Here’s an article that’s well worth reading – but This Site won’t re-publish much of it here because the information has already been covered by Vox Political elsewhere.
For now, let’s limit ourselves to this:
After years of the war on the poor,worsening mental health, increasing mass hunger and suicides, the UK government has announced a further round of attacks. Two measures stand out.
There will be more benefit sanctions, where benefits are stopped if people are deemed to have failed to look for work. This will add to the over 2 million food parcels a year currently needed. It will also push more vulnerable people into taking their own lives.
And the main test for Employment and Support Allowance will be abolished. If this had been done out of a belated recognition of the harm these tests have caused in the lives of millions of people, it would be a good step. It is not. Instead, the feared Work Capability Test will be replaced by something even worse: the kind of test currently used for another benefit – Personal Independence Payment or PIP.
It is notoriously difficult to pass the PIP test, and be awarded benefits, especially if your main disability is a mental health issue.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that 1 million people will be deprived of benefits because of the extension of the PIP test into assessments for ESA.
The scene is being set for all the harm already done by ‘Welfare Reform’ to be added to massively.
We have beaten such changes before and it is entirely possible to do so again.
Expect a new wave of information detailing how that can happen – starting soon.
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The Department for Work and Pensions has announced plans to record all disability benefit assessments:
Plans to move to a new telephony platform during 2024 and make enhancements to the Video Assessment application … will bring the ability to record all disability health benefit consultations.
The update comes just a week after the publication of a report from the Work and Pensions Committee into the health assessments system used by people who cannot work or face extra costs due to disability or ill-health to access vital benefits.
The report contained a proposal from the chair, Sir Stephen Timms MP for all assessments to be recorded by default, with an option for claimants to opt-out.
The cross-party committee of MPs said that footage could then be used to review cases more accurately without having to go to appeal, and help assessors learn from past mistakes. It added that some of the suggestions could drive down the high rate of decisions reversed on appeal, which still stands at 69 per cent for Personal Independence Payment (PIP).
This is the part that encourages This Writer.
This Site has long publicised the belief that assessors from the private companies hired by the DWP to make recommendations on benefit claims have disqualified claimants for false reasons.
The answer – recording the assessments – has (also) long been known, but has been resisted by the DWP on the basis that it insisted on specific – expensive – equipment being used.
It seems that stipulation has now been rendered pointless due to advances in technology, and the government has at last bowed to the inevitable. The change is expected to come into effect next year.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, of course.
I certainly hope that benefit assessments after the new recording guidelines come into force show a marked increase in approvals – and that the number of appeals drops as a result. They are a waste of tribunal time.
I fear that the DWP and the assessment firms will merely find another excuse to disqualify people who genuinely deserve help.
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This is an unusual situation: a Conservative MP has said changes to benefits for disabled people will make it harder for the most vulnerable to get help.
Nigel Mills said that people who are unable to work consistently would face a tougher threshold to be entitled to government support.
At a meeting of the Work and Pensions Committee, Mr Mills said:
“It is effectively raising the bar because presumably there are some conditions where I don’t have a disability but I’m not fit for work but [under current arrangements] I would get the existing extra support by being put in the not expected to work group.
Nigel Mills argued there was a risk that people who are unable to work would face a tougher threshold to be entitled to government support.
“Someone in that situation under the new regime will get less and that is what you’re trying to achieve.”
He added: “To get the extra support I would need to qualify for PIP that is not currently the case.”
Katie Farrington – director-general for Disability, Health and Pensions at DWP – responded by saying that the Government was “not trying to raise the bar”.
She said the current Work Capability Assessment system was being removed because it seemed people who want to try work are being discouraged from doing so.
She said: “This is not about… saving money by the back door.”
But when pressed on the number of people who would be affected by the change, she admitted that ministers expect the figure to be around 300,000.
The changes will be imposed alongside plans to toughen up sanctions for people on benefits, that have been criticised by members of the Work and Pensions Committee who say there is little evidence to suggest they are effective in pushing people into work.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said the Government should not “be shy or retreat from the fact that we have expectations of those to whom we get public funds”.
How sinister is that?
He was saying that a Tory government would expect people who receive sickness or disability benefits to prioritise getting back into work above everything else.
The question on all concerned parties’ lips is: does that mean they should disregard their own health for the sake of a Tory statistic showing progress? Good for Mr Mills, for exposing this.
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The Tories are bringing this nightmare back again.
Jeremy Hunt’s Budget announcement that he is ending the Work Capability Assessment has turned out not to be the relief so many benefit claimants with long-term illnesses thought it would be.
He is ending the Limited Capability for Work-Related Activity element of Universal Credit, meaning that people who received it may now have to seek work under the new Personal Independence Payment system.
They’ll need to claim the new UC health element, and to do that they must also be eligible for Personal Independence Payment – and under this system they may also be required to seek work or accept job offers.
Additionally, assessments will now be carried out by work coaches from the Department for Work and Pensions, rather than the (so-called) health professionals who currently carry out the much-maligned WCAs.
There are fears that these civil servants will not have the proper training to identify claimants’ conditions and needs, and may be set target numbers of people they have to try to force into work, which they will impose on disabled people.
The Institute of Fiscal Studies think tank has estimated that a million people could be forced into work and 600,000 could lose an estimated £350 per month in support as a result of the change.
Hunt has been up-front about the intention behind the change: it’s to push people into work who would not otherwise have sought it.
The problem is that it may push people into work who simply cannot do it.
Experience has shown us what happens when the government forces people with long-term illnesses and disabilities to seek work:
They are rejected by employers – or find that they simply cannot do the work. Unsuitable for employment, and unable to claim benefits, they either starve to death or die of their health conditions.
We have seen it before – many times, in the years since the Tories came back into office in 2010.
It is scandalous that Jeremy Hunt is talking up a change that may make unendurable the lives of people who are already among the UK’s most vulnerable.
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At last it seems we get the facts about the plan to ditch the Work Capability Assessment for people with long-term illnesses – and it isn’t pretty.
It seems an inferior test, for PIP (Personal Independence Payment) will be used instead and up to a million people will lose a lot of money:
Up to 1 million people claiming incapacity benefits could lose hundreds of pounds a month as a result of plans outlined in the budget to push ahead with the “biggest reforms to the welfare system in a decade,” experts have said.
The warning came as ministers unveiled a range of measures to try to drive more people back into the workplace, including scrapping controversial “fit for work” tests for disabled claimants and stepping up the threat of benefit curbs against part-time workers.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies said up to 1 million people currently on incapacity benefits could lose about £350 a month as a result of dropping the work capability assessment (WCA), which assesses capacity for work, and using the personal independence payment (Pip) test, which measures only the extra living costs of disability.
It said the logic of the plan meant those who had conditions that prevented them working – such as people with short-term or fluctuating illnesses – but who did not claim Pip, or incur major additional living costs, would no longer receive extra support. Pip tests are widely distrusted and currently take 14 weeks to process.
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Uncannily accurate: The Conservative government’s genuine policy towards PIP claimants may as well have been as it appears in this cartoon from 2017. But what will replace the assessment system it satirises?
I should be pleased.
This Site has campaigned against the Work Capability Assessment for sickness and disability benefits, practically since I started publishing it at the end of 2011.
In my opinion, it has been misused, as a tool to force people who are too ill to work onto job-seeking benefits that carry sanctions if a claimant fails to carry out particular tasks – tasks which the long-term sick and disabled are often clearly incapable of doing.
In many cases, the results have been fatal. I know this because it took me two years to force the Department for Work and Pensions to release figures showing that 2,400 people died within a limited period (two weeks) after being found fit for work, between dates in 2011 and 2014.
That’s right – these people had been found fit to go to work by this hopelessly flawed tick-box assessment system, and then they had proven themselves to be nothing of the sort.
And the Tory government carried on as though nothing was wrong.
I also have personal experience of the system’s flaws. After my partner – Mrs Mike; remember her? – was wrongly put in the work-related activity group for Employment and Support Allowance, she appealed in the hope of being relocated to the support group.
Instead, whoever received her letter slapped a “Do Not Contact” tag on her file for no discernible reason and allowed her claim to end after 12 months, while she waited – in considerable confusion and distress – for a response that was never going to come.
Fortunately, I was around to kick up a stink and get the situation sorted out. But that just highlights the fact that many thousands of people don’t have that kind of help at hand.
And now, we’re told, the Work Capability Assessment is to be scrapped.
But we’re not being told what will replace it.
This Independent article has comments from a couple of organisations that have a stake in what happens:
Trades Union Congress general secretary Paul Novak [said:] “Scrapping the work capability assessment will be welcome if it means an end to assessments that cause anxiety instead of helping people achieve their aspirations,” he added, while urging greater investment in public services to get people off NHS waiting lists and reduce barriers to training.
James Taylor of the disability equality charity Scope said axing the assessment was “the minimum change needed to even begin improving a welfare system that regularly fails disabled people”, and stressed the need for “a more person-centred system” offering “specialist, tailored and flexible” support.
“Those that want to work should be supported. But for some, that’s not an option and disabled people shouldn’t be forced into unsuitable work,” he said. “There is a lot of work to do for the government to restore trust in our benefits system.”
Notice that they both mentioned ways of getting more people back into work; this is Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s aim with the changes to the benefit system.
And that’s why I fear for the future of sickness and disability benefits in the UK.
I think the odious Hunt is planning another push to put sick people into jobs they can’t do. If I’m right, his plan will fail on many levels.
Distractions, distractions: the Tories love them and try to cause as many as possible.
Even while the fuss over the Downing Street Christmas party last year is embarrassing for them, it means you may not have noticed other harms they are inflicting on sections of the population.
For example: the Department for Work and Pensions.
1. It seems the government is quietly pushing through proposals to change the assessment of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) – the main benefit for people with disabilities – even though it only put them out for consultation a short while ago.
The plans to expand the Special Rules for Terminal Illness and to remove the proposed 18-month minimum award period for people receiving PIP were part of a Health and Disability Green Paper and the government ran a consultation on them that ended on October 11, just two weeks before they appeared in Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Budget statement as schemes that will definitely go ahead.
The Tory government expects to save £70 million over three years by doing this.
Labour has demanded clarification, smelling another Tory stealth cut. And it is true that the plans will have an impact on people with protected characteristics, so Sunak needs to explain why they are not mentioned in the ‘Impacts on Equalities’ section of the Budget.
Of course, it is entirely possible that the impact in this instance will be a good one.
The proposal is to replace the systems that are being cut with “better triaging of cases and testing a new Severe Disability Group”.
While the DWP has a poor history of doing anything “better”, the plan for a “Severe Disability Group” is now quite well-known and would put people with progressive, lifelong conditions into a group where they would never have to face reassessment for the benefit.
It is entirely possible that the whole of the £70 million projected saving would come from this change. This Site – and others – has spent years pointing out that the DWP spends more on constant reassessments that try to find ways to exclude people with disabilities from the payments that make their life worthwhile than it would if it left them alone.
It may be that the government has actually listened for a change and is doing the right thing for once.
I know – it’s a slim chance. But watch this space.
2. Sadly the reliability of any evidence provided by the DWP on proposed savings comes into serious doubt when one learns that the department withheld evidence that the work capability assessment, used to determine whether people are eligible for sickness benefit Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), was linked to 590 suicides:
“…the programme to reassess people on incapacity benefit through the WCA was linked to 590 suicides in just three years.” How anyone can believe our benefits system is fit for purpose or not designed to harm, is beyond me. https://t.co/ptMoNmQj0f
Dr Paul Litchfield said: “If I had had that evidence available to me, or indeed been told that it was there – you can only ask for stuff if you know that it exists… I would certainly have looked at it and taken it into consideration.”
The information includes secret DWP reviews into benefit-linked deaths and two reports sent to the DWP by coroners aimed at preventing future deaths of claimants.
The revelation suggests that the DWP deliberately tried to prevent its reviewer from suggesting changes that would have saved lives.
3. Dr Litchfield also criticised the DWP as “odd” because, while it accepted his recommendations on policy, the operation side of the department continually and consistently dragged its feet when he proposed changes:
He said he believed the government department was stalling – waiting for the next review, with a different set of proposals, to come along so it wouldn’t have to change anything.
But how far can we trust him on this?
He said the government should develop a new assessment, based on the discredited biopsychosocial (BPS) model of disability. It already is.
This is the idea that the illnesses that prevent people from being able to work are all in the sufferers’ minds, and that they were perfectly capable of having jobs. This in turn led to the “scrounger” and “skiver” lies put about by the Tory and Liberal Democrat coalition government of 2010-2015.
It is important to remember that these beliefs informed New Labour policy on benefits when that party was in charge of the DWP. Current shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, as Work and Pensions Secretary under Gordon Brown, enforced rules that docked assessment points from amputees if they could lift objects with their stumps, while she said claimants with speech problems who could write a sign would receive no points and deaf claimants who could read such signs would have no points for hearing loss. Anybody with mobility issues would be assessed using “imaginary wheelchairs”. She also removed half the mental health descriptors from the assessment, hugely increasing the possibility of suicides if the benefit was withheld.
Dr Litchfield said a new, independent reassessment of the benefit was long overdue. This Writer agrees – but this gentleman and his ideas should be kept very far away from it.
4. Underlying all of this is the question of whether the DWP has a duty of care to benefit claimants.
The department has denied this for many years, so it was welcome to learn that PIP review Paul Gray believes this duty is implicit in all of its work:
But This Writer strongly disagrees that it is a “learning process”. The UK government has been providing benefits to people for many decades now and should be entirely capable of showing proper care for their well-being.
The fact that thousands – possible tens of thousands or indeed hundreds of thousands – of people have died after being denied DWP benefits suggests that there was a failure of care, and that this was a political decision.
5. What are we to conclude from all of the above?
It can only be that the Department for Work and Pensions is a chaotic dis-organisation that fails to uphold its duties properly, with the result that many thousands of people have died who should have been receiving the benefits, and the respect, that is due to them.
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Habitual cruelty: if you thought the Tories stopped persecuting people with long-term illnesses and disabilities during the Covid-19 crisis, think again.
This is the UK in 2021, summed up in one series of tweets:
Here's a 'thing', purely anecdotal but I have no reason to doubt. A friend has a Job Centre face to face meeting next week. NHS 111 has advised a PCR test and ten day self isolation. She's phoned the JC and explained the situation…threatened with sanctions for non attendance.
1. If her results arrive before her appointment and are negative she will not have to isolate and can attend…this is obvious. 2. If positive and she fails to attend she faces a sanction. 3. It the results do not arrive before her appointment, what shall she do?
I've advised her not to attend. If she is infectious then the other claimants are at risk. I'm sure that 'possibly infectious' is a reasonable excuse for non-attendance.
I don’t know where this Job Centre is, but its staff are clearly trying to create another Jodey Whiting.
Jodey had incurable conditions – they could only get worse – and failed to attend a benefit re-assessment interview because she was in hospital with a brain cyst at the time.
All her benefits were cut off – even though the interview can only have been to work out whether her conditions had worsened enough for her to require increased payments.
She took her own life soon afterwards. A coroner ruled that it could not be described as suicide because there is reason to believe her action could have been a cry for help.
This Writer has no doubt that Ms Whiting was pushed towards taking her own life by the Department for Work and Pensions.
If somebody on benefits contracts Covid-19, fails to attend a benefit interview, and the DWP cuts off all her payments – in the full knowledge of what happened with Ms Whiting – doesn’t that indicate, to you, that this government department is hoping for the same end result?
It does to me.
Let’s hope it doesn’t get that far.
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This is a good question – triggered in This Writer’s mind by a reference to a different case.
Please read the following Twitter thread, which was prompted by a tweet referring to the death of DWP benefit claimant Philippa Day:
@NorwichChloe I have a petition with over 250,000 signatures and a group with over 3,500 ppl on Facebook who can tell you that THIS. IS NOT. AN. ISOLATED. CASE. My own daughter was bullied by an ATOS Inspector, who also tried to intimidate me. 1/ https://t.co/1IsCmDTAxq
3/ @NorwichChloe WHY, WHEN IT COSTS THE GOVERNMENT MORE MONEY TO CARRY OUT REASSESSMENTS are you still reassessing lifelong Disabled people and Terminally ill people??? All you're doing is PERSECUTING, DEMONISING AND DISCRIMINATING AGAINST THEM.
Yes, why does the DWP force people with incurable or terminal conditions to prove that they still have a lifelong disability or are still dying?
Reading those words, I thought about Jodey Whiting. She had a number of disabilities, including scoliosis which – as far as I can tell – is an incurable condition that requires constant treatment for the length of the sufferer’s life. If untreated, it could be life-threatening.
So it was pointless to demand that she attend a work capability assessment, because it was impossible for her condition to have improved. It could only worsen.
There is an argument that a WCA could take place to ascertain whether a claimant’s payments should increase – but that cannot be used as justification in Ms Whiting’s case because her benefits were stopped.
The DWP’s Green Paper on Disability, released in July this year (2021), acknowledges that it is pointless to keep reassessing people with lifelong and/or terminal conditions and proposes the creation of a Severe Disability Group (SDG). People put in this group would not have to face reassessment.
If the DWP is admitting that it is unreasonable for people with lifelong conditions to face constant reassessment now, then it would also be unreasonable to suggest that they should have faced constant reassessment in February 2017, when Ms Whiting took her own life.
Strangely, this does not seem to have been considered by the High Court when it rejected an appeal for a second inquest into Ms Whiting’s death, last month (October).
I wonder why the court did not consider that the absence of necessity for the assessment that led to Ms Whiting’s benefits being cut was a material consideration in her case.
There’s now a second appeal for another inquest. Perhaps the point could be made this time around?
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Despite warnings of soaring poverty and homelessness, the Department for Work and Pensions has confirmed it has still not produced a formal impact assessment of the £20 a week Universal Credit cut.
The Tories don’t actually give a shit who starves, do they?
So poverty will rocket and the sick will take the biggest hit.
And the Tories are hoping to avoid criticism by saying they haven’t done an official impact assessment.
It’s like children looking away from a huge mess and telling their parents they don’t see anything wrong.
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