On Budget day, the Government released the Health and Disability White Paper, which pledges to help Disabled people get into work. It got a little bit lost under the cost of living news. But it’s massively important. Because not all Disabled people can work.
And the Government intends to use Personal Independence Payments (PIP), a benefit designed to help us cover extra living costs as Disabled people, as the passport for additional Universal Credit money.
At the moment, there is a thing called the Work Capability Assessment. It’s a blunt instrument, whereby Disabled people have to pass the assessment to prove they can’t work. The plus side of the Work Capability Assessment is that it protects Disabled people from sanctions, and conditionality – it recognises that some people have limited capability to work.
But it also goes catastrophically wrong. People are called to assessment who absolutely cannot work, are told to work, can’t work, so have some of their benefits removed, and die. We will not forget Stephen Smith who was told he was fine to work, emaciated at just six stone. Or Errol Graham, who was so ill he missed his appointment, had his benefits cut, and died.
The Government is tinkering with broken systems without any direct input from Disabled people ourselves. We have a phrase in our community: nothing about us without us. Except time and again, everything about us is without us. When it comes to more benefit changes like these ones, we have grave fears the changes will cost even more lives.
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This is complicated, cack-handed stuff. Pay attention. Here’s the detail.
The Government plans to scrap the Work Capability Assessment (WCA). And in its place, people who receive PIP will receive a Health Addition within their Universal Credit benefit (UC) – paid at the same rate as the present Limited Capability for Work-Related Activity element (LCWRA). If you don’t get PIP, you won’t get the Health Addition.
Others, including people who have reached a certain stage in their pregnancy or are having chemotherapy or radiotherapy will also be included.
But (I HATE big buts, and I cannot lie), the award of the Health Addition will no longer mean that such people are NOT expected to have to work or do anything to get ready for work.
Still with me? So, because not everyone who is in the UC group gets PIP, the numbers of people receiving the Addition will decline.
In essence, the DWP gets to save some money by not undertaking WCAs, only PIP assessments, which it has to do anyway. Horrible, systemically hateful PIP assessments, which many people are too scared to undertake, and don’t appeal on, even though they have a high chance of winning an appeal, because appeals cause sky high anxiety. Clever, huh? It looks like a good thing because the current system is hated and flawed. But. Huge but.
Only around half of new PIP claimants (around 64% of almost five million applications) get PIP on first application. A fifth of these appeals see a change (either for the good or for the bad) to the award. And then 70% win if they go to a tribunal. Chances of winning an appeal are therefore high. But. Again, but. The Government stats put this as 9% of people having the wherewithal to appeal against an initial decision, and only 4% of people who had an initial decision take it to tribunal.
The attrition vibes are strong here. The process is so arduous and distressing that most people don’t appeal. And many don’t ever reapply. What an easy way to keep a benefit bill down, hey?
Back to the WCA vs PIP shenanigans. If someone gets PIP going forward, once the changes are introduced, it will not mean that someone has no work conditionality. Instead, a DWP work coach will decide, after a nice conversation, what ‘tailored individual’ work conditionality they have. DWP culture is a very variable bag. DWP interviews in my personal experience have felt a little bit like something involving a tape recorder, bags of planted evidence and a plain, intimidating room in Line of Duty. And these work coaches will have the power to implement sanctions.
Sanctions don’t end well for us. The Government has had to look at 150 cases where people have come to serious harm or died because of sanctions. The BBC reports that 82 people have died because of benefits being cut. When it comes to sanctions deaths, documents have a habit of going awry. And then the Government is not keen to release reports on such deaths.
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Disabled people want to work. But there are huge barriers to us getting jobs. We are seen as less employable. We can’t always get to work on public transport. If a work coach decides we are fit to work, it’s just the beginning of climbing the mountain of getting a job.
Another proposal involves another nice little chat with a healthcare professional with the focus on can do, not can’t do. When it’s can’t do which is the kicker when it comes to work. It’s can’t do which matters.
The DWP always says things like it has consulted widely at Green Paper stage. But they haven’t consulted on any of the proposals about increasing sanctions, or using PIP as the gateway. This is so far wide of co-production. There is never, ever, anyone with deep lived experience of life at the sharp end of these processes involved with their redesign. This policy won’t come into force until 2026, and needs to be cleared by a vote in Parliament. And there is an election due before that date.
But if it does get through Parliament, Disabled people could be working at the coalface, breathing in the dust, waiting, with the canaries, to expire.
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