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DWP plans to send presenting officers to 50 per cent of all PIP tribunal hearings

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Stuart
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Quite a few are likely to be new recruits ….

The Department is in the process of recruiting, training and deploying approximately 150 Presenting Officers at Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and Employment Support Allowance Tribunals in order to present the Secretary of State’s case and support the First-tier Tribunal in arriving at the right decision.

According to internal data, from April 2017 to date, the PIP Presenting Officers have attended approximately 23 per cent of PIP appeals at the First-tier Tribunal. The aim is for the PIP Presenting Officers to attend approximately 50 per cent of all PIP Tribunal hearings.

http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-question/Commons/2017-11-16/113562/

stevenmcavoy
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excellent.

id have enjoyed one being there in a recent pip appeal where they done the spurious “client gets carers allowance and the tribunal might want to ask about that” routine.

would be good to have got a response to my questions ( in the written submission) as to why the dwp as the decision making body feel its appropriate to be aware of facts they think might be important, not bother assessing them themselves then ask the tribunal to do so.

they will probably annoy us all with constant sor requests but their heightened attendance should produce some amusement/tribunals bored with their nonsense.

Peter Turville
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In my experience tribunals don’t require any assistance (from the DWP) to reach the right decision! They are able to do it despite the DWP (rubbish decisions, submissions etc).

Daphne
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Mike Hughes
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“Rubs hands with glee!” 😊

Chrissum
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Below is an extract from the DWP’s response to the current parliamentary select committee into PIP / ESA assessments:

“This Department welcomes SSAC’s scrutiny and, as a result, has progressed a range of initiatives which focus on driving improvements. These include the recruitment of approximately 150 Presenting Officers, split between PIP and ESA, who present the Department’s case at Tribunals and are gaining valuable insight into why decisions may be overturned. Their feedback will be directed to the relevant parts of the business in order to drive long term improvements to the claimant journey.”

So they are there to find out why the tribunals are overturning so many of their decisions. For those of you who haven’t read the response it can be found here: http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/work-and-pensions-committee/pip-and-esa-assessments/written/73998.html

Mike Hughes
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Well they’re certainly not there to aid the tribunal and by and large there’s little evidence of an ability to even present the case. Add in levels of inexperience and knowledge which mean they’re unlikely to be able to look at a decision; decide it’s unsupportable and take it back to a DM and what have you got…

On the bright side they have at least not yet fallen into the trap of employing consultants!

At the risk of stating the obvious though this is an organisation which starts from the perspective that there’s nowt wrong with the decision making process and nowt wrong with MRs so there must be something wrong with tribunals. Now, given this governments dislike of scrutiny, accountability and evidence based policy making this basically comes down to a wholly politicised DWP sending spies into tribunals under the auspices of improving the “claimant journey”!

Perhaps we should suggest a team of respected WROs sit in with DMs across the UK and look at how they make decisions. Feedback to the “relevant part of the business” would almost certainly then “drive long term improvements” and would cost a 1/10th of this nonsense.

Of course HMCTS are as much as culpable in this for their long-standing demand that everyone benefits from having a PO present. It wasn’t necessarily the case in the past and it certainly isn’t going to be the case now.

This feedback they’re talking about is laughable. I was staggered recently to see a PO ripped to pieces by a judge for trying to defend a literally laughable decision which was simply wrong in law and took 3 minutes to determine. The PO came out saying that they would be feeding back that the tribunal had a different interpretation of the law to the department and that they should consider taking it to UT. If that’s what they’re getting back (and one should never ideally prefer anecdote to the collection of hard data) then nothing will be changing at all.

Anyone surprised?

Chrissum
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In short, no, particularly when we have been told that there is no mechanism in place for feeding back to the specific DMs that the tribunal have disagreed with their decisions, and the consistent DWP view is that it is “new” evidence presented at the tribunal that was not in front of the DM at the time of making the decision which leads to the decision being changed not the quality of the decision itself. Of course, they can’t make that excuse when there is a clear cut misapplication of the law…

Geri-G
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I loved my last tribunal with a PO there. I really had to stop myself from smirking and laughing! Lady with Personality Disorder.GP and Mental Health evidence in papers.My submission was a doddle, I just referred the tribunal to the evidence that was already there!
Judge gave the PO a dressing down, and asked if the department had actually READ any of the evidence from the Professionals, and then questioned whether the HCP was a mental health nurse (which they weren’t as I had checked the NMC register). Judge then went on about HCP’s and stated that whilst they were supposed to be “trained” in mental health, how could a nurse who dealt with broken legs and heart conditions possibly understand mental health. PO was rather red faced, and tried to waffle his way through, but didn’t work. Great outcome for my client.

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Daphne - 28 November 2017 10:17 AM

Typical salary of a presenting officer will be £25,631

Starting salary is just over £22,000 with no opportunity to increase it with the current pay system, so there is no chance of reaching £25,631. I was an EO for 14 years and never got near that salary.

Mike Hughes
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And as the new digital systems come online there will no doubt be less of them as HMCTS are simply not bright enough to see just how much they need bodies in the office to compile and distribute competent appeal papers as well as doing listing which make sense.

Can’t see their pay being on an upward slope if there are less of them.

[ Edited: 27 Feb 2018 at 02:46 pm by Mike Hughes ]
Daphne
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Disability News Service reporting that presenting officers who attend benefit appeal tribunals are being asked by their bosses how many high-level awards to disabled people they have been able to prevent -

https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/truly-appalling-revelations-show-dwp-is-subverting-justice-at-appeal-tribunals/

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Chrissum - 29 November 2017 12:44 PM

In short, no, particularly when we have been told that there is no mechanism in place for feeding back to the specific DMs that the tribunal have disagreed with their decisions, and the consistent DWP view is that it is “new” evidence presented at the tribunal that was not in front of the DM at the time of making the decision which leads to the decision being changed not the quality of the decision itself. Of course, they can’t make that excuse when there is a clear cut misapplication of the law…

By ‘new evidence’, what they mean is, the evidence they ignored at every stage.

Paul_Treloar_AgeUK
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Daphne - 27 February 2018 02:43 PM

Disability News Service reporting that presenting officers who attend benefit appeal tribunals are being asked by their bosses how many high-level awards to disabled people they have been able to prevent -

https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/truly-appalling-revelations-show-dwp-is-subverting-justice-at-appeal-tribunals/

Sorry Daphne, I missed you posting this. I posted same here, although John was kind enough to share the FoI request with me as well.

Presenting Officers ask to report on averting enhanced PIP awards and ESA SG appeals

Stuart
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A corrected written answer says 211 presenting officers were recruited in 2017 - the correction also removes reference to PIP and ESA (although DWP’s response to the Work and Pensions Committee PIP / ESA assessment inquiry (para 51) said the majority were recruited for those appeals.

Sally63
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Paul_Treloar_AgeUK - 02 March 2018 09:10 PM
Daphne - 27 February 2018 02:43 PM

Disability News Service reporting that presenting officers who attend benefit appeal tribunals are being asked by their bosses how many high-level awards to disabled people they have been able to prevent -

https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/truly-appalling-revelations-show-dwp-is-subverting-justice-at-appeal-tribunals/

Sorry Daphne, I missed you posting this. I posted same here, although John was kind enough to share the FoI request with me as well.

Presenting Officers ask to report on averting enhanced PIP awards and ESA SG appeals

they should be able to tell if the presenting officers make any difference by comparing the outcomes with and without POs. If the stats change in the DWP favour it may be the POs. if they don’t then the POs won’t be making any difference.