Disability Assessment Services Debate

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Department: Department for Work and Pensions

Disability Assessment Services

Ruth George Excerpts
Wednesday 13th March 2019

(5 years ago)

Westminster Hall
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Gillian Keegan Portrait Gillian Keegan
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Yes, it can be quite a long time. We have heard that people can wait for three or four months. That uncertainty means that it is very difficult for a person to plan, as they do not know how much support they will receive.

Ruth George Portrait Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)
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The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech and is putting into words what a lot of us experience in our constituencies. In my area, it takes 48 weeks for an appeal to be heard, and people usually have to sign on for universal credit, rather than ESA. They have to undergo conditionality, even though in 71% or 72% of cases in my area, at the end of the process it is found that they are not able to work. They are being pushed into that by a system that does not take into account their disability. Does the hon. Lady agree that that desperately needs looking at? People have to wait a year or more to get assessed properly.

Gillian Keegan Portrait Gillian Keegan
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Yes, I do, but we need to solve the root cause of the problem, so that we do not have these high tribunal rates. If we do not have them, we will not have the waiting times. That is the best way to ensure that the system has a low failure rate.

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Ruth George Portrait Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)
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I echo much of what has been said across the House. I am glad that Members on the Government side are taking an interest. I would love for some of them to take up the vacancies on the Work and Pensions Committee, where we look in detail at these issues.

I have met and heard from many constituents, particularly those with mental health problems, who suffer from the whole round of assessments. They are often on both ESA and PIP, so they have assessments roughly every year. Once they get a letter about an assessment, they have to fill in a form and seek medical letters to substantiate their claim. Many medical professionals are refusing to write those letters, because the DWP ask for such detailed information and they cannot possibly give the time to provide that. If they do, they charge for the letters—often £25 or £30.

As Members across the House have said, there is great reluctance to perform home visits—particularly in my very rural area where they can take longer, but also where it takes much longer for constituents to travel to appointments. Often, they simply cannot. One constituent told me about dragging her disabled daughter, who was ill and in pain, out of bed to go to her assessment because she was told she had to. Another’s GP refused to give evidence for any more assessments about home visits.

Yes, people get their taxi fare paid for them, but they have to pay up front. That often costs £100, which some people simply cannot afford. The Minister promised the Work and Pensions Committee that work capability assessments would be video-recorded, but now people are being asked to provide their own recording equipment. Again, that is an issue of affordability.

As the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Paul Masterton) said, the process has an impact on claimants’ mental health. They go to an assessment; they wait for the result; they put in for a mandatory reconsideration, which often is turned down point-blank, and they then have to wait for an appeal. That is an incredibly stressful process, during which the claimant has to sign on for universal credit and go through the process of being assessed for work and claimant conditionality, under threat of sanctions.

I spoke to the Minister last week about a constituent of mine who died on his first day back at work. I spoke to his wife, who was absolutely clear that her husband had been forced into returning to work by DWP’s refusal to take doctors’ evidence. It said it knew best because he had passed a work capability assessment. That should no longer happen. Doctors should not receive letters saying they must not give people fit notes because they have passed a work capability assessment. That sends people further into mental health despair and, in some cases, towards suicide. I really hope the Minister looks at this issue.

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Marsha De Cordova Portrait Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
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It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I congratulate the hon. Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan) on bringing forward this debate. She made some really valid points. She is absolutely right that it is up to the Government to remove of some of the barriers that disabled people face to ensure that they can live independently and participate fully in society. I welcome the move to stop assessments for personal independence payment for pensioners, but we need to go further to ensure that those who do not need reassessment do not have to continue to go through the arduous assessment process.

We heard from Members across the Chamber about the fundamental flaws in the assessment framework for disabled people. We heard about the time that many ill and disabled people have to wait for an assessment. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Ruth George) highlighted that in her area people have to wait up to 48 weeks before they get to an appeal. We heard countless accounts of what happens at assessments and of poor decision making. My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) shared his constituent’s experience of being given two days’ notice but still being recorded as a no-show, yet assessment providers can cancel at the last minute. We need to eliminate such double standards. The hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) pointed out some of the poor decision making that happens after assessments and highlighted the rubber stamping of decisions at mandatory reconsideration stage. That step was put in place to ensure that we got decisions right earlier, so it is really important that that issue is picked up.

Since 2013, more than 700,000 ill and disabled people have been forced to challenge decisions at appeal following poor decision making after their assessment. Last week, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions admitted that disabled people feel “put on trial” by these assessments. By her own admission, we need not just small-scale improvements of the assessment framework, but a wholesale overhaul of the system, which has created a hostile environment for disabled people.

Every week, I hear from constituents and from disabled people across the country who have been pushed to despair as a result of the failing assessment framework. I was contacted by a lady called Susan, who has Crohn’s disease. She is on DLA and has a Motability vehicle. Following her assessment, in which she did not score any points for her mobility, she lost her car, which she described as her one bit of independence. I share her experience with the House because it is not isolated; I hear these heart-wrenching accounts all the time.

Some 72% of PIP decisions are overturned at appeal, and more than 100,000 disabled people have been wrongly deprived of PIP. We heard that more than 4,500 disabled people were wrongly denied PIP when they transferred from DLA. Most shockingly, 17,000 people died before their PIP decision was reached. In the last three months, nearly three quarters of people who appealed their work capability assessment decision were successful.

We know the system is flawed and is not working. That is why it is worrying that we are looking at combining all these assessments. We cannot combine them when we know there is bad decision making and the assessment framework is flawed, so I ask the Minister: why not listen to people like Susan, and look at conducting a wholesale review and overhaul of the system?

Ruth George Portrait Ruth George
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Will my hon. Friend give way?

Marsha De Cordova Portrait Marsha De Cordova
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I will not; I do not have time, frankly.

The Government announced last week that they would extend the contract of the Centre for Health and Disability Assessments, better known as Maximus, to carry out work capability assessments. Nothing could be worse for any disabled person to hear. Since 2014, an estimated £595 million has been paid to Maximus to carry out assessments and in total £1 billion has been paid out to private contractors. These companies have repeatedly failed the DWP’s standards, so does the Minister agree that rather than extending the contract, it is time to bring these assessments back in-house? Will she confirm that the details of the new contract will be made available to Members?

It appears that I have only 20 seconds left, which is shocking, so let me be clear: we need a radical overhaul of the assessment framework before any moves are taken to combine the assessments. We need an assessment framework that will take into account disabled people’s lived experiences and treat all disabled people with the dignity and respect they deserve.