Work Capability Assessments

Stephen Hepburn Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[David Linden]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, and I will come to that point in a moment.

I will talk about the difficulties faced by certain groups, in particular people with mental health conditions or learning disabilities, in navigating the WCA process; the lack of information about outcomes for individuals following fit for work determinations; and concerns about the risk of poverty and destitution as a result of incorrect decisions. I also want to touch on the relatively high success rate of appeals against ESA decisions, and the difficulties experienced by claimants seeking to challenge fit for work decisions, including the fact that ESA is not payable pending a mandatory reconsideration, meaning that the only option in the meantime is to claim jobseeker’s allowance, potentially exposing an individual to inappropriate conditionality.

[Mr Stephen Hepburn (Jarrow) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned mandatory reconsiderations. Is he aware that Department for Work and Pensions staff are informing people that mandatory reconsiderations will be delayed over Christmas because of the excess workload they face? Through him, can I ask the Minister to transfer staff from bringing in the sanctions and stopping the money, to the mandatory reconsiderations, so that people get their money?

[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.