Work Capability Assessments

Mark Hoban Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mr Mark Hoban)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) on securing the debate. I also thank her for being unusually helpful and supplying a copy of her speech to my office in advance. I hope that that will enable us to engage in a reasoned debate on how we are to introduce the audio recording of work capability assessments. It is important, and we must get it right. It accords firmly with our commitment to improving the WCA process continuously.

The interest in audio recording that has been expressed in parliamentary questions, freedom of information requests and, indeed, today’s debate demonstrates the importance of this issue. We fully appreciate the benefits of offering audio recording to those who request it as part of their face-to-face assessments, but, while we accept that there has been an increase in demand for its use, we must be sure that we understand the evidence base, including that relating to the value to claimants. Making knee-jerk policy is not an option. The evidence needs to be balanced against potential costs, and that is the process in which my officials are currently engaged. I shall say more about that shortly.

As the hon. Lady said, my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), made a statement on audio recording back in February 2012. He said on that occasion:

“we will offer everyone who wants it the opportunity to have their session recorded.”—[Official Report, 1 February 2012; Vol. 539, c. 291-92WH.]

Since then we have striven to honour that commitment, and all those having face-to-face assessments have been able to request that their sessions be recorded.

The present policy is that claimants can ask for their assessments to be recorded, either by means of the service offered by the Department for Work and Pensions and Atos Healthcare or through the use of their own recording equipment. Requests for an audio recording, whether through the use of Atos Healthcare’s equipment or through the use of equipment provided by a claimant, must be made in advance when a face-to-face assessment is arranged. The purpose of that is to provide adequate notice so that recording equipment can be made available and ready for use.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

A constituent of mine provided her own equipment for her son’s work capability assessment. One tribunal judged that it was admissible while another judged that it was not, because it was not clear that the nurse involved had given consent. Allowing claimants to provide their own equipment leads to complications. It would be much better if the equipment were clearly offered, and, indeed, if its provision became standard.

[Mr Hoban]

My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to how difficult it is for people to provide their own equipment, and to the importance of ensuring that proper controls govern such matters as consent.

Atos has access to 31 audio recording machines, three of which are currently being repaired. It also has access to 21 cassette machines which are on loan from the DWP. We constantly monitor the updating of audio recording assessments to ensure that the supply of the equipment meets demand.

Let me put our commitment into more context. Those who want an audio recording can request one, but a claimant has no legal right to an audio-recorded assessment, and neither the DWP nor Atos Healthcare has a legal obligation to provide an audio-recording service or equipment. Our commitment is based on our intention to provide the best possible service for claimants, but the unavailability of audio recording facilities does not mean that the WCA process can be delayed indefinitely. That could slow down the process unnecessarily. Since the introduction of audio recording, only nine requests have been refused owing to the unavailability of equipment.

As the hon. Member for Edinburgh East said, Professor Harrington’s first independent review of the WCA recommended that the Atos Healthcare pilot audio recording of assessments should be used to determine whether such an approach is helpful for claimants and improves the quality of assessments. In making that recommendation, Professor Harrington rightly noted the need to balance potential drawbacks such as the increased burdens on tribunals and the sharing of sensitive personal data, with potential improvements in both assessor and claimant behaviours.

Following that recommendation, the audio pilot took place in the Newcastle assessment centre during spring 2011. The pilot involved 500 claimants being offered the chance to volunteer to have their assessment recorded. The results of the pilot showed that less than half of those offered ended up having an audio recorded assessment and only a handful, less than 1%, requested a copy of their assessment.

The hon. Lady has raised concerns about the metrics we use when considering demand for audio recording. We feel that the metrics used are key in showing the exact demand during the pilot.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Perhaps the Minister was about to come to this point, but I am sorry that he has chosen simply to repeat the 1% figure without addressing the criticisms that have been raised—I have heard them from others, too. The context of the pilot made it difficult for people to get a copy and the pilot was then evaluated very quickly.

[Mr Hoban]

I do not think that it was that difficult to get hold of a copy. The recording might need to be held on a handheld device before it is transferred to a computer and a transcript is printed, but that does not stop people asking for a copy. I thought that was one point in the hon. Lady’s thoughtful speech that was not well substantiated.

The results also provided little evidence that audio recording of face-to-face assessments improved the quality of assessments. There was only limited evidence of improvement in the customer experience for some individuals. Of those who took part, fewer than half the claimants thought that audio recording would be helpful to them. Those are the key areas that Professor Harrington wanted to understand when he called for the original pilot. As a result the Department decided not to introduce audio recording of face-to-face assessments universally on the basis that a facility for all assessments would be extremely costly, with no apparent substantial benefit or improvement in the quality of assessments. We ensured that when claimants asked for an audio recording, we were in a position to provide that facility. That was not intended to provide a permanent solution, but it is important in helping to provide the evidence for further changes.

Let me say a little about current demand. Since the introduction of a limited audio recording facility in September 2011, fewer than 4,000 claimants have requested a recorded assessment. To date, Atos has conducted more than 2,000 audio-recorded assessments. During that period almost 1.5 million face-to-face assessments for both ESA and incapacity benefit reassessments have been completed. Therefore, the proportion of recorded assessments is less than 0.2% of all assessments carried out during the period. We need to continue to monitor that take-up, but universal recording for such low numbers does not seem prudent and might not provide value for money.

We have always been clear that the provision of a limited audio recording service is a temporary measure that needs to be evaluated fully before a final decision is taken on the future of the service. As I have already said, we need the evidence to show that investing potentially large sums of money into the provision of universal recording will improve quality and will be used by claimants.

We agree with the comments in Professor Harrington’s third report in which he expressed views about audio recording needing to improve the quality of assessments. He said that

“further monitoring and evaluation work needs to be completed before a decision can be made”.

That is why we have decided to extend the evaluation period until the end of the summer to allow us to gather additional data on quality and potential take-up for a subsequent robust decision on any potential future audio-recording provision. We now have a benchmark for current take-up but, as has been rightly pointed out, we cannot get a true comparison until we routinely let people know about its availability. I am pleased to say that we are therefore taking steps to boost awareness of audio recording.

The Department and Atos are in the process of amending written communications to claimants by updating the WCA AL1C form. The document is sent to claimants when they need to arrange a face-to-face assessment and will provide more information on how to arrange an audio-recorded assessment. We expect the revised form to be sent out to claimants by the end of next month, once the necessary changes have been made and the form has been cleared for use.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Perhaps the Minister might be able to explain why it has taken nearly two years to make that amendment. If I understood him correctly, he said that the evaluation of all this process was being extended to the end of the summer, so if the revised letter is not going out until the end of this month or the end of next month, there will be very little time to judge whether that has made any difference.

[Mr Hoban]

The volume of people going through the WCA on a monthly basis is significant—I believe that 100,000 claims are made for ESA every month—so it will not take long to find out the take-up rate, although we need to make sure that the pilot has the right amount of time to gather sufficient evidence. Earlier the hon. Lady was arguing in favour of a shorter pilot and now she is potentially arguing for a longer pilot in order to get the evaluation right, but she makes an important point.

In addition to the letter I mentioned, the Department has recently provided more information about the audio-recording facility on the “Inside Government” section of the gov.uk website. By ensuring that more people are aware of the facility we will get a much better picture of how many people are applying for an audio recording and a better assessment of the level of demand. The hon. Lady rightly made the point that we do need to understand what the demand actually is.

In the past, the Department has asked Atos Healthcare to apply a processing safeguard whereby requests for audio-recorded assessments should be accommodated within four weeks, and where that was not possible, the assessment should go ahead without a recording. However, during the remainder of the evaluation period, to help ensure that claimant expectation can be met, the four-week safeguard for requesting audio-recorded assessments has been removed. That will enable us to gather a fuller picture of demand and capacity, in order to inform a full and robust evaluation.

To conclude, we are continuing to evaluate the costs and benefits of the current approach, and will await the results of a further evaluation during the summer before making a further decision on the future of this service and how it can improve the WCA.

[Heidi Alexander]

rose—

[Mr Hoban]

I just want to finish these remarks.

Although I acknowledge the increase in audio recording and potentially the recommendation of Professor Harrington on this matter, we also need properly to evaluate the cost and benefits of the extension of recording. We are doing just that. By raising awareness of the service we will be able to gauge demand, assess usage of the recordings by claimants and tribunals—it is important to understand where tribunals want to see transcripts of recordings—and evaluate the wider impact on quality.

As a word of caution, I say that the original evaluation demonstrates a reasonable level of interest from claimants but a low level of take-up of the actual recordings and no impact on quality. I am determined, as I have made clear in debates in this House since I took on this role, to improve the WCA, but I am prepared to do so only where the benefits are demonstrable.

Question put and agreed to.