Disability Benefits Assessments

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) on securing this important debate.

The Green Paper’s commitment to reforming assessments is welcome. Every MP knows of awful problems with them. At the start of the Parliament, the Select Committee on Work and Pensions agreed on an inquiry on the issue. That was put on hold while face-to-face assessments were suspended, but we are now taking evidence. We want disabled people to be at the heart of the inquiry, so we have launched a survey of personal experiences of assessments, to which we have so far had more than 3,500 responses. The survey is on the Committee’s website, including in an easy-read version, and we would welcome further responses.

A key problem is that disabled people just do not trust DWP, and the Department keeps making things worse. As my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea mentioned, last week the Department lost the judicial review brought by disabled people regarding the national disability strategy consultation. The Department’s defence in court was that it had not set out to consult disabled people properly and therefore was not guilty of not having done so. As you have reminded us, Sir Gary, the Department is now, absurdly, appealing against that defeat. The Green Paper consultation was launched after the summer recess began. Calls from disabled people’s organisations to extend the deadline were rejected. The Department also rejected the call of its own social security advisory committee for a protocol for engaging with disabled people to try to overcome the problems.

In September 2020, the Department received from the National Centre for Social Research a report that it had commissioned on the uses of health and disability benefits. Some 120 people were interviewed for that research and were told, in a letter approved by the Department, that the resulting report would be published.

The Government have a protocol on social research, adopted in 2015, which requires the publication of all such research within 12 weeks of receipt. The Secretary of State confirmed to the Select Committee that the protocol applied to that research, but told us that, nevertheless, she was not going to publish it. The Committee agreed, unanimously, that it should be published. We asked the Department again and made it clear that if it was not published, we would use our powers to order NatCen to provide us with a copy.

I am pleased that NatCen has complied with our order; the Committee now has that report. We will meet tomorrow morning, and my view is that we should publish it. Ministers seem to think that their interests are best served by hiding and covering up, but every botched attempt means that disabled people trust them even less. I hope that this Minister will usher in a new openness.

Our inquiry has already heard, extensively, about problems with assessors who lack basic understanding, assessment reports that seem to relate to a different person, and forms that cannot be read by the assistive technology that blind people use. The Department has been very slow to make sensible changes. In 2018, the previous Work and Pensions Committee produced—unanimously, on a cross-party basis—a series of recommendations. Some of those that were accepted have still not been implemented. Dr Paul Litchfield, the former independent assessor of the work capability assessment, told us in December:

“Then you look at things seven years down the road and as far as I can see things have not been taken forward.”

We have already heard many sensible points in our inquiry, and I very much hope that the Department will accept and implement the recommendations that will be made in our report later this year.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chloe Smith]

I do not think that is likely to be in the White Paper. The hon. Gentleman might have heard that it is not our intention to further devolve welfare to the Welsh Government. None the less, I look forward to more conversations on that with him and with colleagues in the Welsh Government. I take a great interest in devolution affairs in the Department and will be able to have those conversations, just as I do with colleagues in the Scottish Government. I note what SNP Members have said today, which I will come to shortly.

Last year we published the health and disability Green Paper—the main subject of today’s debate—and the national disability strategy, which set out a wide-ranging set of practical actions to improve the lives of disabled people and affirmed our commitment to put disabled people at the heart of policy making. Support for the British Sign Language Bill, which was debated last Friday, is the latest example of such action. The health and disability Green Paper explored what changes we can make to the system, for three reasons—so that we better enable independent living, improve employment outcomes and improve the experience of people using the DWP’s services.

Both the national strategy and the Green Paper were informed by the views of disabled people, who told us in enormous numbers about their experiences and their priorities for change. Although it is not the main subject of today’s debate, I can confirm that we are disappointed at the judgment on the UK disability survey and intend to appeal. Of course, the Chamber will be aware that the court dismissed the claimants’ claims that the Secretary of State had been subject to a duty to consult.

We remain focused on delivering the contents of the strategy, which is broad and important. Ensuring that everyone has the same opportunity for a fulfilling working life is a key part of levelling up the country, on which I am sure I agree with the Chair of the Select Committee.

[Stephen Timms]

As was said in the debate, the grounds on which the Government resisted that case was that they were not properly consulting people in the first place. That is surely a hopeless position for the Government to be in. They should consult people properly from the start.

[Chloe Smith]

We certainly do have confidence in our consultation and our listening. I will not go into further detail on the strategy because there is so much else that I want to respond to today.

We have made progress, including significant progress towards our commitment to see an additional 1 million more disabled people in work by 2027. As my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell) explained, supported employment is very significant within that, but there is much more still to do, and I welcome the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) that employers also need to rise and play their part in supporting disabled people or people with ill health in the workplace.

There is also more to do to improve people’s experiences of our services and to build their trust in the system. I have heard the comments made today, and that is why our aim in the Green Paper was to improve the experience of disabled people and people with health conditions by listening, learning and improving. We want to make our services easier to access and our processes simpler where we can. We want to make improvements that will help build people’s trust and explore ways to offer more and better support for the people who need it most.

Turning to the economy, which is important for the context of this debate, the last two years have been really tough. However, because of our focus on getting people into work, we had the highest level of employment that this country had ever seen when covid hit, and we have succeeded in supporting jobs and livelihoods throughout the pandemic. The economy continues to rebound. With around 1.2 million vacancies currently available, including in many sectors vital for our recovery, we want to get people into jobs that they can do right now. The jobs market presents huge opportunities for all jobseekers. I want to ensure that those opportunities and the world of work are accessible and inclusive for disabled people and those with health conditions.

The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) mentioned the Way to Work campaign. I can reassure her that for those who are unable to take up employment due to their health conditions or personal circumstances, we tailor their requirements to their capability and situation to ensure that all that we ask of them is realistic and achievable.

We understand the pressures that people are facing with the cost of living, and we will continue to listen to people’s concerns, as we have done throughout the pandemic. That is why we are providing support of around £12 billion this year and next to help families with the cost of living.

Many important points were made during the debate about the assessment system and the benefits system. The benefits system considers the impact that a health condition or disability has on an individual’s ability to work and carry out day-to-day activities. As all hon. Members know, decisions are based on an assessment of an individual’s functional ability, not their diagnosed health conditions. Claimants are of course encouraged at the outset of their claim to provide all evidence that is relevant to their case, including medical evidence supplied by their GP or other professionals such as support workers, carers or community mental health nurses. We recognise that attending a health assessment can be a stressful experience, which is why, whenever we are able to assess somebody solely on the available paper evidence, we do so.

It is of course important that the benefits system is fair to both benefit recipients and taxpayers. We think that our health assessments are a fair and robust approach to managing the gateway to benefits, with our decisions based on evidence and objective criteria.