When is a backlog not a backlog?

Tribunals Service dealing with five-fold increase in number of incapacity benefit and ESA appeals
However the total level of work in hand cannot be described as a backlog, says Justice Minister

What a twit this Minister is…..

One of our clients appealed in May and is still waiting for his ESA appeal. As his problems include severe anxiety you can imagine what it is doing to him. Mind you, that’s Reading.
Has anyone else actually read the Equality Impact Assessment for the proposed Legal Aid scope restrictions? It’s a joke.
There are I think 11 categories of work to be excluded from current scope, and for each one you have the formulaic structure:
(1) Requirement to carry out an equality assessment.
(2) Meaning of “direct discrimination”
(3) Meaning of “indirect discrimination.”
(4) Analysis of impact by sex, using the following figures: proportion of people getting legal aid for this work who are women/men; proportion of people granted legal aid for all subjects who are women/men; compare the two and see what they look like; declare that the proposals will or won’t impact more on one sex than the other; conclude that if it does the differential impact is justified.
(5) Repeat, mutatis mutandis, for white and BME claimants;
(6) Repeat, mutatis mutandis, for healthy/disabled claimants.
(7) Periodically ask damnfool questions, like wondering why disabled people are overrepresented in the debt caseload (it’s because they can’t work, stupid).
(8) Make astonishing findings such as that 92% of those getting legal aid for immigration issues are BME, and that over 80% of those getting it for welfare benefits are disabled; but that’s all right because it’s justified. And by the way we are only doing this (and look it’s 50 pages long, so you can’t say we aren’t trying, even though it’s all cut and paste on a word-processor_) because we have to but we aren’t going to let it make any difference.

The Reading venue is getting pretty desperate. I have a case, initially adjourned due bad weather (December 2009), relisted for the following Feb (2010) and adjourned again because TAS had booked interpreter for the wrong slot. Judge directed appeal should be listed for first available slot after start of March 2010 and it’s finally been relisted for the end of Feb (2011). As the issues involved go back to 2003 (it sat at the DWP for well over a year before the bundle was produced), expecting the client to remember anything about the relevant time frame is going to be well nigh impossible.

We have many cases passed to TAS in April/May 2010 still in the queue to be listed. I imagine it’s much the same all around the country.

But there’s no backlog, obviously.

Jonathan Djanogly’s performance in yesterday’s Commons debate on legal aid reform was not encouraging.  He more or less made it clear without expressly saying so that legal aid for welfare benefits would be severely curtailed if not scrapped altogether.  And in an appalling display of disingenuousness, ineptitude or ignorance (take your pick) he stated that legal aid funding wasn’t necessary for CAB generalist advice as that was a small percentage of their overall funding streams.  The majority funders were local authorities. He further stated that it was inappropriate for DWP staff to send claimants to CAB’s for advice, that is what they should be doing, and that legal aid for CAB’s generalist advice was also inappropriate. 

He also didn’t seem able (or didn’t want to) to distinguish between general welfare benefits advice and the more specialist end of it (representation, etc).  And his faith in tribunals alone to get the best outcomes for appellants without the need for specialist representation was breathtaking in its naivety. 

Now two of the problems with all this are (and I’m sure there are many others that are exercising those funded by legal aid) first, it ignores the fact that many local authorities are pulling external funding to advice agencies, particularly where advice is provided in house, due to the spending cuts.  And second, anyone with a passing familiarity with the benefit system will know of the appalling standard of advice given by many DWP staff, a problem exacerbated by the fact that those DWP staff who do have sufficient knowledge, with a few exceptions, are now located in (far) back offices where the public have no access to them and those who try are usually screened out by contact centre staff whose knowledge of the benefit system and claimant’s rights would fit on the back of a postage stamp.

It’s not going to get any better anytime soon.

Anyone got a plane ticket to a better country?  Egypt for example.

Here in Swindon, I am awaiting a hearing date for an IB appeal lodged in May 2009!!

I know I wont win with this example - but just to show you is a national problem - I have ESA appeals which are taking 10 months to be listed.

Well that repsonse is in stark contrast to what I heard at a Tribunal User Group Meeting recently from the Tribunal Service rep

Ours are well into the 10 months from appeal to hearing date too and some are taking longer than this.