I have an Incapacity Benefit appeal coming up in the next few weeks. Despite repeatedly requesting (4 times) a medical report from client's GP, he has failed to provide it. I have made a complaint to the practice manager and have not had a response. I believe that the success or failure of this appeal will lie with the supplying of a medical report from client's GP. Has anyone had this experience before, and, if so, can you make any suggestions on how best to proceed. Thanks

Unfortunately this is not part of the NHS contract and so the GP is not obliged to comply. What is more, I have had experience of GP's providing reports that are quite frankly worthless.

I recenly won an appeal despite having received a wothless report from the GP. I invited the Tribunal to commission their own report. The Tribunal declined, and depite an initial very unsympathetic attitude from the doctor sitting on the Tribunal, they went on to award 11 points on the mental health decriptors, and then stopped the hearing and reinstated the award.

I had prepared a detailed written submission, and despite the fact that the chair rejected some large chunks of it we got there in the end.

If there is no question mark over the actual diagnosis, in consultaion with your client, you could start trawling through medical textbooks which deal with the condition in question. They are often written in quite general terms so you can then correlate the diagnosis to the descriptors in the PCA,( and highlight areas of disagreement with the EMP) thus building the argument in your submission. The Tribunal will ask your client on they day about how (s)he is affacted by the illness.

Unless there are good reasons for not doing so and you know your client well (and so could possibly then take on the role of witness as well as rep), you will have to butt out at that point.

Thanks for the tip. I have never come accross this situation before and normally GPs jump at the opportunity to write a brief report when you offer to pay for it as a disbursement. I will ask the tribunal to commission a report but if they decline I'll already have become a medical sleuth. Thanks again.

I think you are very very lucky if GPs locally to you generally jump at the chance of providing a report. Long may it remain so (I send thank you letters to nice GPs now telling them the results, they are so few and far between I can't bear the thought of them hardening up)

If you've asked four times then it's not worth getting the report anyway - the GP will be so fed up they'll just write nastiness and if they've already dug in their heels they're probably not the amenable kind anyway.

It's also hard to get a tribunal to commission a PCA report because the only logical route I can see for that is to run the whole thing again and they've never taken that route when offered it with an awful first examination hotly disputed by the client. I think most tribunals know who the 'hard' EMPs at local examination centres are and give you largesse or not accordingly (not that that's a good thing, but you get to know it yourself and forewarned is forearmed). I remember producing a sympathetic IIDB report from one EMP and the chair saying "I can't believe this - you ought to see his AWT reports!"

Another alternative is to comission an Occupational Therapist to do an assessment, as this is prime OT territory. Not necessarily expensive if you can get a very local one and limite your questionnign to four or five descriptors at the most. You can find local ones via http://www.otip.co.uk.

The best reply I ever had from a GP was: "The DWP have told me this man is fit for work" AND he charged twenty quid for it too!!

Excellent! That quote is not far off the mark in terms of what this GP originally told the client. I'll look into the Occupational Therapist route. They do tend to be fairly good around, often not charging CABX etc, so perhaps we are lucky. Thanks for your advice.

Hi bwalsh

You can rely on the client as a credible witness nothing to say that corroboration is needed although absence of it can lead to an inference by TAS. If you explain this and it becomes obvious that there is still a problem request an adjournment? I have had many postponed and then sent the postponement decision to the GP and this has yet to fail it seems to prompt them. Only problem is that if you do this you or the client need to turn up if not agreed in advance as the postponement may not be granted but can argue in interests of justice etc can normally argue a way round this....best regards MB.