The DWP must deliver a better service for disabled people and better value for money for taxpayers.
The DWP must deliver a better service for disabled people and better value for taxpayers
Today the government has announced the new provider for the ailing Work Capability Assessment (WCA). Maximus are replacing Atos, who quit the process after repeated concerns, raised by Labour and disabled people, about the operation of the test.
The government has spent months seeking an alternative provider.
While we’ve always said that simply changing the provider isn’t enough to deal with the underlying problems, Labour hope the new start under Maximus will lead to improved results.
Disabled people have every right to feel wary. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) are agreeing a new contract that will last years. With a general election looming, and Labour already having outlined a series of reforms we’d make to the Work Capability Assessment, it is unclear how the new provider will be expected to deliver improvements – or what penalties they’ll face if they don’t.
That’s why I have written to the Minister for Disabled People to ensure that any change of policy direction under a future Labour government can be accommodated within the contract, and that action can be taken swiftly to address poor performance.
We have also said that the new provider should be made responsible for ensuring that the Work Capability Assessment is better connected to work support to increase the number of disabled people in work. It’s essential that the new provider gains credibility quickly by providing more accurate results about assessments.
And crucially, the new provider must ensure the huge backlog of Work Capability Assessments is tackled swiftly.
We also expect Maximus to make significant improvements in the day to day delivery of Work Capability Assessments. Labour will insist that:
- Every assessment centre must be accessible; that information about the Work Capability Assessment process must be available in accessible formats; and that disabled people who cannot reasonably be expected to attend a face to face interview should be assessed at home or another convenient and accessible location.
- Claimants are advised that they are able to bring a companion to the assessment, who can assist them as appropriate.
- Information sharing must be improved, including between Department for Work and Pensions, Maximus and Work Programme contractors.
- Recordings of assessments must be provided on request.
- Reports from assessors must include information on how an impairment or health condition affects someone’s ability to work.
But there is a broader need for reforming the Work Capability Assessment. Assessments must be part of the support to help disabled people back to work. Currently, the Work Capability Assessment is seen as entirely separate to the Work Programme – contributing to the appalling failure rate of the government’s flagship employment scheme.
Iain Duncan Smith’s DWP set a target of a 15 per cent employment rate for people on the Work Programme after two years. But after three years only 7 per cent of Employment Support Allowance (ESA) claimants who have accessed the programme have found work.
Our new approach would provide information about the support that is available in the local area to help individuals. Improving this element of the assessment and decision-making process is a crucial step towards a more integrated system of support.
Disabled people should also have a central role in monitoring the tests. A Labour government would ensure that for the first time disabled people would get a real say in how the assessments are delivered.
The independent reviewer of the Work Capability Assessment would work alongside a scrutiny group of disabled people supported by the Office for Disability Issues. We would also require the DWP to respond to Work Capability Assessment reviews and end the practice of ‘accepting’ recommendations that are then kicked into the long grass.
Accuracy of Work Capability Assessments must be dramatically improved under Maximus. Thousands of disabled people appealing inaccurate decisions have had to wait months for decisions, wasting millions of pounds in appeals and tribunals.
The DWP must deliver a better service for disabled people and better value for money for taxpayers. The Public Accounts Committee has already reported that targets set for the quality of the assessment were not challenging enough.
Labour would ensure a new system would impose penalties for poor performance, measured both on the number of times decisions are overturned by the DWP or through appeals. Clear financial penalties will ensure assessors improve the quality of assessments.
This means collecting all the medical evidence needed to make a decision and ensuring they listen to what claimants tell them to ensure decisions are based on the full facts.
The new provider of Work Capability Assessments takes over at a difficult time. Maximus will be judged very quickly on whether its performance is an improvement on years of failure and chaos in the DWP.
Ministers and the new provider need to urgently get a grip of Work Capability Assessments.
Kate Green MP is shadow minister for disabled people
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40 Responses to “Labour demand big improvements to Work Capability Assessments”
Mason Dixon, Autistic
You will don’t get it. The WCA needs destroying and replacing with a real-world test, which disability campaigners have been saying ever since the great mistake in 2008. So I guess this means Labour still isn’t listening.
joe kane
Still no proper access to any kind of legal aid, advice or protection for the UK’s most vulnerable group of people being subjected to an undeniable state campaign of disabled human rights abuses.
The whole of the ESA regime is an unethical and unscientific human rights atrocity which was specifically designed by the Labour Government in 2006 to disappear an average of 100,000 sick and disabled people a year for 10 years from the welfare rolls.
The politicians, civil servants and medical professionals who designed the ESA regime need to be put on trial for their crimes against sick and suffering humanity.
disgruntled
It looks like there’s going to be more atrocities, like the ones ATOS performed on the disabled. There’s going to be a huge human cost & the appeal courts will be blocked to the roof!
SO THE FIGHT FOR THE DISABLED GOES ON & ON!
Bill Kruse
Predictable rubbish. The WCA needs to be scrapped. If it was really working to reduce sickness cliamants there wouldn’t be more now than there were when Labour was last in. The idea of dealing with the back log quickly as the same time as everything else she’s trying to insist on is pie-in-the-sky talk. As for getting disableds back to work, you cannot support people back into work that isn’t there. On that subject, local support seems to consist of providing panic rooms for overwhelmed librarians and cutting the bus services disableds need more than most to get to work in the first place. I will remind readers claimants during the first stage towards awaiting appeals have no money to live on since Grayling introduced mandatory reconsideration as a prerequisite and stopped availability of ESA during this increasingly lengthy period. What are Labour going to do about that? Absolutely nothing it seems, not even worth a mention, so Labour are entirely happy with the prospect of innumerable claimants going without the basic necessities of life for an indeterminate period.
Gee, someone bring the election forward, I want to run out and vote Labour right now this very minute!!
ephemerid
Yet again, Kate Green has utterly failed to mention illness.
People claim ESA because they are ill – that’s why the conditions for claiming prior to the WCA is the Form Med 3 and that’s why a doctor’s opinion is required in the first instance.
Yes, some people are disabled by their illness; yes, fit and well people with disabilities get ill; yes, some people on ESA can be both ill and disabled. But it’s a SICKNESS benefit, not a disability benefit. People in work claim ESA on the grounds of illness if they get no sick pay.
I am heartily sick of Labour conflating sickness with disability. People with disabilities can and do work; people who are ill can’t and shouldn’t be tested for doing so if their doctors say they are not capable for work on the grounds of sickness.