This is my response, as a PIP claimant, to Jeremy Clarkson's latest Times column comparing benefit claimants to his dogs.

Dear Jeremy, a Letter From a PIP Claimant

Dear Jeremy,

I'm writing to say thank you for my PIP payment. I know you said we should do this weekly, but PIP is actually paid four-weekly, so you'll have to make do with one letter covering the whole month. I hope that's not too much of an inconvenience.

I really appreciated being compared to your dogs. It's exactly the kind of dehumanising I look for when I open the paper, because there just isn't enough of that about these days.

My £194 a week went towards: care costs, because I need support workers five days a week, my community alarm subscription (so if I fall or have a seizure, someone actually comes), council tax, utilities, renewing my blue badge, transport to appointments, and my power chair. Oh, and I did buy a game on Steam for £5. I know. I know. I'm sorry.

Thank you so much for going to work so that I don't have to. I'd love to stop living in relative poverty, but alas, here we are.

Kind regards, Laura.

Let's Look at the Actual PIP and Universal Credit Data, Shall We?

This week, Jeremy Clarkson wrote a piece for The Times arguing that benefits claimants should write a letter to a random taxpayer, thanking them for their generosity in funding a life of not working. Both Universal Credit and PIP claimants are in his crosshairs.

Here's what the data actually says.

On Who's Actually Working

DWP statistics show 37.8% of UC claimants are in work, either employed or self-employed, and around 30% of PIP claimants are working too.

So a fair chunk of the people Jeremy wants writing thank you letters are, in fact, taxpayers themselves.

On What Universal Credit Actually Pays

The mean UC payment is £1,030 a month. Broken down: a couple with children get £1,330 on average, a single parent £1,280, a couple with no children £1,000, and a single person with no children £800. In most cases housing is the single biggest cost covered, the exception being single claimants with no children, where LCWRA (Limited Capability for Work and Work-Related Activity) support is slightly higher.

On Children, Which Jeremy Conveniently Skips

Child Benefit is currently £27.05 a week for the eldest or only child, and £17.90 for each additional child. UC also adds extra monthly amounts for low-income parents, and there are no work commitments expected until your youngest turns three. Jeremy never mentions children once, despite them being one of the most common reasons an able-bodied adult isn't in paid work. For context: the UK spends roughly £13.4 billion a year on Child Benefit alone, and £22 billion on child-specific support more broadly, against £25 billion for PIP. Funny how only one of those gets called a scrounge.

On LCWRA Claimants

43% are aged 50 plus, and only 7% are under 25. The DWP doesn't record a single “primary condition” for LCWRA, claimants can appear across multiple ICD-10 classifications but only once within each. So while 71% show a mental health condition on record, plenty of those people will also have a physical health condition sitting elsewhere in the data.

I've made a video breaking down the DWP's metadata quirks previously.

So Jezza, What Does the PIP Data Actually Mean?

It means roughly a third of PIP and UC claimants would be writing themselves a thank you letter, since they're taxpayers too.

It means low income families with a parent at home would be writing one as well.

It's currently very fashionable to go after anyone diagnosed with ADHD or ASD following the rise in diagnoses, conveniently ignoring that the spike is largely millennial AFAB people getting a late diagnosis, now that the psychiatric community has caught up to the fact ADHD and ASD present differently in AFAB people thanks to decades of societal conditioning.

And the million young people not in education, employment or training? They're not just sat there doing nothing, whatever the framing suggests. Yes, 45 to 60% report long-term health conditions, including mental health conditions, but there's also a lack of apprenticeships, a genuinely weak entry-level job market, and a skills gap left by a pandemic that hit right in the middle of their schooling. None of that is their fault.

And While We're On Social Care

You mention the “Labourites” making noises about social care like it's a punchline. So it doesn't bother you that thousands of hospital beds are taken up by patients who are medically fit to leave, but stuck in the middle of a standoff between the NHS and their local authority? Or the over-65s attending A&E because there's nowhere else for them to go? That seems like a genuinely enormous waste of taxpayer money to me, but maybe I'm missing the joke.

I receive local authority care myself, and yes, the system needs reform. Support workers need proper training and proper pay. Right now most are on minimum wage, which, ironically, often makes them UC claimants too.

Do Better, Jeremy

It's clear from an article that compares benefit claimants to your dogs that you have very little regard for people less fortunate than you. You have a genuinely significant platform, and instead of using it to push for something better, you've chosen to throw more fuel on a fire that's already burning disabled people.

Because we are the ones who pay for pieces like this. Disabled people are already frequent targets of hate speech, online and in person. There are countless videos of wheelchair users trying to board a bus and being verbally abused over the wheelchair space, a space that disabled people had to fight for in the 90s, because a buggy is parked in it. Who knows, maybe that wheelchair user was also on their way to work.

So I'll say it plainly, Mr Clarkson: do better.