A View from Amnesty: the Timms Review, poverty and the antidote to despair

The evidence on poverty in the UK is overwhelming. We are not short of data, testimony or expert analysis. We have inquiries, reviews, casework and lived experience all telling us the same thing, again and again.

What we are short of is the political will to act on it. So today I want to talk less about the evidence, and more about what happens next – because that is where the real test now lies.

Today, Sir Stephen Timms published his interim review on Personal Independence Payments[1], and inevitably the headlines have reduced it to pitting defence spending against social security, as if the two were locked in some zero‑sum contest

It’s a false choice, and a dangerous one. National security and household security are not competing priorities – they are mutually reinforcing. A country cannot be made safer by making its people poorer.

I want to be honest about what the Timms Review actually means for people. PIP was designed to help meet the extra costs of disability. For many of the disabled people we speak to, it has become something else entirely: a survival payment, the only thing standing between them and going without food, heating or a roof. And the process of getting it, or keeping it, is too often traumatic in itself – inaccessibly complex, adversarial, and emotionally exhausting, built on suspicion rather than dignity.

This is why the submission from Amnesty International UK’s Disabled People’s Human Rights Network matters so much. Drawing on their own collective lived experience, they set out, in devastating detail, how the PIP system creates real and lasting harm – including, for some, the trauma of tribunals and appeals that stays with people long after the process ends.

They argue this: the PIP assessment and appeals process is so complex, adversarial and hostile that it causes harm in its own right, separate from any decision on entitlement. Support has drifted from meeting disability‑related costs to functioning as a last line against destitution, with no adequate legal framework linking it to real living costs. The network calls for support to be judged by dignity and adequacy, not cost or employment targets – and for disabled people to lead reform, not merely be consulted on it. Their message is unambiguous: this system is causing harm by design, and the Timms Review is a real chance to change that.

I’m proud to stand alongside a network that is this brave and clear‑eyed. It’s exactly the kind of leadership from disabled people themselves that this moment demands. Read their submission in full here.

And we cannot talk honestly about this system without talking about sanctions. In our own casework, we’ve seen a disabled man sanctioned for missing an appointment he was physically unable to attend, left without heating for weeks as a result. That is not a one off case – it is what a punitive, mistrustful system does by design. Sanctions don’t build the trust or engagement the system claims to want; they push already struggling people further into crisis, deepen ill health, and teach people to fear the very system that is supposed to support them. You cannot sanction someone into wellness.

Amnesty International UK’s Social Insecurity report lays out a system that too often leaves people without the basics. Research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation finds that five in six low‑income families on Universal Credit are going without essentials, and our own casework reflects exactly that reality.

A single mother left with £30 a week for food after deductions, skipping meals so her children could eat. A disabled man sanctioned for missing an appointment he physically could not attend, going weeks without heating. A young worker whose fluctuating hours meant she regularly went without so her siblings could eat.

These are not isolated stories. They are symptoms of a system failing by design.

And that brings me to yesterday, when I joined experts in Parliament as part of the Right to Food UK Commission[2], which has spent months taking evidence from people with lived experience, frontline organisations, academics, businesses, local authorities, trade unions and civil society across the country.

I was struck, again, by the scale of what we are dealing with – and by how consistent the message has been throughout: millions of people are going hungry not because Britain lacks food, but because millions lack the income, security and protection needed to afford it.

The Commission’s evidence is stark. The cost of hunger to this country runs into the tens of billions of pounds a year – much of it landing directly on public budgets through healthcare, social care and social security, the rest paid in lost productivity, poorer health and avoidable suffering.

Meanwhile, the Commission’s proposed programme of prevention would cost a fraction of that, and would pay for itself many times over. Britain is already paying for hunger. The only question is whether we keep paying for failure, or start investing in prevention.

We know what would help. Scrapping the two‑child limit, expanding free school meals, and targeted action on child poverty are genuinely welcome steps – proof that practical, evidence‑based policy is possible when there’s the will for it.

Now we need the rest: a Right to Food Bill placing a clear legal duty on government to ensure food is affordable and accessible, and a Statutory Social Security Commission to provide independent oversight of benefit adequacy.

I keep thinking about Beveridge, drawing up his plan for social security in the middle of a war, and Bevan building the NHS out of the wreckage of one. They didn’t wait for perfect conditions. They acted because the moment demanded it.

Behind all the noise, and behind all this evidence, are people desperate for a government – and a new Prime Minister – willing to do the same.

People who simply want to be able to feed themselves and their children. People with disabilities who want to be treated humanely, with their own voices at the centre of decisions made about their lives.

Over 14 million households are living in poverty in the UK right now.[3] That is a source of real despair. But action is the antidote to despair.

We have talked enough. We know enough. At Amnesty International UK, we’ll be pushing to put ending poverty at the very top of the new Prime Minister’s in‑tray – join with us to demand action.

[1] Interim Timms Review 2026

[2] Right to Food Commission: https://www.ianbyrne.org/rtfcommission

[3] This figure comes from Trussell's landmark report 'Hunger in the UK 2025', available here: https://www.trussell.org.uk/news-and-research/publications/report/hunger-in-the-uk-2025