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PIP regulations to be amended
Thanks for that, yes I’m sure you are right; being distressed doesn’t preclude qualification.
What I’m struggling with is that with autism (and I imagine for some people with LD without autism too) it can be very difficult to disentangle to what extent someone’s difficulties with following a journey is caused by ‘distress’ and to what extent caused by other issues such as intellectual inability to follow a route or being preoccupied or distracted. Very often the two feed into and compound each other – ie someone who is aware that they are struggling and vulnerable to getting lost will be ‘distressed’ and that psychological pressure will further reduce their navigation ability. I don’t see how they are going to apply this.
Thanks for that, yes I’m sure you are right; being distressed doesn’t preclude qualification.
What I’m struggling with is that with autism (and I imagine for some people with LD without autism too) it can be very difficult to disentangle to what extent someone’s difficulties with following a journey is caused by ‘distress’ and to what extent caused by other issues such as intellectual inability to follow a route or being preoccupied or distracted. Very often the two feed into and compound each other – ie someone who is aware that they are struggling and vulnerable to getting lost will be ‘distressed’ and that psychological pressure will further reduce their navigation ability. I don’t see how they are going to apply this.
Decision Makers and tribunals will have to decide whether the distress or becoming lost for another person would come first. Tribunals and decision makers are going to find this difficult to make findings of fact on but they will do on the balance of probabilities.
Head of No.10 Policy Unit:
“These tweaks are actually about rolling back some bizarre decisions by tribunals that now mean benefits are being given to people who are taking pills at home, who suffer from anxiety.
We want to make sure we get the money to the really disabled people who need it.
... I total understand anxiety and so does the Prime Minister. We’ve set out in the mental health strategy how seriously we take it.
My point was that these PIP reforms are partly about rolling back some frankly bizarre decisions in tribunals which have seen money that should go to the most disabled spent on people with really much less urgent conditions.”
George Freeman expresses regret: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/27/may-adviser-george-freeman-regrets-benefits-disabled-people-anxiety
As an aside. How on earth do they manage to calculate the cost as being £3.7billion? Based on past form, I am now instantly sceptical about any such statistics which emanate from DWP and/or their ministers.
As an aside. How on earth do they manage to calculate the cost as being £3.7billion? Based on past form, I am now instantly sceptical about any such statistics which emanate from DWP and/or their ministers.
Its in the equality assessment. The descriptor 3 change will save £50m over 6 years (so a drop in the ocean).
The descriptor 1 change has been calculated by trawling for people with relevant conditions who have been awarded points under 1(b). The DWP have then assumed that 80%(!) of those people would get awards under 1(d) or 1(f) post MH and have further assumed that the PIP claim rates will continue to rise exponentially going forward.
Yep. As I thought. DWP’s time-honoured dodgy figures. AKA alternative facts or post truth data.
Not sure I follow the logic here. If the UT decisions were “bizarre”, why couldn’t they be appealed?
From The Government’s response to the consultation on the Personal Independence Payment assessment criteria and regulations published back in 2012:
Concern was raised that the activity takes insufficient account of the impact of mental health conditions on mobility. We do not consider this the case. Individuals could potentially score in a number of descriptors in the activity if they cannot go outside to commence journeys because of their condition or need prompting or another person to accompany them to make a journey.
Hardly “bizarre” that the Upper Tribunal agreed with this…
From the House of Lords Business Papers today:
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville: To move that a Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the Social Security (Personal Independence Payment) (Amendment) Regulations 2017, laid before the House on 23 February, be annulled (SI 2017/194)
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201617/minutes/170227/ldordpap.htm
Not sure I follow the logic here. If the UT decisions were “bizarre”, why couldn’t they be appealed?
Of course they could be, but they are not ‘bizarre’ they are reasoned, even if you might not agree with or like the decision and an Appeal could be lost. This is just politics. A decision looks costly and you are worried about the Disability Cuts headlines so you just blame it on Judges, who are not going to answer back. I doubt that he’s read the decision in full. At least he didn’t call them ’ so called judges’ but its a similar tactic.
If he had read the decisions in full, he would probably recall paragraph 2 of LB:
[this case] illustrates once again the gaps left in the drafting of that Schedule, requiring a large expenditure of effort to render its provisions coherent and thus making it ineffective as a simple day-to-day test of disability needs to be applied by non-lawyers.
Not sure I follow the logic here. If the UT decisions were “bizarre”, why couldn’t they be appealed?
Cheaper to lay regulations and risk JR? Remember the furore about the Bedroom Tax appeals…
Everything’s okay ..... it’s not a cut apparently according to the BBC’s new ‘reality check’ service:
Maybe not a cut, but still a disgraceful, and somewhat spiteful attack, both on those claimants affected and on the UT.
Urgent question on PIP cuts to be asked in House of Commons today - expected at 1:15pm -