Work Capability Assessments Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Work and Pensions
Stephanie Peacock
Main Page: Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley East)Department Debates - View all Stephanie Peacock's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(6 years, 4 months ago)
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David Linden
I know that the Minister is respected across the House for listening; I am sure she will have heard that point, and I hope the hon. Gentleman gets an answer to it in the wind-ups.
Finally, I will touch on the impact of assessments, frequent reassessments and poor decision making on the physical and mental health of claimants. We could easily spend the next hour and a half trading statistics across the Chamber, but I prefer to focus on real people and those whom I have been elected to represent. Throughout my short time as Glasgow East’s MP, I have seldom had a surgery in which a constituent has not come to me having been the subject of a flawed work capability assessment.
One such case was that of my constituent, David Stewart from Baillieston. David suffers from hidradenitis suppurativa and has had numerous abscesses over the years requiring extensive surgery and skin grafts. It is not uncommon, at times, for him to receive morphine up to six times a day. His own general practitioner stated clearly that David should not be working, yet he was found fit for work at a work capability assessment. It was only after my office intervened and helped him draft a mandatory reconsideration that that decision was finally, and justly, overturned. That brings me to the first issue I want to raise with the Minister today: the astonishingly high level of successful appeals against work capability assessment decisions.
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
In my constituency, two thirds of residents who are initially rejected for PIP and ESA are shown to be eligible on appeal. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that suggests the whole work capability system requires much more reform?
David Linden
The hon. Lady makes a good point; I very much agree.
The latest quarterly release on appeals of work capability assessments shows that 59% of decisions are overturned at appeal. To be blunt, that means that six in every 10 decisions are wrong. That is incredibly alarming.
There is, of course, a wider point about the undertaking of work capability assessments by a private sector provider, which I oppose on ideological grounds—I agree with the hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) on that point. I doubt, therefore, that it will come as much surprise that I very much welcome the commitment by the Scottish Government to ban private firms from carrying out benefit assessments. I wholly concur with the Scottish Social Security Minister Jeane Freeman, that
“profit should never be a motive nor play any part in assessing or making decisions on people’s health and eligibility for benefits.”
Over and above my ideological objection to private sector provision, I am sure that all hon. Members will be concerned to note that, according to the DWP’s own data released only last week, the ESA assessment provider has consistently failed to meet the contractual expectation for the quality of assessment reports.