Work Capability Assessment

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Monday 9th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, the Improving Lives Green Paper was published in October 2016. I am pleased that we received around 6,000 consultation responses supported by 166 accessible events across the country. That is good; it is all about us listening to people, to understand what is truly needed and how we can tailor support to meet the needs of different people. Since the Green Paper consultation, our officials have been working hard to analyse that fantastic response. We are working towards an autumn publication which will set out our response to the consultation and how it has informed what we are going to do next.

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, to ensure that the work capability assessment is fit for purpose, will the Government undertake to carry out a thorough inquiry into the alarming reports that assessors are disregarding evidence of unfitness to work put before them by claimants; and that claimants are even taking their own lives as a result of the stress to which they are subjected by work capability assessments, something which has been confirmed by coroners’ findings?

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, it is important to point out that we are talking about approximately 2.4 million claimants who make up the employment support allowance caseload. Obviously the references made by the noble Lord to particular individuals are of concern, but the nominal expenditure forecast for 2017-18 is £15.3 billion. In that case, we have to proceed with care in the changes we make, to ensure that the delivery of assessments works for everyone. Since the Centre for Health and Disability Assessments took over the contract to carry out assessments in 2015, a number of improvements have been made to claimants’ experience of them. The number of HCPs has been increased by 68%—