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A humiliation was how the BBC's political editor described the climb down, forced upon Kea Stama by his own MPs over the government's proposed benefits bill.

Any saving the Treasury had hoped to make

was reduced to the roundest number of all.

The politics is a subject on its own.

The underlying problem the government was trying to solve, however, remains.

Why has the cost of benefits ballooned so unexpectedly?

Who gets them and why? And in principle,

what should be done about it, if anything? It all needs some explaining, which is why we're inviting you to step into the briefing room.

First, let's find out exactly what the disability benefits are and how you get them.

Paul Lewis is the presenter of Radio 4's Moneybox program.

Paul Lewis, what are these disability benefits that we're talking about here?

Well, the main one is personal independence payment or PIP.

It's a benefit that's replaced a number of older benefits in the past.

And the purpose of it is to help people who have disabilities cope a bit more with the extra expenses that that disability causes.

It's not a benefit that's linked to work. It's not means tested. It's just

an extra amount of money that you get because as a disabled person, you inevitably have more

expenses. Right. And then there's universal credit and disability allowance. You can take me through

that one. Universal credit is different. I mean, universal credit is what's called an in-work benefit.

It's a means-tested benefit.

It's there to either give you a basic income if you don't work

or to give you a bit more income if you're on low pay.

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