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ESA is biggest single social policy failure of the last 15 years.
Interesting blog from Jonathon Portes from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research in relation to the Conservative announcement of plans to cut a further £12b from social security spending over the next Parliament if elected.
It has been clear for some time that the Conservatives’ plans to achieve a budget surplus in the next Parliament – regarded with considerable scepticism by most informed observers, from the IMF to the vast majority of leading UK macroeconomists – was dependent on large cuts to spending on working age social security benefits, only a small fraction of which the Conservatives were willing to specify in advance of the election.
The Prime Minister clearly believes that incapacity benefit reform – the introduction of a new test, the Work Capability Assessment (WCA), and a new benefit, Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), has resulted in significant reductions in the numbers on benefit and hence significant savings.
And it is indeed true that that was the plan. In 2011, the DWP forecast that by now the numbers of benefit would have come down very significantly, by about half a million, to 2.1 million. And that would indeed save substantial amounts of money - £3.5 billion a year in 2014-15. Had these plans been delivered, the Prime Minister’s statements would make perfect sense.
But it hasn’t quite worked out that way. The reasons for this are complex:...
Spending was supposed to fall by £3.5 billion. It simply hasn’t happened. I have described this whole episode – costly and painful for claimants and taxpayers alike - as the biggest single social policy failure of the last 15 years.
Well worth reading the whole thing Welfare savings and incapacity benefits
Having just finished delivering an ESA training course and had lots of fun explaining all the administrative and other reasons for delays with WCAs etc I would ask one simple (OK complex) question of the next SSWP (I could think of a lot more on ESA/WCA):
Where do you think you Maximus (& Capita) are going to recruit enough (given the current the vast pool of under-employed) healthcare professionals from in order to:
(a) deal with the WCA new claim backlog.
(b) re-instate ‘routine’ re-assessements with the frequency originally intended with the intro of ESA/WCA.
(c) re-assessments for other reasons - supersessions from LCfW to LCfWRA - significant deterioration issues under the revised Reg 30 etc.
(d) deal with PIP assessment delays
(e) PIP re-assessments (current and future) with the frequency originally intended
(f) the volume of DLA to PIP migration assessments required as the ‘roll out’ progresses and within the timetable envisaged.
Given that;
(1) your party (may have) made a committment in its manifesto to recruit and train additional doctors/ nurses etc for the NHS.
(2) there is a national shortage of GPs, OTs (and nurses / physios?).