Work Capability Assessment

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I refute the allegation that this is a deeply discredited system. The Department for Work and Pensions takes the death of any claimant very seriously. Where it is made aware that a person has died and it is suggested that that is associated in any way with the department’s activity, a review will be undertaken to identify any lessons that can be learned. It is important to make it very clear that in a case of suicide, a mandatory internal assessment review is undertaken. All these reports will be kept for six years from the date of the final report.

In October 2015, we moved from peer reviews to an internal review process, which is what I meant to call it in the first place. That process means that we hold more information, including all emails relating to the case, the original commission, the final report and any recommendations resulting from the internal process review. That relates to the death of any individual who has been in receipt of any benefit—not necessarily just the work capability assessment but any benefit at all.

It is important to make the point that we retain that information for six years. Some of it is highly confidential. What we do not retain for more than one year is the day-to-day business on emails which is where requests come in and out about who is asking for what information. That is in line with normal practice. We retain that information for only one year. Complex issues are involved in the decision-making for this, however, and we examine those issues with great care, also taking into account letters from the coroners’ courts. Once again, the department takes the death of any claimant seriously and always conducts an investigation into the circumstances.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, despite what the Minister said, if all that information is available, why do families not get to see those reports? Take, for example, the Justice for Jodey Whiting campaign. She died in February 2017. She took her own life 15 days after her disability benefits were stopped for missing a work capability assessment, when she was already seriously ill. Her family have repeatedly asked for that review and have never had permission to see it. Three disabled members of staff at the DWP wrote a safeguarding report, which was magically lost in the system. I understand that that was also not passed to the investigators.

The DWP changes its story every time. In May 2018, it claimed that it had no record of the reports or whether it shared vital documents linking fitness to work with the death of benefit claimants. Most extraordinarily, it recently said that the independent reviewers did not ask for documents. How on earth can they ask for documents that they do not know exist? I echo the call for an inquiry, but I want to add another couple of questions.

The Minister’s department claims that it does not hold information on claimants who have lost their lives. On the issue of the length of time for which certain documents are kept, surely there must be a full review of all documents and for how long they are held. Either it is incompetence or, more alarmingly, it is a cover-up. Will the Minister ensure that there is a proper, independent investigation specifically into those missing documents? Why were those documents hidden from the independent reviewer? It is just not good enough to say that they were not asked for, when the independent reviewers did not know about them. Finally, what scrutiny has the department given the private sector contractors, Maximus, Capita and Atos, carrying out the WCA and their record-keeping and passing on of information to assist the DWP when it gets requests from campaigners such as John Pring at Disability News Service, who has campaigned tirelessly for two years on this matter?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I cannot respond to the specific case that the noble Baroness mentioned, but I will write to her. I can only repeat what I have already said. This is not a question of keeping information from individuals. As I said in the Statement, the reviews that we carry out—84 since 2015—contain extremely personal information. It would not be appropriate to declare which individual cases were shared with the reviewers on this occasion. We instituted a change in October 2015 when we moved from peer reviews to the internal review process to ensure that we can hold more information, including all emails relating to the case, the original commission, the final report and any recommendations resulting from the internal review process. In line with the department’s document retention policy, any records of whether peer reviews and coroners’ reports since 2010 were either requested by or shared with the independent reviewers of the work capability assessment do not exist. As I said, we keep the information for six years from the date of the final report in the case of the reports and active emails—the day-to-day business of the department—for only one year.

I stress, however, that we take this situation and this issue very seriously. I do not accept that the department has in any way sought to withhold information for any ulterior motive. The department works hard to do the right thing. If one looked across the private and public sectors, one would see that the period for which we hold information of this kind is absolutely in line with normal practice.