Work Capability Assessment

Countess of Mar Excerpts
Wednesday 5th November 2014

(9 years, 12 months ago)

Lords Chamber
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Lord Freud Portrait Lord Freud
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The important thing about doing these assessments is that someone assesses correctly in terms of capability of performing functions and capability of working; that is, what people are able to do. As I said earlier, we have more specialist professional support going into the system to make sure that those assessments are done accurately.

Countess of Mar Portrait The Countess of Mar (CB)
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My Lords, is there any foundation to the report in the Independent last week that some 6,000 people with diseases such as Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis and severe CFS/ME have been put into the work-related activity group? If that is the case, how many of those people have been got into work? What is the point of putting them in the WRAG if they are not going to get better?

Lord Freud Portrait Lord Freud
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Clearly, I am not able to respond on specific people going into specific places. The whole point of the assessments is to focus on functional capability or needs at the point of assessment.