Work Capability Assessments

Wayne David Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Williams.

I am grateful to have the opportunity to raise the issue of work capability assessments, and I note that the number of right hon. and hon. Members present indicates a degree of interest that merits us having a debate that is often misrepresented. From the outset, I must make two important points. First, I support the principle behind work capability assessments; some Members are against them in principle, but I am not. I agree that those who seek sickness benefit should be assessed to determine their fitness for work. Of all the many constituents who have contacted me on the matter over almost two years, none has disagreed with the principle behind an assessment—that people who can work ought to be helped into work where jobs are available. There are many benefits, which I have seen for myself with constituents who have been able to find work, although they previously thought that they might not work again. Those benefits are not merely economic but relate to health and well-being, and we should not confuse the debate by suggesting otherwise.

To support the principle, however, does not mean ignoring the current chaos of the work capability assessment in practice. Increasingly, over the past 12 months in particular, we have seen a chaotic process, which takes an inordinate amount of time, causes great anxiety for many, takes up huge amounts of public money, especially in the appeals process, and is doing a disservice both to those who want to get back to work and to those who will not be able to work.

The Government, in particular the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), with whom I have discussed the situation in the Chamber and in meetings a number of times, have a habit of deflecting responsibility for how the system operates. Too often, the Minister has a ready excuse for the failings of the work capability assessment. Sometimes, he blames the previous Government, and sometimes he claims that people need to have patience to allow reforms to bed in, but I am not sure that I have ever heard him accept responsibility for the mess that the system is currently in. Part of the reason for that mess is the speed of the roll-out, despite the warnings of the pilot process and the report of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions.

About 11,000 people a week currently undergo the work capability assessment. Between 40% and 70% of those who appeal their assessment win their appeals, depending on whether they are represented. Is it any wonder that the cost of appeals is on track to reach £60 million for 2011-12, up by £20 million on the previous year? Is it any wonder that the number of tribunal service staff has increased by 30% since January 2010? Is it any wonder that tribunal centres, including the one in my area, in Hamilton, now operate on Saturdays to cope with the huge backlog of appeals? The system may have been put in place before the Minister took office, but by signing off on the nationwide roll-out, which has clogged the system, and by not dealing with the defects, the Government now have ownership of the problems and should be dealing with them.

Professor Malcolm Harrington, in his first review of the work capability assessment, made a number of important recommendations to improve the system. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions welcomed the report and said that he fully endorsed the recommendations. The Minister said:

“We fully endorse Professor Harrington’s recommendations... We believe that the principles of the assessment are right, but that the system which we inherited contained some flaws that risked undermining its effectiveness. We have moved swiftly to put those right.”

Yet in Harrington’s review of the second year, published in November last year, he made it clear that the users of the system, including benefit claimants and the organisations working with them, have seen no difference. The review cited one survey by the Disability Benefits Consortium, which asked 439 welfare rights advisers during the summer of last year whether they had noticed any improvement since the first Harrington review: an incredible 75% reported no change and fewer than 4% saw improvements. That is a damning indictment of the Government’s failure to implement proper change to make the system fairer, not only for those who use it but for the taxpayers who fund it.

One example of the Government’s failure to follow through on its welcome of Harrington’s recommendations relates to the performance of Atos Healthcare. Atos is the multi-billion-pound French IT firm that receives £100 million a year from the Department for Work and Pensions to carry out the work capability assessment. The Atos website, which I am sure the Minister is as familiar with as I am, boasts of global turnover of €8.7 million; Atos employs 78,500 people around the world.

[Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

Before my hon. Friend goes into details about why Atos is probably failing as a medical assessment organisation, does he agree that part of the problem begins with the attitude of many of the staff engaged by Atos and their total unprofessionalism?

[Tom Greatrex]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. I have been contacted in the run-up to the debate by a variety of organisations giving me examples, and I have others from my own constituents, of how the process has failed and how it works and does not work. The process does not properly take account of a whole range of issues, from people with fluctuating or mental health conditions down to how people feel and how they are treated when they go into the assessment—for example, the people doing the assessments not making eye contact or asking leading questions to get an answer that is nothing to do with the health conditions.