Work Capability Assessment (Government Response)

Monday 17th September 2012 Written Statements

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mr Mark Hoban)]

Today I will be publishing the Government response to the consultation—“Work Capability Assessment: accounting for the effects of cancer treatment”.

I strongly support the principle of the work capability assessment and am committed to continuously improving the assessment process to ensure it is as fair and as accurate as possible.

We have a statutory commitment to an annual independent review of the work capability assessment for the first five years of its operation and appointed Professor Malcolm Harrington in June 2010 to start these reviews.

Professor Harrington has to date carried out two independent reviews of the work capability assessment and is currently undertaking a third. As part of his second independent review Professor Harrington asked Macmillan Cancer Support to look in detail at how the work capability assessment assesses people with cancer in order to provide him with evidence for further recommendations for improvement.

As a result of the evidence received from Macmillan we decided to conduct an informal consultation to seek a wider range of views and evidence. The consultation “Work Capability Assessment: accounting for the effects of cancer treatment” was announced on 24 November 2011 as part of the Government’s response to Professor Harrington’s second review.

Today’s document outlines the responses received to that consultation and provides further information on how we intend to change the way the work capability assessment works for people receiving cancer treatment based on consideration of those responses.

The revised proposals expand the categories of cancer treatments under which a claimant may be treated as having limited capability to undertake work-related activity to now include individuals who are: awaiting, receiving or recovering from treatment by way of chemotherapy irrespective of route; or awaiting, receiving or recovering from radiotherapy.

I will place a copy of the full Government response to the consultation in the House Library and it will also be available later today at: www.dwp.gov.uk/consultations.