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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Conditionality and sanctions  →  Thread

Sanctions - what is DWP’s responsibility if WP provider is an alleged bully?

Andrew Dutton
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Welfare rights service - Derbyshire County Council

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Claimant has been sanctioned multiple times, will remain without UC until Sept, and will then have to pay back the hardship payments received over many months, and which are continuing.

Each sanction is imposed for non-attendance at Work Programme appointments.

The claimant states that not only is the adviser at the WP provider high-handed, ‘they talk to you as if you were something they’ve stepped in’, they provide no practical support, the claimant, who has no computer skills, was ‘parked in front of a computer’ with no support or over three hours and forbidden to move away, as were others.

The MRN quotes the claimant’s statement that another WP participant burst in to tears over her treatment, that the provider spoke to the claimant as if she were a child, that she attempted to leave because she was so upset and was pursued by the adviser who (allegedly) was restrained by someone else from grabbing her, that the adviser had ‘ruined her confidence’.

She states that she would attend another office for WP, but not that one.

DWP has rejected good cause in each case and argues that the claimant should have complained, seen the adviser’s manager, requested a move etc.

Not easy when someone has ‘ruined your confidence’ by apparent bullying?

Appeals have gone in on all the decisions, but my real question is – faced with evidence of intimidatory behaviour by the adviser, what responsibility does DWP have to take some action to protect claimants? Can they just step aside and say it’s someone else’s problem?

In what way are sanctions assisting this claimant back to work??????

Paul_Treloar_AgeUK
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Information and advice resources - Age UK

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Surely you also need to complain on behalf of the client Andrew as well as appeal the sancitons?

I had similar case once in past and unfortunately had to leave advice centre before complaint was resolved but we were able to arrange telephone appointments rather than face to face whilst the complaint went on.

Andrew Dutton
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Welfare rights service - Derbyshire County Council

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I’ve put a complaint in but I’m aware that we usually get in to a ‘not me guv’nor’ situation whenever there is a complaint about an agency acting for DWP - neither of them wishes to take responsibility and pushes it to the other.

As DWP has (or had) contracts with the WP providers I’m wondering how much DWP can really distance themselves, in anticipation of them doing just that.

Stainsby
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Welfare rights adviser - Plumstead Community Law Centre

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I know the context is different (WCA), but I think the principles are the same and I regularly write submissions containing the following arguments (Sorry if it makes this post a bit long)

I note that the DM who carried out the mandatory re-consideration is satisfied with the accuracy and integrity of the HCP report and invites Miss X to complain to Maximus if she has any concerns about the reports accuracy,( p22 of the bundle) but I submit that the DM is either under some sort of pressure to accept the Maximus reports uncritically and without considering any other evidence, or is simply not taking responsibility for the decision which is not one that Maximus has any authority to make.  I am also reminded that in KN v SSWP (ESA) [2016] UKUT 0521 (AAC) CE/1665/2016 Judge Gray held [at 24]

As to Mr Hampton’s contention that the lack of a formal complaint in relation to the conduct of the medical examination has bearing upon credibility, I do not accept it. It does not seem unlikely to me that claimants believe such matters will be dealt with at the appeal. There is force in the observations of Ms. Blackshaw that the practical and emotional difficulties in dealing with an appeal may overwhelm an appellant even without there being a need to engage in an associated formal complaint process. There is no legal requirement for a complaint to be made in tandem with an appeal, and it seems to me wholly wrong to use the absence of such a complaint as a significant credibility pointer. Such a complaint would be no more than a previous consistent statement, and, although there are no technical issues as to the admissibility of these in an inquisitorial tribunal it must not be forgotten that their treatment in other legal fora1 is prescribed due to their self-serving quality and any slight probative value they may have being generally outweighed by the need to investigate such statements of limited relevance2. As a natural further step from Mr Hampton’s submission in this context, if a complaint had been made and dismissed that could surely not be a reliable indicator as to whether or not the tribunal should accept the appellant’s account of the conduct of the examination or the accuracy of the report, because it is the task of an independent tribunal to decide what evidence it accepts or rejects; it cannot abdicate that decision to another investigative body, indeed it should be highly circumspect about allowing such a decision to influence it at all since it knows little if anything about the standards and operating procedures under which it was made.

In [2015] AACR 9 Judge Bano held at [9]

9. A crucial consideration in this context is the regime of sanctions underpinning work-related activity, as explained by Judge Gray in MT v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (ESA) [2013] UKUT 0545 (AAC) – see [23]. In assessing the risks to the mental health of a claimant from a finding that a claimant does not have limited capability for work-related activity, a tribunal may therefore have to consider the possible effects on a claimant of stress resulting from the element of compulsion which the “conditionality” of work-related activity entails. Under regulation 3(4) of the Employment and Support Allowance (Work-Related Activity) Regulations 2011 (SI 2011/1349), a requirement of work-related activity must be reasonable, but as Judge Gray pointed out, there may be no opportunity for a claimant to challenge such a requirement until after a sanction has been imposed

As Judge Gray holds s in KN, Tribunals and decision makers cannot abdicate their responsibility to another investigative body, and again holds in MT, there may be no real opportunity to challenge the reasonableness of a requirement until a sanction is imposed.

The UT is firmly of the opinion that claimants must have the opportunity to challenge requirements through the appeals process regardless of whether they make a parallel complaint to the work programme provider

past caring
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Welfare Rights Adviser - Southwark Law Centre, Peckham

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I don’t think it can distance itself, either legally* or morally, if substance to the complaint/allegation is established. Establishing there is substance is the issue…..

*legally in the sense of either sanctioning a claimant who was bullied or requiring them to attend whilst they may still have to come in contact with the bully. It would probably take more than one upheld complaint to exert sufficient pressure for the WP to be given the heave-ho.

BC Welfare Rights
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The Brunswick Centre, Kirklees & Calderdale

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