Work Capability Assessment Consultation

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

I respect the hon. Gentleman; having appeared before the Select Committee, I know how seriously he takes the matters that he has raised. However, I cannot accept being described as bearing down on those who are

“on the make and on the take”.

If he can find any example of myself or my Ministers making those assertions, I would like to see it. In the absence of that, I hope that he will be big enough to withdraw those comments.

The hon. Gentleman does not like the assessments, but we hear nothing about alternatives or what the SNP’s plan is to replace assessments. If there are inherent problems with assessments, presumably the logic is that he is not going to assess anybody at all. So we do not know what his plan is. He refers to conditionality, so let me make a point about that. There are those whose health and disability situation is such that I passionately recognise that they should not be expected to undergo any work to look for work or to carry out work itself. As a compassionate society, we should be there to support those people, and we will continue to do so. But where somebody can work, there is a contract between the state and the individual: if people are to be supported and they can work, it is right that they should be expected to do so. In those circumstances, the conditionality should apply.

The hon. Gentleman made specific reference to Access to Work. That programme provides up to about £65,000 for each individual involved to bring forward adaptations to the workplace to accommodate that individual into employment. It is a huge commitment on the part of this Government, and I can inform him that the latest figure I have is that 88% of those applications are being processed within 10 days.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

It is greatly welcome that we are trying to get the assessment to give people the outcome they deserve, but it is intriguing to make what sounds like a fundamental change to an assessment that we are going to try to scrap in a few years’ time. Will the Secretary of State set out how many of the 2.5 million people he cited as being in this situation he thinks would not be in the same group after these changes? How many of them will have a chance to be reassessed before we scrap the assessment entirely?

[Mel Stride]

I dealt in my statement with my hon. Friend’s question about why we are doing this, given that we will be getting rid of the WCA in due course: I said that there is no reason why we cannot bring forward these benefits earlier, even though we are going to be removing the WCA altogether. As for the numbers impacted, we know that about one in five people on those benefits do want to work, given the right support. Until the consultation is concluded and we know the exact nature of the policy changes that we may or may not be making at that point, we will not be able to assess the numbers exactly.