Welfare Reform (Sick and Disabled People)

Debate between John McDonnell and Anne McGuire

Thursday 27th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

That is exactly right. There are three consequences from what is happening. First, disabled people are being forced more and more to rely and depend on care from their own family members, who are themselves, to be frank, overstretched in providing that care, especially as local authority respite care is now being cut back so dramatically. Startlingly, as we found in a previous debate, a large number of these carers are children caring for their parents. A year-long investigation by Carers UK confirmed that carers, who save this country an estimated £119 billion a year in care costs, are about to lose £1 billion in benefit cuts.

Secondly, the care needs of many disabled people are simply not being met. A recent inquiry by the all-party groups on local government and on disability found from the evidence they took that four in 10 disabled people are failing to have their basic social care needs—which my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) has mentioned—met.

Thirdly, as my hon. Friend has said, the withdrawal of social care and support services is cutting many people off from any form of social contact with the outside world. Many are driven back into their homes, while others are forced out of them, losing all their independence, and into residential care or even hospital care as a result.



Alongside cuts to social care, there are the mounting cuts in welfare benefits. Like most hon. Members, the vast majority of disabled people whom I have met are, like any other employed person, desperate to work and support their family with a regular wage. For some, the tragedy is that their disability is so severe that they will never be able to work and will have to rely on welfare benefits to ensure that they do not live in poverty, while others need positive and sensitive practical support to help them to get back into work or to work in the first place.

The system introduced during the past six years to support people in securing work or the appropriate benefits could not have been better designed to undermine disabled people’s ability to get into work or receive the appropriate benefits to assist them. The previous Government started the process of reassessing all those on incapacity benefit to see whether they could be assisted back into work, and if not, to ensure that they had the right level of financial support. They introduced the work capability assessment, and brought in Atos to implement it. That might have been well intentioned in theory, but in practice, thousands of disabled people have been caused untold suffering, humiliation, stress and, at times, absolute despair.

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend recognise that the introduction of the work capability assessment under our Government was phased? Part of the distress he mentions was due to the fact that the contract was renegotiated to go for a big bang of assessments and reassessments of everyone on incapacity benefit.

[John McDonnell]

The work capability assessment was flawed from the start. It stemmed from the work of the American insurance company Unum, and the so-called biopsychosocial model of disability assessment. That was exposed as an invention by the insurance companies simply to avoid paying out for claims. My right hon. Friend is, however, absolutely right that Atos was brought in and then given a contract to churn through large numbers of assessments very rapidly—as fast as possible. The staff employed in order to achieve that often had minimal medical or professional qualifications, and their expertise or experience was often totally unrelated to the condition or disability of the people they assessed.

Assessments largely disregarded people’s previous diagnosis, prognosis or even life expectancy. The recent “Panorama” programme “Disabled or Faking It?” exposed the scandal of seriously ill patients—people diagnosed with life-threatening conditions such as heart failure or end-stage emphysema—being found fit for work. The so-called descriptors, or criteria, on which assessments are based bear no relation to the potential employment available, take little account of fluctuating conditions and are particularly unresponsive to appreciating someone’s mental health issues.

According to all the Department for Work and Pensions figures, the appeals roll in—on 40% of decisions—and most appeals are now successful. The test has been condemned by the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing. The report by the president of the appeals tribunal to the Government denounced the test as

“failing to coincide with reality”.

Even when someone wins their appeal, there can be a lengthy wait before their benefits are reinstated. In one period, 37,000 people were waiting up to a year to receive benefits after they had won their appeal.