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Minutes of SSAC meeting discussing proposed ESA (repeat assessments) regs
Draft proposals are ‘a counter to people exploiting the way in which the current legislation worked’ according to DWP. Minutes question background behind the policy -
For that reason Ministers had reached a decision that, in such circumstances, payment of ESA should not be made pending an appeal on the LCW decision for that particular group of claimants only. That decision had been notified to officials after the supporting papers had been sent to the Committee. The view of Ministers was that both legs of the proposal needed to be in place in order to provide a coherent strategy to deal with the perceived abuse. The draft regulations being presented to the Committee therefore needed to be updated to include that aspect of the policy. The Equality Assessment is , however, accurate since those responsible for completing it were under the mistaken instruction that both legs of the proposal had already been agreed by Ministers.
Policy making being done on the hoof….
‘The Department had no specific evidence about the reasons why ESA repeat claims were being made. Anecdotally DWP was aware that a number of people were claiming ESA more because of the conditionality requirements of JSA that did not apply in ESA’
Anecdotal evidence, no research, ask your mate who’ll confirm your vague hunch that some claimants are exploiting the system, make policy accordingly!
Research? Facts? Actual ratiocination? Naahhhhh. Just believe….
So when my disabled clients chose to claim ESA despite knowing they would get a disability premium in their JSA, its not an indicator of how completely inappropriate JSA is. Its some vaguely dodgy-sounding way of fiddling the system and they are doing it just because they can.
Nice spin from the DWP there.
oooohh! The bloke from DWP contradicted himself between this meeting and the consultation on Wednesday, he told us that there were no plans to change the WCA; point 3.5 i reserves a position with “no immediate [/] plans”