Work Capability Assessments

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) on securing the debate. We have heard some important and telling points.

As we have heard, the previous Labour Government introduced the work capability assessment as part of the change from incapacity benefit to employment and support allowance. Incapacity benefit did not help people with long-term sickness or disability back into a job. In fact, in 1997, the vast majority of people in receipt of incapacity benefit were simply abandoned; in many cases having been encouraged to move on to that benefit to reduce headline unemployment.

We started, experimentally, with the new deal for disabled people, which was a striking innovation at the time. I am pleased that the Minister has sought to build on the lessons of that programme, and from pathways to work which followed, into the new Work programme, and the ESA was the next step in that process. The WCA was designed to look at applicants’ functionality, and to assess whether each applicant was fit to return to work, fit to undertake work-related activity, or not fit for either.

Atos was contracted in 2005 for seven years. The current Government opted to extend the contract for a further three years in November 2010—the contract now runs until 2015—and will soon need to decide whether to take up the option to continue the contract to 2017. That decision needs to be influenced by the kind of experiences that we have heard about in the debate.

It is clear that the system has been overloaded. There needs to be change for it to function properly, so we support fully the implementation of the first Harrington review and much of the second. We regret that the Government pressed ahead with implementing the Department’s internal review last year, given the widespread consternation about the findings of that review. We were particularly concerned by one aspect of Professor Harrington’s second review, which proposed that some cancer patients, who until then had been exempted from a WCA, should no longer be exempted. Macmillan Cancer Support was concerned that that would put greater stress on cancer patients when they ought to be concentrating on recovery. It was a particularly frustrating development for everyone. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us this morning—if not this morning, then in the debate in the House this afternoon—that there will be something of a climbdown on that point.

I am anxious to ensure that the Minister has the time to answer fully the points that have been put to him, so will shorten my remarks. We have still to hear—apart from the point about cancer patients—about a number of other proposed changes that the two WCA reviews have recommended. What is being done on the new descriptors that cover fluctuating conditions—on which we have heard a good deal in the debate—and mental health conditions? There have been some helpful recommendations on those. When will the results of the pilots on recording assessments be released and responded to by the Government—a point also made in the debate?

It is worrying to hear that capacity pressures are restricting the ability of Atos to implement the Harrington recommendations. There needs to be better communication between Atos health care professionals and decision makers in the Department for Work and Pensions if we are to reduce the number of mistakes made in WCAs and the current, astonishingly high number of successful appeals.

I should like to draw attention to an issue that has not yet been raised and is a practical consequence of the problems and delays in the WCA system. The DWP recently revised its estimates of the number of people receiving ESA who will go into the Work programme, which the Government introduced in June. The forecast of the number of people going into the Work programme has been reduced dramatically, and the bottleneck in the WCA seems to be a major part of the explanation. Will the Minister comment on that? It is one of the key reasons why a number of small voluntary sector providers, which are contracted to the Work programme, are now at risk. Groups with specialist expertise to help people with particular health problems are receiving far fewer referrals—therefore, a far lower income—than they were encouraged by the Government to expect. In some cases, they have had no referrals at all since the Work programme started in June. Some are saying that they will have real trouble staying in business at all.

Problems with the WCA, as we have heard, could turn into a serious loss of capacity in the voluntary sector. People then left with no specialist help available would be in a worse position still. How will the Minister ensure that the WCA is refined? When will he introduce the changes that have been called for by charities and Professor Harrington? What assessment has he made of the capacity of Atos to implement those improvements? Will some of Professor Harrington’s recommendations not be implemented, as has been suggested, because of the capacity pressures in the system?

Ministers have defended their decisions about the welfare system on the basis of the need to save money. However, it is very important, particularly for Ministers in this Department, not only that they are saving money, but that the system that they are responsible to Parliament for is working fairly. All hon. Members who have spoken in the debate are absolutely right to highlight the fact that, with this part of the system, there is a long way to go.