Welfare Reform

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Monday 11th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Let me repeat the figures that I gave. Of all those who have been migrated through the system, about 5% have been successful in the sense that they have had their appeals upheld. There may be a slight change to that figure, because there is a backlog at the moment; we could probably make it up to 7% or 8%, but I do not think that it will get any higher than that. We should remember that all the people the hon. Lady is talking about represent the flow—that is, people who have not been in receipt of incapacity benefit until now but have been applying to come on to incapacity benefit and are being migrated through the process on to employment and support allowance or jobseeker’s allowance. The figure for those appeals is 5%, and that was part of the process that was started by the previous Government.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

Many of us welcome the Secretary of State’s efforts to tackle the scourge of worklessness and to end the era in this country of indiscriminate and too often counter-productive welfare. On work capability assessment, he will know that these macro benefits are built on a series of individual assessments by a particular doctor on a particular day of a particular condition. May I press my right hon. Friend to take a personal interest to ensure that assessments of neurological disorders and mental health issues in particular are done fairly?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend raises a very important point. I can guarantee to him that we have already been doing that, but we will continue to do so. That is why the independent panel, which includes somebody from Mind, will review it. Mr Farmer has been tasked with reviewing that generally, as well. We will constantly keep this under review and ensure that that is the case. We do not want to use this to punish people; it is about helping people, not punishing them.