Employment and Support Allowance

Eilidh Whiteford Excerpts

Tuesday 18th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Neil Gray]

Absolutely. There are great problems in the assessment process. It is part of a wider problem with the system as it stands. To take away £30 a week from people who have been assessed as unfit for work and who are in the work-related activity group is certainly not the right way to go about things. We impress it on the Minister that these cuts should be paused.

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate and raising these critical issues. Does he recognise that many of those in the work-related activity group will be people who move in and out of work as their conditions fluctuate? When they go back on the benefit during a period of ill health, they are going to find themselves in a very much disadvantaged position compared with before. This is just no way to treat people who are battling and living as best they can with often incurable, long-term, debilitating illness.

[Neil Gray]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and, to her credit and in her typical way, makes her point well. The Government have suggested that there will be a 12-week window in which recipients of ESA in the WRAG may well be able to return to the previous rate; I suggest that that is not enough. If the Government will not reverse the cut, there should be a longer grace period to allow people the opportunity to return to work and to attempt to sustain that work, which is not always easy for some of these people to do.