Work Capability Assessment

Mike Penning Excerpts

Thursday 27th March 2014 Written Statements

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mike Penning)]

The Government will be publishing today the response to the fourth independent review of the work capability assessment (WCA).

Dr Paul Litchfield carried out the review, and I welcome his findings. In carrying out his review Dr Litchfield gathered a range of evidence to provide invaluable insight into how the WCA is working.

I strongly support the principle of the work capability assessment and am committed to continuously improving the assessment process to ensure it is as fair and as accurate as possible—Dr Litchfield’s recommendations allow us to build on improvements already made to the assessment to achieve this aim.

Government have accepted or accepted with certain caveats all but one of the 32 recommendations that fall within the scope of DWP. As a result of Dr Litchfield’s recommendations we will:

Carry out a full impact assessment into the alternative approach of decision-maker triage outlined by Dr Litchfield;

Continue work already begun with the British Medical Association (BMA) to develop and co-design a new ESA113 for the collection of further medical evidence; and

Comprehensively review all letter and forms—including the ESA50 form—used in the WCA process.

As announced on 6 March, Official Report, column 67WS, I am delighted that Dr Litchfield has agreed to lead the fifth and final independent review of the WCA and I look forward to receiving his findings before the end of 2014.

Finally, the Government response to Dr Litchfield’s review also sets out what we will do as a result of the evidence-based review of the WCA descriptors.

The evidence-based review did not provide evidence that changes to the WCA descriptors would significantly improve the overall assessment. However, the findings do indicate that it might be possible to make practical improvements to the assessment process.

As such we intend to build on the experience of using a semi-structured interview topic guide during the evidence-based review and examine the possibility of health care professionals carrying out face-to-face assessments using prompts from a topic guide in WCA discussions with claimants generally.