Oral Answers to Questions

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

As I have already said, universal credit is now available in more than half the jobcentres. The full development starts rolling out next year. People will benefit enormously not just from the technicalities but from the fact that an adviser will now stay with a claimant all the way through the claim. I know that my hon. Friend was not looking for a job, but perhaps the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) will need to be looking for one in a few years’ time.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

9. What recent assessment he has made of the effect of work capability assessments on disabled people.

[The Minister for Employment (Priti Patel)]

We are committed to continuously improving the work capability assessment process for all people. That is why since Labour introduced it in 2008 we have conducted a Department-led review, an evidence-based review and five independent reviews.

[Louise Haigh]

Contrary to the Minister’s earlier remarks, figures finally released by the Department over the summer showed that 2,380 people died after being declared fit for work—more than four times the death rate of the general population. In a harrowing case, a constituent of mine reported to me that she frequently considered committing suicide, both before and after being found fit for work. Does the Minister not feel that it is therefore high time to review the work capability assessment and that thousands of people are being wrongly defined as fit for work?

[Priti Patel]

Once again let me say that any attempt to extrapolate anything from those figures is simply wrong. It is impossible to draw any causality from those statistics. Organisations have commented on this and Full Fact, which is widely known, has said that similar comments to those made by the hon. Lady, which have been widely reported, are simply wrong. We should not infer from the data that there is any causality, and the trends are down.