Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps the Minister will take to ensure that the Timms Review adequately takes account of the needs of those living with arthritis and other musculoskeletal conditions.

For the Timms Review to be a success, lived experience must be at the heart of its work. To do this, we are co-producing the Review with disabled people, the organisations that represent them, clinicians, experts, MPs, and other stakeholders.

In October last year, I published the revised Terms of Reference on GOV.UK setting out further details about the Review’s scope. I also announced I will co-chair the Review alongside Sharon Brennan and Dr Clenton Farquharson CBE. We will oversee a steering group responsible for leading the co-production process, setting the Review’s strategic direction and will determine how it runs and what it recommends.

To recruit the steering group, we ran an open and accessible expression of interest from 30 October to 30 November. I will provide an update on its membership in the coming days, ahead of its first meeting later this week. The steering group will not work alone, once in place, it will shape a programme of participation that brings together the full range of views and voices.