Work Capability Assessments

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Wednesday 27th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

I shall do my best to answer the questions asked by the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel).

I start by saying that there is a huge amount of agreement between us. Let us be clear: the proposals are not an exercise in money-saving. I have said time and again that they are about saving lives, not money. Yes, we will save money if we reduce the number of people who are welfare-dependent, but the starting point surely must be to try to help people make a better lot of their lives. That, effectively, is where the proposals came from.

If we look back to the last Parliament, there was—and, I believe, still is—cross-party consensus on the need to make the changes. The original proposal to assess current incapacity benefit claimants came in the Green Paper that I launched in 2008. James Purnell, who was Secretary of State shortly after that, took up the proposal for the migration and put in place many of the mechanics that were needed.

Given the hon. Lady’s comments, I believe that there is still cross-party consensus on the need to do something about the issue. Frankly, I regret that the assessment was not done years ago, because it is not right for anybody to be left on benefits, doing nothing, year after year without us seeking to find them a way back into work and helping them to make a better lot of their lives.

The hon. Lady is also right to say that we inherited the work capability assessment; it was set up by the previous Government, and was initially meant to operate with the employment and support allowance system for new claimants. It was designed by the previous Government and they put it in place, but it was not completely right; there were things that were wrong with it and needed to change.

One of the first things that I did after taking office this summer was make a number of changes to the work capability assessment—changes that were recommended by the previous Government following work that they did in their last few months in office. I looked at the changes and felt that they were sensible. They included: simplifying the language in the work capability assessment; making greater provision for people awaiting, or in between, courses of chemotherapy; making the higher rate of employment and support allowance available to more people with particular communication and mental health problems; and taking into account how people have adapted to a disability.

My view was that that was not enough, and I share the hon. Lady’s concern. It is not in my interests or the interests of the Government to get this wrong. I do not want to do down people who should not be trying to get back into work. I want to help those who have the potential to work, and to ensure that the work capability assessment is as effective as possible. There is no hidden motivation. I am not saying that we should make the test as tough as possible so that we can get more people off benefits and into work, thus saving money. I can categorically assure the hon. Lady that that is not the case.

There is no such thing as a perfect system, but we are working as hard as we can to make the system as effective as possible. Let me tell the hon. Lady some of the things that I have done to ensure that it is. Since the election, we have commissioned a further review of the work capability assessment. It is being carried out by a leading occupational health specialist, Professor Harrington of Birmingham university. We have assembled an advisory group to work with him, which includes Paul Farmer, the chief executive of Mind. I particularly wanted him to be on the review, because mental health is a big issue. Getting the facts right on mental health is essential. I do not want to say that people with mental health problems should not be able to work. Equally, I want to find the right dividing line to ensure that we do not do the wrong thing by people with mental health problems who would have genuine difficulty in working.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I want to emphasise the importance of the assessment of mental health problems. A constituent of mine told me that he could have sat down and cried to prove that he had mental health problems. He did not and, as a result, he was categorised as having no mental health problems. That was despite the fact that his general practitioner had categorically said that he did.

[Chris Grayling]

I have told the mental health charities that I am happy to hear their proposals on how we can change the wording of the assessment to strengthen the way in which we deal with people with mental health problems. I am happy to look at such proposals and incorporate any sensible changes. I said to Professor Harrington and his team that I want them to bring forward recommendations on how to improve things and to knock off any rough edges so that we can make the system as fair as possible.

The majority of people—it is far from all—who are on incapacity benefit with mental health problems have issues with long-term chronic depression. We have a straightforward choice. We can either leave them at home for the rest of their lives—the hon. Lady mentioned that many people end up just retiring rather than ever moving off benefit—or we can try to do the right thing and help them back into work. I passionately believe that the second is the better option. In a moment, I will address the hon. Lady’s concerns about personalisation, because I agree with her on that.

What I am saying applies across the piste: we are either saying that we will leave these people passively on benefits for the rest of their lives, or saying that we will do something to help them turn their lives around. It may be that going back to work will involve them doing something different from what they were doing before. If, for example, they were doing a manual job and they had an orthopaedic problem, they may have to do something different, and that may be a huge wrench that damages their self-confidence. The hon. Lady was right to say that many people who are on long-term benefits have lost networks and self-confidence. I do not buy into the headlines that say, “They are all scroungers.” Hon. Members will not find me using such language.

The biggest issue is about detachment from the workplace. Some people who have been in work previously and who have become utterly detached start to lack confidence; they do not know what to do or how to go about getting work. Sometimes, people have grown up in an environment in which worklessness has been the norm, and they do not have the knowledge to be able to take the first steps into the workplace. Helping them not only with the assessment but over the hurdle of getting back into work is a huge challenge, and that is what our work programme is all about.

Let me touch on one or two of the other areas that the hon. Lady raised in relation to the assessment. Atos has no financial incentive to get more people through the assessment and back into work, nor would I countenance it having one. It is Jobcentre Plus that takes the decision and not Atos, and Atos does not design the test. The recommendations that we get from Professor Harrington’s review—as long as they are sensible, and I am confident that they will be—will inform our decision making about how the test should be shaped.

[George Hollingbery]

My constituent, Gary Dennis, was recently diagnosed with motor neurone disease. He went to his work capability assessment and passed with flying colours—he got zero out of 13. I understand the Minister’s reluctance to categorise any disease as one that should not be assessed through the WCA, because everyone needs the dignity of work if they can have it. None the less, there are diseases, such as motor neurone disease, that have particularly aggressive pathways. There is a case for emergency reassessment. Within six weeks of Mr Dennis’s work capability assessment, he was completely incapable of work. Will the Minister consider such cases?

[Chris Grayling]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving me prior notice of his concerns. One of the things that I am happy to consider—I have said that we will carry on reviewing this process as we go forward—is some kind of emergency brake for people who suffer an immediate and very sharp deterioration in their condition. We should be able to reflect that, and I will ask officials to consider how we deal with such a situation. The goal is to do the right thing by people. What I do not want to do is say of any condition, “Nobody with that condition can ever work.” I do not want to give people an automatic path into the support group because where we can, and where circumstances enable us to do so, we should be trying to help people into work. Clearly, when things change rapidly, we need to see whether there is a way in which to address that.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

I am glad that the Minister says that Atos does not have an incentive to fail people. We have heard so much about the cases in which Atos has failed and in which people have successfully appealed against its assessment. Surely there should be some penalty for the service provider, because the system, and the appeals that errors cause, are a great waste of taxpayer’s money.

[Chris Grayling]

We cannot simply regard this as a question of errors by the assessors. The hon. Member for North East Derbyshire mentioned the issue of the number of medical professionals available. A more diverse range of medical professionals is being used, including those with expertise in mental health and orthopaedics; it is not simply doctors who are being used. One problem with using GPs is that we are putting them in a difficult position, because they are in danger of compromising their long-term relationship with a patient if they say, “Actually, you can go back to work.” We are very reluctant to go down the GP route. I am confident that having a mix of professionals will help us to deliver what the hon. Lady has asked for.

Getting the appeal numbers down is about getting the system right. I have asked Professor Harrington to consider how we can improve the system to reduce the likelihood of appeals. Appeals will never disappear, because some people will not want to accept what has happened. What we can do is seek to make the system as good and as effective as possible.

Let me touch briefly on the work programme and the support. The hon. Lady made a valid point about the need to provide personalised support. The work programme is designed to offer providers the freedom to tailor a programme to the individual, and not simply implement a programme designed in Whitehall. One of the reasons why programmes went wrong over the past 10 years was that they were too centrally directed. Officials would say, “You will do this. You will have five interviews and a period of work experience.” I want to trust the professionals, particularly those from the smaller, voluntary sector groups who probably work with some of the harder-to-help claimants, and give them the freedom to decide what works, rather than having to follow what Whitehall dictates.

[Natascha Engel]

We have only two minutes left, and I am really desperate to get an answer to the tribunal service question. I accept that we have lots of areas of agreement, but not, I think, when it comes to the tribunal service. This is not about the fact that some people will not accept that they are fit to work. Some 40% of people who appeal are successful. That means that they are told that they are fit to work, appeal, and are then told that they are not fit to work. That is a very serious number of people. What is the Minister doing to ensure that the tribunal system is up to the massive spike in numbers that it will receive?

[Chris Grayling]

First and foremost, I am trying to ensure that the cases do not get to the tribunal in the first place by making the assessment as effective and as accurate as possible. We also have officials working closely with the tribunal service to address that issue. We are running a number of pilots within Jobcentre Plus to look at ways in which we can improve the process and work more effectively with people who have been passed as fit for work to reduce the number of cases that will ever go to appeal. I am happy to share more of that with the hon. Lady as the weeks go on.

Let me touch on the last two points that the hon. Lady made. She asked where the jobs will come from. Some 280,000 new private sector jobs have been created in this country in the past three months, and the number of people claiming benefits has barely changed. That cannot be right, and it has to change. The private sector can create opportunities. Our job is to ensure that claimants are ready for them. As for the loss of £25 a week, sickness benefit should be for people who are sick. If there are two people sitting side by side in the Jobcentre, both of whom are deemed fit for work, it is not right if one of them is better off than the other. That is why we are clear that the proposals are a sensible step to take. At the end of the day, I want a system that treats people fairly and decently, and also helps them back into work. I do not believe that anybody is better off at home on benefits, doing nothing.