Should people with mild ADHD be stopped from claiming disability benefits?

The generational fracture that this question seemed to invite never really materialised. Voters here backed tightening PIP eligibility for mild ADHD by three to one, and the consensus ran from the youngest voters in the chamber to the oldest, cutting clean across a welfare debate normally coded as young versus old.

The one pocket of real resistance sat, oddly, in the middle of working life: the 25-34s split closer to six-in-ten, the softest yes of any age band, while the 35-54s were the most convinced of all, backing the tougher line by ten to one in places. Men and women, meanwhile, arrived at almost identical verdicts, denying this the gender gulf that welfare rows so often produce.

The shape of the vote tracks the argument Kemi Badenoch has been making explicitly: that a doubling of no-work-requirement ADHD claims in under a year points to definitional creep rather than a rise in genuine incapacity, and that mild conditions should not carry the same entitlement as severe ones. This chamber, at least, seems to have found that framing persuasive rather than punitive.

For a topic that touches mental health, disability and the four-million-strong benefits caseload, the striking thing is how little argument there was about it at all.