Tag Archives: independence

Ongoing award for people on PIP with ‘light touch’ review after 10 years – but is it true?

(This could be a record for the speed at which fears voiced in a Vox Political article have been confirmed. Around an hour after I published what follows, I received the comment that now appears at the end of this article.

(Read the piece – and then check out what a disabled person told me about it.)

If you don’t know what Personal Independence Payment is, then you haven’t read this Site for very long. Or properly. Have a quick search; you’ll probably have to try Disability Living Allowance for the early years.

Done? Well, I’ll carry on anyway.

DWP minister Tom Pursglove (who?) has been telling other MPs that there are guidelines about the assessments carried out on people claiming PIP.

He said they’re intended to determine the “needs arising from a health condition or disability” – not the condition itself.

He said regular reviews are a “key feature of PIP”, in place to ensure “payments accurately match the current needs of claimants”.

(In reality, this often means that payments are withdrawn because claimants are determined to have magically got better. Alternatively, claimants are put through continuous reviews to find out if, say, the limbs they lost have grown back.)

So when Mr Pursglove said, “Claimants with very high levels of functional impairment who are on the highest PIP awards, and whose needs are only likely to increase, should receive an ongoing award of PIP, with a light touch review at the 10-year point,” I had a doubt.

If you actually searched back through This Site’s DLA and PIP articles, you’ll know my reasons.

Did you spot the cop-out words “should receive”?

He didn’t say people with degenerative conditions will receive an ongoing award, and he didn’t say they will get a light-touch review.

All we need is one claimant to come forward, say they have a degenerative condition and have not received this treatment, and the whole Tory/DWP house of falsehoods will fall down. Again.

ADDITIONAL: It took around one hour for that one claimant to come forward. In a comment on the Vox Political Facebook page, that person stated the following:

“Ha ha, is it bollox true. Just had my PIP review on a degenerative condition and they CUT my award. Took them three years from review letter to review interview. The system is designed not to work for the claimant. Have you ever tried ringing the PIP line? What a dysfunctional joke that is.”

So there you are: Pursglove debunked.

Source: People on PIP most-likely to receive an ongoing award with a ‘light touch’ review after 10 years – Daily Record


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Tory benefit changes mean around 1m people may be forced into work they can’t do

[Image: Black Triangle Campaign].

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.

Source: Disability benefit changes: ‘My disability means I cannot work but I worry I’ll be forced to by the new rules’


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Work Capability Assessment to be scrapped for benefit claimants. But what will replace it?

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.

Is the DWP deliberately disallowing PIP claims by losing or delaying forms?

The problem with fighting the government to protect the vulnerable is that the government can keep attacking relentlessly.

Years ago, I ran a successful campaign that showed that thousands of people had died because the Department for Work and Pensions had denied them sickness benefits for no apparent reason.

It raised awareness that DWP decisions could be wrong and could be challenged, and I hope it saved a few lives.

Now, it seems the DWP has been quietly running a new scam – denying claims for the disability benefit Personal Independence Payment (PIP) by claiming to have lost the forms, or falsely recording that they have arrived after the deadline for returning them has passed:

Up to 42,000 claimants had their Personal Independence Payment (PIP) award stopped in 2021, an increase of almost 300% in just two years. 25,400 claims were disallowed in 2020. The figures were revealed by Tom Pursglove, DWP minister for disabled people, in response to a written parliamentary question.

The figures refer to people who allegedly failed to return their AR1 PIP review form but it is not known whether non-return includes forms that were returned late. It is also not clear how many people challenged the decision that they had failed to return their form on time.

Mr Pursglove’s response shows that the number of claims disallowed each year for non-return of the AR1 review form have increased steadily year on year since 2017, when there were 7,500 claims disallowed.

The DWP has come out with its usual flannel about helping millions of people every year – as though that is some kind of huge achievement and not its job.

It says only a small proportion of claimants are penalised for non-return of forms, as though 67,400 people in two years is a small number and not more people than live in entire towns the size of Taunton or Hereford.

I tend to agree with the website Benefits and Work, which has stated:

The number of claimants allegedly failing to return their forms seems to be far outstripping any rises in awards that had taken place at the time. We know that the DWP’s post handling and call management is dire and getting ever worse. It seems very possible that many disallowed claimants are returning their forms on time, but the DWP is either losing them or taking far too long before recording that they have been received.

“We have no way of knowing how many of the 42,000 claimants appealed or how many simply gave up in despair, even though they knew they had returned their form on time. Other claimants may have failed to return the review form because of the effects of a physical or mental health condition.”

The DWP reckons it ‘watermarks’ files on claimants with serious mental health or cognitive conditions who have difficulty communicating or engaging with the process as Additional Support (AS) – meaning they will be asked to attend a PIP assessment even if they fail to return their form.

And claimants who are identified or deemed as vulnerable – due to their circumstances, not just their condition – are watermarked ‘Additional Customer Support (ACS)’.

But I can’t help remember how Mrs Mike was ‘watermarked’ when she appealed against a decision to put her in the work-related activity group for Employment and Support Allowance. Her file was marked ‘Do Not Contact’, and we knew nothing about it until we were notified that her year on the benefit had expired and she was no longer entitled to it.

As is well-documented in previous articles on this site, I went through the roof and the government department backtracked rapidly. Mrs Mike is now in the support group, where she belongs.

So I have doubts about DWP ‘watermarking’ claims.

As far as lost or delayed forms are concerned, I recommend that anybody claiming benefits from the DWP make a copy of any forms they send, and post the forms using a system that requires a DWP representative to sign for them. This evidence can then be copied from the Royal Mail and used to show exactly when the DWP receives the forms.

Alternatively, if the DWP doesn’t receive the forms, claimants can get in touch, say their forms have been lost by the Royal Mail, and request a new set of forms and an extension to their deadline. The forms can then be duplicated, using the copies of the original that have already been made.

Does that seem fair? Does anybody with experience of the current system have any other ideas?

Source: DWP PIP warning with thousands of benefit claimants having payments stopped – Chronicle Live


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New three-point independence referendum plan for Scotland

Nicola Sturgeon: she’s going all-out for Scottish independence – and who can blame her, when Boris Johnson has made such a mess of the United Kingdom?

It seems the Scottish National Party is planning to race Northern Ireland’s Sinn Fein to be the first to gain independence from Boris Johnson’s UK.

The new majority party in NI has a plan to secede from the Union within the next five years, but the SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon has proposed October 19, 2023 as the date for a referendum on Scottish independence.

Her party has published a Referendum Bill, to be debated by the Scottish Parliament – but this will not happen until the UK’s Supreme Court has ruled on whether the Scottish government has the power to hold a vote without UK government approval.

She has requested this approval, writing to Boris Johnson to request formal consent for the vote to be held. He has said the UK government will consider it, but its position that “now is not the time” for another referendum has not changed.

Sturgeon’s aim is to avoid legal challenges to her Referendum Bill when it comes to be debated in the Scottish Parliament; Supreme Court backing will make that possible.

So the plan is that – in the belief that Johnson’s government will refuse to back her request – it will still receive validation that it is lawful and constitutional from the Supreme Court and the Referendum Bill will be passed by the Scottish Parliament.

There is a back-up plan, which is for the SNP to fight the next UK-wide general election on a single issue: “should Scotland be an independent country?”

It is only eight years since the last referendum on Scottish independence, so one can understand why the UK government in Westminster is reluctant to tolerate another one.

In 2014, around 45 per cent of voters supported independence, with 55 per cent against. Current polling shows little change, with 48 per cent in favour and 52 per cent against.

This makes a new referendum a big gamble for the SNP. It may annoy voters into believing that the party is too focused on a single aim, to the detriment of a nation – the UK – that is trying to pick itself back up after the double-blow of Brexit and Covid-19.

Alternatively, the same phenomena may be the reasons for people to support the plan – as the current version of Brexit was Johnson’s brainchild and has been a disaster, while his policies on dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic have been similarly ham-handed, resulting in many thousands more deaths than should have happened.

In any event, the Supreme Court may simply rule against the referendum, forcing Sturgeon’s party into its fall-back plan – but what if Johnson calls a general election early in order to wrong-foot her?

Meanwhile, across the Irish Sea, Sinn Fein’s leaders have a plan to get Northern Ireland out of the union at some point over the next five years – if they can get Unionist parties to stop throwing their toys out of the pram over their election loss and allow the Assembly at Stormont to sit again.

They will be watching what happens in Scotland very carefully, no doubt.

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Tory DWP is threatening to remove Motability car lifeline from severely disabled man

The DWP: where cruelty is written into the rules.

There’s new devilry afoot from the Department for Work and Pensions, as lawyers Leigh Day report:

A severely disabled man faces losing his lifeline Motability car in the latest blow he has suffered as a result of the enforcement of a benefits rule that he has just received permission to challenge in the courts.

Cameron Mitchell, aged 20, of Carlisle, has to return his Motability car by Thursday, 3 March despite the fact that he is wholly dependent on it for transport between his home, where he lives three days a week, and hospital where he stays for the rest of the week.

Cameron, through his mother and Deputy, Nicola Clulow, is challenging benefits regulations which put on hold Cameron’s Personal Independence Payments (PIP) and Nicola’s Carer’s Allowance after he spent 28 days in hospital, even though he continued to require his parents’ care whilst in hospital.

This week Cameron was granted permission to go ahead with his judicial review of Regulations 29 and 30 of the Social Security (Personal Independence Payment) Regulations 2013 which he argues are discriminatory and irrational. Cameron’s legal arguments will be presented in a High Court hearing later this year after the court agreed that his claim was ‘arguable’.

However, in the months since the legal challenge was launched, Cameron and Nicola have been struggling to deal with the consequences of the enforcement of the rule, the latest of which means the loss of the Motability car.

In December 2021, Cameron’s mum received letters asking her to repay overpayments of PIP and her Carer’s Allowance that the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) had made while Cameron was in hospital from December 2020.

Leigh Day solicitor Carolin Ott wrote to the DWP asking them not to cut Cameron’s benefit package or claw back any overpayment until a decision had been made by the courts about his legal challenge to the 28-day rule and in response the DWP agreed to stop clawing back overpayments for at least six months.

However, the mobility element of Cameron’s PIP that had been paid to Motability for the car while Cameron was in hospital was still clawed back from Motability in late 2021 (even though the car was needed by his parents to continue caring for him while he was in hospital and later in hospice care). Motability say that without payment, the vehicle needs to now be returned.

Leigh Day has written to the Secretary of State for Work and Pension’s lawyers again asking for the matter to be resolved urgently and has also written to Motability asking for an extension to allow the issue to be resolved by the DWP.

Nicola is deeply distressed by the prospect of losing the vehicle and can’t see how Cameron would be able to spend any time at home if the vehicle is taken away. Cameron has benefited from being able to receive care at home which is an important part of the transition to his full-time home care package. The loss of the Motability car would have a serious, detrimental impact on him and his family.

In his judicial review challenge of the lawfulness of the suspension of PIP and his mum’s Carer’s Allowance during his extended hospital stay, Cameron is arguing that the ‘hospitalisation rule’ breaches his rights because it directly discriminates against him (a person with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) requiring hospitalisation for a period of more than 28 days) as compared to those with PMLD who are hospitalised for less than 28 days.

He is also arguing that the ‘hospitalisation rule’ indirectly discriminates against those who have PMLD or treats those with PMLD the same as others when it should be treating them differently in recognition of their disability-related needs (which mean that they require care from ‘known carers’, people who know them and their needs whilst they are in hospital). He also argues that the rule is irrational because it cuts across the purpose of PIP.

Nicola Clulow said: “Cameron has been stuck living in intensive care first in Newcastle, then in Carlisle for almost 15 months now. Not because he’s ill but due to problems and delays in providing a home care package that can meet his complex special needs.

“He’s 20 years old and has had to spend days and nights for months watching very sick people who often don’t survive and despite his lack of communication it’s clear to everyone that he was switching off from the world, was depressed and just had no interest in life.

“Contact with the outside world and the ability to go home to be with family are crucial for him. To go out, and especially to go home Cameron requires a great deal of equipment to go with him and this would be impossible without his Motability car.

“Having been called on 21st February 2022 by Motability to say his vehicle must be returned on Thursday 3rd March was one of the most difficult and upsetting situations we have faced because it means that Cameron will once again have to simply stay looking at the four walls of the Intensive Care unit and not get home.”

Leigh Day solicitor Carolin Ott said: “We are very pleased that the court has granted our client permission for a judicial review of the hospitalisation rule which has suspended his PIP and his mother’s Carer’s Allowance, but are deeply concerned by the detrimental impact of the enforcement of the rule whilst Cameron awaits his day in court.

“Cameron is a young man with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) and like many others with PMLD is dependent on input from his known carers. In circumstances where the NHS alone can’t cover his care needs, his PIP should have never been suspended in the first place. The detrimental impact of that suspension, which on top of causing loss of income and stress is now also causing his family to lose his Motability car, is ongoing and we hope that it will be urgently addressed.”

Source: Cameron Mitchell can judicially review hospital-stay benefits rule but faces losing Motability car | Leigh Day

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Secret DWP benefits survey cherry-picks respondents – so it can lay blame on claimants?

Too much Coffey: the Work and Pensions Secretary (right) seems to have commissioned a survey of benefit claimants in order to say their failure to budget properly has put them into hardship – not her insistence on providing starvation-level payments and using the slightest excuse to cut them off. Meanwhile, she parties.

The Department for Work and Pensions has launched a secret survey – sent only to specially cherry-picked claimants.

The reason seems to be to blame benefit recipients for any hardship they suffer, claiming that poor budgeting skills are the root of the problem rather than the political decision to fix payments at starvation levels – and then to use the flimsiest excuses to stop them.

The survey asks about debts claimants may have, what effect the debts have had on them and what support they need. It is the last question that has raised concerns, as Benefits and Work, which hoisted the red flag on this apparent scam, pointed out:

The full question and list of options is as follows:

What types of help or support, if any, would be most useful in helping you manage your finances?

  • Help with working out what money I have left to spend each/day/week/month.
  • Advice on how to spread my spending so I don’t run out of money
  • Advice on how to reduce my spending
  • Advice on how to reduce my debt
  • Advice on how to increase my income
  • Help with setting up a direct debit/standing order
  • Help with opening a bank account
  • Other (specify)

In this context, advice to increase my income is most likely to relate to those in employment.  In general claimants cannot increase their income unless there is a benefit they could be claiming that they are not aware of.

What is entirely missing from these options are the ones that would actually make a difference to claimants, such as:

  • Pay benefits at a rate that is enough to live on
  • Remove the 5 week waiting time for UC
  • End the long delays for PIP assessments and WCAs

Because there are no such options, this survey will produce results that say that, of claimants who are in debt:

X% say they need advice on working out what money they have left to spend

X% say they need advice on how to reduce their spending

X% say they need advice on how to reduce their debt

Whilst some people may indeed say in the ‘Other’ box that the help they need is a higher rate of benefits, this will not be listed as a percentage in outcomes as everyone’s answers will be worded differently.

In other words, all the support needs will be around claimants not understanding how to manage their money, rather than it being impossible to manage on the money they receive.

See how it works?

Benefits and Work has made Freedom of Information requests to ask how the claimants taking part in this survey are selected, how many are taking part and whether the results of the report are going to be published.

The logical conclusion to be drawn is that the DWP has been stung by having to reveal the findings of its secret report on how people on sickness and disability benefits are struggling with unmet needs.

Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey had repeatedly refused to publish the DWP-commissioned report on disabled people’s experiences of the benefit system – so the Commons Work and Pensions Committee ordered its authors to provide a copy to Parliament. It has now been published.

The report, received by the government in September 2020, stated that many people are using disability benefits such as PIP, which is intended to meet the additional costs of disability, for very basic needs such as food, rent and paying debts:

“The participant had kidney failure, arthritis in his back, legs and arms, depression and bulimia which caused chronic stomach pains. He lived alone in a flat rented from a Housing Association, using Housing Benefit. He was in the ESA Support Group and received PIP. He made monthly repayments for utility bill arrears and had a £5,000 bank loan which he could not afford to repay. His debt repayments meant he could not afford essential day-to-day living needs and used a foodbank. He found it difficult to wash independently due to his arthritis and needed a walk-in shower but could not afford one and seemed unaware that he may be eligible for support through the local authority. He also needed support with cooking and cleaning and received help from a cousin. His cousin would like to claim Carer’s Allowance but neither of them knew how to make an application. He had no other support networks close by.”

It said claimants with invisible disabilities such as mental health conditions often struggle even more than those with physical conditions to meet their basic needs:

“Participants with mental health conditions tended to report a wide variety of basic needs, health and care needs and social needs that were unmet. In comparison, those with profound learning disabilities and severe physical disabilities were typically in the group that identified having fewer unmet needs. While the latter group experienced a high level of need across a range of areas, these were usually being met through a combination of local authority support and informal support networks, usually parents who provided a high level of care.”

And the wellbeing of disabled claimants often depends primarily on being in a household in which another member has a well-paid job:

“The participant has recently moved in with her mother and sister, she had previously lived alone in a council-rented flat but had begun to feel isolated and found paying the rent and bills difficult so decided to move in with her mother. She has a range of health conditions and disabilities including Asperger syndrome, anxiety, ADHD, joint stiffness and IBS. She works 28 hours a week and receives PIP. Before moving to live with her mother she was concerned about how her income would cover essential day-to-day living costs. She also struggled with maintaining her personal hygiene and found it difficult to leave the house as she did not like going out alone. Moving in with her mother has helped her to meet all of her health-related needs.”

The reason Coffey and the DWP kept the report secret seems clear when one notes that last October – more than a year after receiving it – the Work and Pensions Secretary was lying to the public about the system it damns.

As Benefits and Work (again) details:

Coffey was telling the Conservative party conference that:

“PIP has certainly grown in a way that was not anticipated when it was introduced.

“To give you an example, three out of four young people who claim PIP have their primary reason being mental ill health.

“That in itself is 189,000 young people who currently receive benefit focused on that. There may be other benefits they receive as well.

“. . . people can think the benefit system is fair.

“And I think by being able to target that even more so to people who really need that support, may improve that prospect of public perception.”

Having been forced to release a report that shows – even in its watered-down form – that the benefit system is forcing hardship and related physical and psychological torture on claimants, including those who already have significant mental health problems (leading to a threat to life itself?), it seems Coffey has commissioned this new survey in order to manufacture a false justification for herself.

I think I’ll write her a letter. Let’s see how she justifies this web of deceit.

Source: DWP secret survey set to blame claimants for going cold and hungry

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Secret #disability #benefits report WILL be published whether #ThereseCoffey likes it or not

Therese Coffey: it seems she’s been too busy having a good time (in line with many of her Cabinet colleagues, we’ve learned) to publish a report on the quality of her work as it relates to people with disabilities who claim benefits.

Tough luck, Therese!

The Tory Work and Pensions Secretary has been sitting on a report on how claimants are affected by the way she runs disability benefits – presumably because it is damning, even though (allegedly) watered-down.

The benefits concerned are those received by people with long-term illnesses and disabilities: Personal Independence Payment (PIP), Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and Universal Credit (UC).

Well, she won’t be able to warm her backside on it for very much longer because the Commons Work and Pensions Committee, sick of waiting for her to pull her finger out, has given her an ultimatum.

It is: publish the report by January 11 or we will publish it in spite of you.

The report falls within the government’s protocol for publication so there really is no legitimate reason for any delay.

Committee chairman Stephen Timms (Labour) said:

The Secretary of State has consistently failed to give the Committee a good reason why this piece of research should not be made public. She even admits that it falls within the Government’s own protocol for publication.

The continued refusal to publish the results of the research, as promised to the participants who gave up their time, will do further damage to disabled people’s trust in the Department—which is already in short supply.

The Secretary of State now has a final opportunity to think again and publish the research. If not, the Committee is firmly agreed that we will be left with no choice but to publish the report ourselves.

Source: Coffey ordered to publish secret disability benefits report or MPs will do it for her

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Did Tory distraction tactics make you lose track of the DWP’s strange plans for sick and disabled people?

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:

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.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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Are you one of the 340,000 PIP claimants who could be owed £16,000 in back pay?

The Department for Work and Pensions has announced that it will be checking 340,000 Personal Independence Payment claims to see if back-payments of £16,000 or more are owed – mostly to claimants with a mental health condition.

The initiative follows – extremely belatedly – a court decision from July 2019, finding that the DWP had not been awarding the correct number of points to some claimants who need prompting or social support to engage with other people face-to-face.

According to Benefits and Work,

Amongst PIP claimants who may have missed out are:

People who have regular meetings with a mental health professional, without which they would not be able to manage face to face encounters;

People who need the input of particular friends or relatives with experience of supporting them in social situations – rather than just any well-meaning friend or relative – to help them manage face to face encounters.

The DWP is not planning to invite claimants for an assessment but may contact them for more information.

This means a brown envelope from the DWP will arrive, out of the blue, through the letterboxes of people who are likely to have a phobia about brown envelopes from government departments.

The most likely outcome from people who are contacted in this way is that the letters will be ignored.

So This Writer is happy to endorse the suggestion, by Benefits and Work, that anyone who believes they may be affected should contact the DWP proactively – get in touch with them without giving them time to get in touch with you.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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