.7 million people receive PIP, with over a third on the highest rate. Most new applicants are rejected at first, yet many succeed on appeal, to the point that rejection is widely seen as routine. Online advice forums frame it as part of the process, not the end.

There is a market for coaching where those providing advice on how to qualify for benefits receive payments. On TikTok and Reddit, “sickfluencers” share scripts and strategies. Paid platforms sell full documentation and form-filling guidance for nearly £100. The very existence of these services highlights how dysfunctional the system has become.

That guidance is no longer limited to human advisers. Parents of children with special educational needs are now turning to chatbots such as AskEllie, an AI-powered “legal assistant”. The tool attracted tens of thousands of followers on TikTok through the free support it promised. Yet SEND law is one of the most complex and case-specific areas of education policy, and specialists warn that generic advice from AI can be inaccurate or even dangerous.

Charities have already fielded complaints from parents misled by automated summaries of their own guidance. The popularity of tools like AskEllie reflects a reality of the desperation of families faced with a broken system, where what was meant to be straightforward now requires an unregulated layer of coaching and automation.

Where PIP is concerned, the tension between physical and mental conditions is especially stark. Physical impairments can usually be demonstrated with evidence. Conditions such as ADHD, autism or anxiety depend on subjective accounts. This creates space for tactical exaggeration. Parents are advised to describe children in ways that allow them to pass the assessment checklists: exaggerating the ability of their children’s problems or needs.

I have seen first hand how an effective system can work. A friend of mine has autism and ADHD and struggles in conventional workplaces. The noise, the interruptions, and the unspoken social rules make it almost impossible for her to function in an office. Yet when she is given the chance to work from home, to set her own hours, and to concentrate during the quiet of the night, she thrives. She does not need a subsidised BMW through Motability, nor coaching on how to navigate a PIP form.

What she needs is flexibility and minor adjustments in workplaces that allow her to contribute at her best. That is what genuine support should mean: removing practical barriers and creating conditions where people can succeed, rather than providing perks that do nothing to address the real challenges of disability.

The Prime Minister has committed to reforming the welfare system to encourage more people to get into work and to save the taxpayer billions. These are admirable aspirations but unless you find practical ways to prevent the abuse that is taking place daily, there will be no fix to our broken system.