Disabled People

Tom Greatrex Excerpts

Wednesday 10th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friends on the Opposition Front Bench on the motion and on rightly acknowledging the campaign outwith this place to bring the cumulative impact assessment to our attention.

I will begin with a non-partisan point: I believe that all of us in this House, whichever side we sit on, do our best to stand up for our constituents. Many of those who come to see us are the most disadvantaged, which is why it is right to point out that Members on both sides have been approached by constituents who are concerned about the impact of recent changes in Government policy—and not just the intended consequences, but sometimes the unintended consequences. That is why a cumulative impact assessment is so vital.

Many of the people who come to see me in my surgeries or whom I interact with in my constituency are disabled, have been injured at work or, through no fault of their own, find themselves unable to work, and what they want is to live as independently as possible, which requires a level of support. For some of them, the impact of certain changes in Government policy might be difficult but will not necessarily make an overall difference. The cumulative impact of those changes, however, can often make a very significant difference in the way they live their lives. That is why it is important to have a full and complete assessment. I hope that the Government, despite the contribution we have just heard from the Minister, will embrace that, not just because it is a coalition initiative but because it is fundamentally important when they are making such a significant change to the way in which support for disabled people works in the UK.

In the time available, I would like to talk about the work capability assessment, which I have done on a number of occasions over the past two and a half years. I must say that the Minister’s predecessor, the current Lord Chancellor, was someone I could engage with. I would not always agree with him, but he would at least listen. I went to see him on a number of occasions. That attitude contrasts sharply with what we have seen more recently. I make that point because I am afraid that that attitude underlies the importance of having this type of cumulative assessment.

I have asked a number of parliamentary questions about the work capability assessment. The Minister, who is now listening, will recall that I have asked written questions that his Department has answered, but lately it has decided that it will not answer them. It has decided that, as a result of a change in the resources available to it, it will not answer those questions because they were requested in a slightly different form. Those questions were asked in exactly the same way, but the Minister refused to answer them. He will be aware, because there have been at least two debates on this, that my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) sought to meet him, along with me and other campaigners, but he has refused to do so.

[Mr Hoban]

To be clear, what I have said—I have written to the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) about this—is that if We Are Spartacus, the group he wants to bring, comes up with some positive suggestions on how we can improve the WCA, I will meet it.

[Tom Greatrex]

If the Minister will not see my right hon. Friend, how can he know of the level of constructive engagement that the group is offering? The judgment he made at the start of that exchange was precisely that he would refuse to see it because he did not want to engage with it. I will leave the matter to my right hon. Friend, who I am sure will wish to speak about it. That is the point I am trying to make in relation to a number of consistent examples. I hope the Minister will reflect on it today and over the summer.

The National Audit Office commented last summer on the DWP’s failure to apply the penalties or service credits within the WCA in relation to Atos Healthcare’s underperformance and failure to seek adequate financial redress. It was almost as if it just did not want to apply them, because that would indicate that there was a problem in the system.

[Robert Flello]

My hon. Friend is making an extremely important speech. I am sure that his experience will be the same as mine: when constituents come to see me, time and again they mention Atos. That is the only word I seem to hear some days because of the nightmare that that company is and the problems it causes to my constituents.

[Tom Greatrex]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention; he makes an important point. It is partly about Atos Healthcare, which has delivered the contract appallingly, but it is also about the deficiencies in the contract, which this Government, particularly—it gives me no pleasure to say this—since the current Minister has been in place, seemingly refuse to deal with.

Dr Greg Wood is a doctor who was employed by Atos until he left its employ at the start of May this year. In the middle of May, he made a series of serious and very specific allegations about his experience as a doctor working at an Atos centre and the way in which the work capability assessment was carried out. For the record, he suggests not that we should get rid of the assessment, or even that it gets cases wrong at either end of the scale, but that people in the middle are being caught because of the flawed way in which the system is designed and implemented. He said that

“claimants are often not being assessed in an even handed way… HCPs are not free to make independent recommendations, important evidence is frequently missing or never sought in the first place, medical knowledge is twisted and points are often wrongly withheld through the use of an erroneously high standard of proof”.

He said that if Atos assessors

“show deviation from the official line the HCP is instructed to change the report”

and:

“In about a quarter of assessments important documentary evidence is missing but the assessments go ahead regardless.”

He said that training of new HCPs creates an environment where they

“expect that they will see in the course of their work score too few points to qualify for ESA. This is often the de facto starting hypothesis, with the effect that the claimant usually faces an uphill struggle before the assessment has even begun.”

He said that HCPs often “begrudgingly” score claimants and that an attitude is drilled into them

“which leans towards finding reasons not to award points”.

Those are very serious and specific allegations that I would have expected the Government to take seriously, given the warm words we frequently hear from the Minister and the Secretary of State, who has now left his place, about improving this process and constantly being vigilant about making it better for people.

I wrote to the Prime Minister on the same day asking him to investigate the allegations. He passed the correspondence to the Secretary of State, who wrote back to me on 22 June. I got back a one-page letter—I have it here—that made absolutely no reference to any of the specific allegations. It did not say that there was a problem; it was just a standard response. The Government wanted to brush it under the carpet. That attitude belies the problems that exist.

On the same day, the Secretary of State’s private office e-mailed me, by mistake, a copy of a letter to another Member of Parliament—a Government Member—raising an individual’s case to which there was a much more systematic and detailed response. That is perhaps because the initial letter came from me, or from a Labour Member. I very much hope not, because they were very serious allegations that the Government decided to ignore completely.

This is not just about the frustrations of seeking information from the Government, although I admit that I do get frustrated about that. It is not just about the waste and inefficiency in a programme that is costing £110 million a year for the Atos contract, and now up to £70 million this year in the appeals process to correct the mistakes. It is not just about an attitude, although I say again that I have found the Minister to be dismissive, evasive and sometimes partisan in our engagement on this issue. It is also about the experience of real people in every single part of this country who often have to adjust their life circumstances due to events completely beyond their control due to illness, accident or incident. It is about people who will have seen a system that is not working properly because the Government rolled out the migration from incapacity benefit without taking into account the lessons identified in the pilot projects, with the consequences that we have seen since. Most of all, it is about decency, compassion and helping people, not hounding people. The system is wrong and it needs to change.

--- Later in debate ---

[Esther McVey]

I have got nearly two hours of questions to answer, so I will keep going.

The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) talked about the Remploy figures in Stoke. I can tell him that 110 people left the factory and that 82 engaged with the extra support we were giving. Of those, 30 are now in work and 36 are on Work Choice.

The right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke) talked about housing and the spare room subsidy. It is quite incredible that people are not looking at the complexities, at how social housing was not built, but collapsed under the previous Government—we are now building it—or at how the stock is used properly. One thing nobody talked about is the fact that among those on the waiting lists—the 1.8 million—are children who are disabled. There are people on those lists who are disabled. We are looking after those people too.

My hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) talked about—

[Tom Greatrex]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Perhaps you could provide me with some guidance. The Minister is obviously choosing not to give way to those on the Opposition Front Bench, but is it appropriate or courteous for her to refuse to give way when she is referring to a point that I have raised in the debate?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

That is not a point of order. It is in the hands of the Minister whether she wishes to give way or not.