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Westminster Hall Debate: Ten years of the WCA in relation to ESA and UC (Laura Pidcock MP)
Dear advisers
Laura Pidcock MP has secured a Westminster Hall Debate on the Work Capability Assessment entitled: “Ten years of the work capability assessment in relation to employment support allowance and universal credit”.
The debate is scheduled for Wednesday 24th April, therefore the timescale is extremely short.
Laura would be very pleased to hear from advisers and claimants about their experiences of the WCA, what are the key problem areas and what would be a better system.
If you would like to contribute your thoughts, please email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) by next *Wednesday 17th April.*
You can read yesterday’s debate on the WCA in Hansard below. Some very interesting contributions were made by various MPs.
Also some media coverage:
Immense frustration at the persistence of the idea that most appeals come to a different conclusion because of new evidence and that the solution to this issue is to improve the MR process by further personalising it.
No, the improvement needed is at the claim stage and requires a significant cultural shift in terms of the competent assessment of evidence. That cultural shift will simply never happen. DWP ultimately fund the WCA by paying providers. It is unimaginable that the way forward would be for DWP to continue to fund that but have DMs objectively assessing evidence conclude repeatedly that the WCA assessment was abject nonsense. The fundamental issue then remains the assessment itself. Until that ceases to exist there is no possibility of the above cultural shift.
Furthermore, the “personalisation” of these processes needs to be actively opposed. It does little more than introduce subjectivity and bullying (see work coaches and cast your mind back to Social Fund reviews).
Laura Pidcock agrees with you Mike:
I want to stress this point in the 30 seconds that I have left. It is just not true that additional evidence is what wins at appeal. It is often evidence that the DWP could have had, and the evidence that people go and give in the initial assessment is the same as that at the appeal stage, so this is not about blaming advice and support agencies or the person for not giving the evidence in the first place. The evidence is there; it is the system that is flawed.
Laura Pidcock agrees with you Mike:
I want to stress this point in the 30 seconds that I have left. It is just not true that additional evidence is what wins at appeal. It is often evidence that the DWP could have had, and the evidence that people go and give in the initial assessment is the same as that at the appeal stage, so this is not about blaming advice and support agencies or the person for not giving the evidence in the first place. The evidence is there; it is the system that is flawed.
I know. I am simply venting at the fact that this is the level of debate and that DWP are allowed to persist with this nonsense within a Parliamentary debate.