Work Capability Assessment

Debate between Chris Grayling and Gloria De Piero

Tuesday 13th March 2012 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Chris Grayling)]

I have a sense of déjà-vu because the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) and I are continuing a debate, albeit on a different subject, from an hour ago.

Let me start by saying that it is of paramount importance to get right issues of mental health in the work capability assessment process. That is the most difficult challenge, because in many respects mental health can be the most intangible of the various areas that we need to assess when we seek to understand what people can and cannot do, and there are clearly many people with mental health problems who cannot possibly be expected to work. I do not have detailed knowledge of the case highlighted by the hon. Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero), but people will appear in our surgeries saying that something is not fair or right, or that they are in the wrong group. Some people will genuinely believe that they cannot return to work, but that will not always be the case.

A few weeks ago, I sat with a woman in one of our Work programme centres. She had arrived having been mandated to the Work programme after 14 years off work with chronic depression, and she said that on the first day she was in tears, did not believe that she should be there and that she was protesting bitterly. I met her about eight weeks later, by which time she had started doing voluntary work in a charity shop and had begun to apply for jobs, and she said that that was the right thing to do after all. We will not always get it right, but we are taking some people down a path that can be right for them, even if they are reluctant to follow it at first.

[Gloria De Piero]

I accept what the Minister says, but does he agree that to decide whether someone is in the right group and has the right of appeal—which in itself acknowledges trial and error—56 weeks is too long?

[Chris Grayling]

I completely accept that, and we have started to reduce the backlog of cases. It is a big challenge, and we have put extra resources into the tribunal service for that. We have also tried to strengthen the reconsideration process in Jobcentre Plus, so that new medical evidence seldom appears at appeal stage. In his first report, Professor Harrington stated that one key reason why so many decisions were being overturned on appeal was that new evidence was appearing at appeal stage. We have tried hard, both at the start of the assessment process and the reconsideration stage, to ensure that such evidence is in place.

I ask the hon. Member for Edinburgh East to step back for a moment because it is tempting to take what the charities say at face value. Charities do good work and have long experience, but they do not always get it right and the internal review was the clearest example of that. I sat through meeting after meeting with the charities at which they said that we should not proceed with the internal review because it would lead to more people with mental health problems being found fit for work and that all the evidence suggested that it was the wrong thing to do.

Work had been done by the previous Government using the approach that the Department always takes to such matters, which is to take a batch of cases, put them through a new methodology and see what difference that makes. Our team of officials advised that, although there were fewer descriptors, the changes would lead to an increased number of mental health claimants in the support group. The charities protested and said, “That won’t happen; you’re wrong. That is not the case and you shouldn’t do it.” A few months later, however, that internal review led to an increased number of mental health patients in the support group. Indeed, the support group as a whole has got bigger. It is easy for groups that advocate change to existing systems to say, “We’ve got the experience; we’re right and you must do this,” but that is not always the case. It was certainly not the case for the internal review.