Disability Benefits Assessments

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Marsha De Cordova]

I absolutely and wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend’s comments. I really hope that when the Minister responds to the debate, she will set out how the Government intend to tackle this backlog so that disabled people receive the vital support they need at the right time and do not experience such severe delays.

As I was saying, how can it be right that someone who had been assessed by a physiotherapist for their mental health condition was awarded zero points, despite providing evidence from their psychiatrist and their doctor about their condition? At an appeal tribunal, they won and were awarded 45 points, but it should never have got to that stage. I know that many of my hon. Friends who are here today have constituents who have experienced exactly the same thing.

Evidence is an essential part of the assessment process, and it is vital that assessors engage with it. They should make best use of all pre-existing evidence from experts, including healthcare professionals. At present, anyone who undergoes an assessment is not provided with a copy of their assessment report, and that should be an automatic part of the assessment process. Who knows? That could lead to better decisions being made.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend not just on securing the debate, but on everything that she has done on disability issues since she came to the House. Does she agree that we need to support calls for an independent public inquiry into the deaths of claimants, including those who have gone through the work capability and PIP assessment process? We do not know the causes or the scale of those deaths. Surely that work needs to be undertaken as quickly as possible.

[Marsha De Cordova]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I commend her for her impeccable work on the rights of disabled people and tackling inequality. I will come on to the point that she raises, because she is absolutely right. We have long supported the call for an independent public inquiry into these deaths, because it is a scandal that that has not been addressed to date.

People should have a choice about how assessments are carried out, be it face to face or by audio. The process has to be accessible and inclusive. The Disability Benefits Consortium rightly calls for the establishment of an independent regulator of social security assessment, with the power to compel evidence from the Department for Work and Pensions and properly hold the Government to account.

Assessments are carried out by private contractors including Atos, Capita and Maximus. Last November, DWP announced that it would spend £2 billion on disability assessment contracts with private profit-making companies over the next five years. Given the millions already spent, it is clear that these private companies are not providing the best value for money. Labour has long called for all assessments to be brought back in house. That would provide for better scrutiny, accountability and value for money for the taxpayer. Does the Minister agree, and will she take action to address that?

Post assessment, the aim must be to get the decision right first time, but time and again, that has not happened. By the end of 2020 in Battersea, one in five disabled people in receipt of PIP had had their awards reduced, and one in three had their awards completely stopped. Citizens Advice Wandsworth shared the experience of someone who was assessed for both ESA and PIP within three days of each other. In their WCA, they were found to have limited capability for work as they could not walk 50 metres. However, they were awarded zero points for mobility in their PIP assessment, which concluded that they could walk 200 metres. This resulted in them losing their Motability car, so they could no longer drive to work, and they now have to claim universal credit. Surely that is not how the system should work.

With the introduction of mandatory reconsiderations, there has been a marginal improvement, but in 62% of MRs in 2021, the result was to go ahead with the initial decision. Many disabled people feel that the MR process is yet another barrier to their right to pursue an appeal to the independent tribunal. Since 2010, some 587,816 disabled people have been forced to appeal to a tribunal for their ESA. In 2020-21, 76% of PIP appeals and 74% of ESA appeals were successful and decisions were overturned at tribunal.

In the past, disabled people have had to wait long periods of time before their cases have been heard at tribunal. Given the impact of the pandemic on backlogs, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) mentioned, can the Minister update us on the current waiting time and tell us the plan for addressing the backlog?

Poor decisions have come at a huge cost to the taxpayer. Between 2017 and 2019, the Government spent £120 million fighting PIP and ESA claims, and the consequences of this failing system are devastating. We all remember the case from 2017 involving Stephen Smith. He was 63 when he was found fit for work, despite having been diagnosed with numerous health conditions. After he failed his WCA, he was forced to live on just £67 a week. He died soon after, weighing just six stone. Only last month, we heard of a disabled man who was in hospital in 2019, as he was severely ill and very vulnerable to infection. The DWP refused to allow him to submit an electronic claim, forcing him to attend a jobcentre in person. He died in April 2020.

In 2019, the Government revealed that 5,690 people had died within six months of being found fit for work under the WCA in the last decade. There is no stronger indictment of a failing system than more than 5,000 people dying just months after being denied vital social security. Labour has been proud to support calls for an independent public inquiry into these deaths, because we need justice for each and every one of them.

The Department’s treatment of disabled treatment has resulted in unimaginable suffering for tens of thousands of disabled people and their loved ones. Rather than enabling disabled people to live more independently, successive Tory Governments have created a hostile environment. The long-awaited Green Paper was a missed opportunity to reshape social security and support for disabled people. I am sure there is agreement across the House that the current system is complex and simplification is needed, but the merger of payments and assessments for PIP and ESA is not the answer. They are two fundamentally different assessments requiring different information. One is means-tested income replacement, and the other is not. There is no doubt that any move towards that could lead to absurd decisions and have catastrophic consequences.

Worryingly, the Green Paper did not address the levels of social security. Cuts to universal credit, with the removal of disability premiums worth £180 a month and the removal of the work related activity component in 2017, have left some severely disabled people destitute. Last month, two severely disabled men won a legal challenge over the DWP’s failure to protect them from the cliff-edge loss of income of £60 a month following their move from legacy benefits to universal credit.

Since 2010, more than 1 million disabled people have faced sanctions. As a result, many have had to go without, skip meals, miss appointments and so forth. It has had a devastating impact. All the evidence points to the fact that sanctions against disabled people do not work, and there needs to be a permanent end to all sanctions. The Government must move towards a more holistic employment model for disabled people.

We need the right kind of social security system—one that respects the values of the Beveridge report. We need a system that we are proud of, as we are all proud of our NHS. In the past 12 years, we have watched the system diminish and demonise disabled people; that is a fact. Changing the narrative is vital to dismantling the hostile environment that has been created for them. We need to rebuild a social security system that is fair, compassionate and there for us all in our time of need. To do so, we need to ensure that the system provides people with an adequate level of income and a change of culture in the Department.

Will the Minister confirm that before she introduces her White Paper, she will engage with and consult disabled people and disabled people’s organisations? We must avoid what happened with the national disability strategy, which was ruled unlawful last month because it failed to carry out such engagement. Will she also commit to creating an inclusive, accessible application process and assessment framework that is built on compassion and genuinely co-produced with disabled people and their organisations? Finally, will the White Paper address the inadequate levels of social security and commit to considering minimum income levels for disabled people? We need urgent action to transform the social security system from one that penalises and sanctions ill and disabled people to one that supports and empowers them to live independently.