Work Capability Assessments

Helen Whately Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[David Linden]

The hon. Lady makes a good point; I very much agree.

The latest quarterly release on appeals of work capability assessments shows that 59% of decisions are overturned at appeal. To be blunt, that means that six in every 10 decisions are wrong. That is incredibly alarming.

There is, of course, a wider point about the undertaking of work capability assessments by a private sector provider, which I oppose on ideological grounds—I agree with the hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) on that point. I doubt, therefore, that it will come as much surprise that I very much welcome the commitment by the Scottish Government to ban private firms from carrying out benefit assessments. I wholly concur with the Scottish Social Security Minister Jeane Freeman, that

“profit should never be a motive nor play any part in assessing or making decisions on people’s health and eligibility for benefits.”

Over and above my ideological objection to private sector provision, I am sure that all hon. Members will be concerned to note that, according to the DWP’s own data released only last week, the ESA assessment provider has consistently failed to meet the contractual expectation for the quality of assessment reports.

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

One thing I have been calling for, for some time, is standard recording of all work capability assessments. Often there is one story from one side and another story from the other, and recording would not only provide some evidence about what really happened, but improve people’s experience of the assessments. It has been piloted, so does the hon. Gentleman agree that it would be good to push forward with the recording of assessments as one way of improving the experience for our constituents?

[David Linden]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady and will come back to how the assessments are conducted, because that forms a major part of my speech.

At this juncture, I want to commend to the House the excellent report by Rethink Mental Illness entitled “It’s broken her”. It was published just last week and makes truly harrowing reading. The report lays bare the full extent of the challenges for people with mental illness when facing assessments for both ESA and PIP. Drawing on findings from a series of interviews and focus group-style discussions, the report finds that the assessment can be “traumatising and anxiety-inducing” for the following reasons: there are numerous issues with the paper forms that claimants must submit, including their complexity and length, and the inflexible nature of the questions they ask; claimants must collect their own medical evidence, which is extremely burdensome, often expensive and time-consuming; the staff who perform face-to-face assessments frequently have a poor understanding of mental illness; and, finally, delays in mandatory reconsideration and appeals to the tribunal mean that claimants may have to wait many months for the correct result.

The report concludes that the current PIP and ESA assessment procedure

“inherently discriminates against people with mental illnesses”.

It sets out a number of policy recommendations to

“dramatically improve the benefits system for people with mental illnesses, as well as saving the Government the vast costs that are currently incurred due to persistent incorrect decisions made early in the process.”