Oral Answers to Questions

Greg Mulholland Excerpts

Monday 10th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

If the hon. Gentleman feels guilty, perhaps he ought to examine his conscience in relation to remarks that he himself has made.

In his report, Professor Harrington said:

“All they call for is a scrapping of the WCA but with no suggestion of what might replace it.”

He added that to

“recognise that things are beginning to change positively in the best interests of the individual… would be helpful.”

This process is an important part of the way in which we help people to get back into work, but the scaremongering that we hear undermines people’s confidence in it, to the detriment of those who are trying to claim employment support allowance.

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

When the last Government placed the contracts with Atos, they omitted to ensure that work assessment centres were fully accessible. In 31 of them there is no ground-floor access for wheelchairs, which is clearly absurd. What is the Department doing to deal with that?

[Mr Hoban]

My hon. Friend has made an important point. We are working with Atos to ensure that as many centres as possible have ground-floor, accessible medical examination rooms, but when they are not accessible, we will try to make arrangements with claimants to ensure that they have access to suitable locations for their assessments.