Sickfluencers: Help, hype, or fraud panic?

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1:32Transcription by CastingWords a way to encourage fraud.

1:39Hi, and welcome back to The Standard Podcast. I'm Martha Tipper, filling in for Tamara Kamornik. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. Coming up is the rise of sick fluences.

2:04Now, for every niche topic, there seems to be another type of so-called influencers, from finance to cooking to working out. And like many influencers online, they share information that could be quite helpful or they could cause more harm than good. Now, sick fluencers help people online make their way through the often confusing and convoluted path of applying for disability benefits or personal independence payment known as PIP. Well, a new report on sick fluences by the right-wing think tank Policy Exchange claims the information online may lead to large-scale fraud. In 2025, the Department for Work and Pensions, also known as the DWP, distributed benefits to over 23 million people.

2:48They reported a 0.4 % overpayment due to fraud for PIP benefits that year, which is about£100 million. In today's episode, I'll be speaking to the London Standard journalist, to Neva Yadav. Here's my chat with Neva. I hope you enjoy it.

3:07Hi, Neva. Thanks for joining me on The Standard Podcast today. Thanks so much for having me. I just wanted to jump straight in and start with the headline. What is a sickfluencer and who coined the term? So sickfluencers are a group of social media creators. They were given the name, arguably it's a pretty controversial name, by the media. And what they do is they share advice on how to claim benefits, namely kind of PIP benefits, across internet platforms. And whether that's through kind of step-by-step guides or just general information on how you can make the most of your PIP benefits and really get the biggest payout.

3:46So Niva, who actually created this report on sick fluences and the alleged fraud that they're creating? So this report that has come out is by a centre-right think tank called Policy Exchange. And what they've basically said about sick fluences is that this online coaching is going to fuel Britain's economic inactivity and put their health and disability benefit system under pressure. And crucially, this report was actually sponsored by Reform UK's Robert Jenrick. And so there was some kind of political backing here in this report. And they've said that claimants of PIP benefits are using things like AI, They're following these step-by-step guides and they're claiming these benefits even if they don't necessarily have the disability that they say they do.

4:32I mean, this report is making quite a substantial claim. Is this actually happening? Are SickFluencers actually coaching people to scam the system? It's a bit of a controversial argument because on one hand, of course, people can take this advice. They can run with it. if they don't have that disability and particularly in examples of invisible disabilities like ADHD or autism you can make these claims you can exaggerate the extent of your disability and so it's plausible but what I would say is that these sick fluences are actually providing really valuable advice to people who really do need these PIP payments and aren't necessarily receiving the legal aid or the advice that they ought to be getting and so for a lot of people these sick fluencing videos are a real lifeline and are really helping people to access the help that they need.

5:22And so whilst it's completely plausible that there is maybe some level of sick fluencing or abuse going on within the system, actually the majority of claimants who apply for PIP benefits are being rejected. And so people need to know what they need to be saying, what they need to be doing to access this help if they need it. As you mentioned, sick fluences, you know, they say they're sort of providing these resources to other people who find accessing these services confusing. Are there any sort of potential positive outcomes of the information shared by sick fluencers? Well, even though people have really jumped on this sick fluencer thing, and they've really jumped on the idea that there are people out there wrongly claiming benefits, this report actually does identify a group of people who are not accessing appropriate support.

6:06And I think that's a really important thing to remember is that this support for a lot of people is vital. And so if you have a disability, which maybe means that your mobility is impaired, you're provided with extra money to be able to get transport or you're given extra money if you can't cook. And obviously, it should be said, the government have no jurisdiction on how you spend this extra money. And so these claims that people are spending it on new headphones and new laptops, they may well be because the government don't trace where that money is going. It just goes straight into the pocket of the person who needs it.

6:37But for a lot of people, this is what they need. They do need that extra money so they can stay in work. And I think maybe that's where there's a crossover is that PIP benefits aren't designed to keep people out of work. They're not designed for people who are just sitting at home and not working. They're designed to keep people in work. Right, we're going to take a quick break. Coming up, what changes political parties have proposed to our benefits system? We'll be back here in just a moment.

7:13welcome back let's head straight back to my chat with neva the report shows some of these claimants have fallen into a sort of gray area where they aren't eligible for long-term state support but they could benefit from these short-term interventions can you explain that phenomenon please so as you said there's a gray area group which this report has identified as people who don't need these big large sums of money in order to stay and work or in order to live their lives And what they're suggesting is these short-term targeted or non-financial interventions. Now, it's not specific on what that means, but a lot of people have suggested things like vouchers, for example.

7:50So you give people on PIP benefits vouchers that they could put towards food or taxis or whatever it may be. You know, additional equipment, I think for a lot of people is a big thing. How do you make your house more accessible or those sorts of things? And so vouchers are where this could come into play. but again it's not explicit on exactly how this would work. And as you said as more people access these benefits that may not have been able to get access to them before what has been proposed to sort of ease the pressure on the benefits system? There are lots of different thoughts on what needs to be done in order to kind of crunch numbers surrounding how much we spend on benefits particularly and how we get people back into work how we encourage economic activity.

8:33One of the solutions that has been thrown about quite a few times are means-tested benefits, where they basically see how much you're earning, do you need the additional money? Of course, that hasn't been without its backlash. And the other thing, which is kind of in-person assessments, again, it's a good idea in principle, but actually making that happen is far harder than you might think. I mean, already, it's both time-consuming and requires a workforce to go through all of these PIP applications and to kind of, a lot of them are rejected inevitably and a lot of them are then appealed and it becomes a whole process and so saying you're going to have in-person assessors is much easier or much easier than it is in reality.

9:17So Niva, based on this report, would you say that people are being encouraged to scam the system and apply for disability services that they don't need by these so-called sick fluences? Oh, it's a tough one. I mean, DWP says there are very low rates of fraud going on. And so perhaps people are not being encouraged to wrongfully apply for these benefits. In the same breath, it's very plausible that people are. But how I see it is that people go to the internet for all kinds of financial advice, whether that be reducing your tax bill or kind of any other financial need you may have. And so this is no different.

9:52People are turning to the internet for advice. That's genuinely what it is. I think the system is notoriously difficult to crack. That is the crux of it. It is difficult to get pit benefits despite what people may think. And so the likelihood of people actually succeeding in defrauding the system is probably very little. Thank you so much for chatting to me, what an interesting conversation. Thank you for having me.

10:20That's The Standard. For all the latest news, head to standard.co.uk. If you're new here, hit follow and give us a rating. If you'd like to get in touch, email us at podcast at standard.co.uk. We'll be back here tomorrow morning for more. See you then.

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