WCA Abolished

As Carolyn staates it’s a concern that the WP discusses the other exceptions but not substantial risk. That’ll be a lot of people primarily with mental health difficulties left subjecy to a Work Coach’s whim.

Some misc bits and pieces of interest .. do add more as you find them ..

Tom Pollard: “Here’s a thread of my initial thoughts & reflections on the government’s proposed reforms to disability benefits & employment support. Having worked on these issues for 15 odd years, including 18 months at DWP, I’m starting from a position of scepticism!” https://twitter.com/PollardTom/status/1636034249277964290

Paul Spicker: “The proposed abolition of benefits for long-term sickness is staggeringly stupid” http://blog.spicker.uk/the-proposed-abolition-of-benefits-for-long-term-sickness-is-staggeringly-stupid/

Anoosh Chakelian: “Why Jeremy Hunt’s Budget welfare reforms won’t work: The Chancellor announced the biggest benefit changes in a decade. But they may only make life harder for those who cannot work” https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/welfare/2023/03/why-jeremy-hunts-budget-welfare-reforms-wont-work

Patrick Butler: “Up to 1 million people claiming incapacity benefits could lose hundreds of pounds a month as a result of plans outlined in the budget to push ahead with the “biggest reforms to the welfare system in a decade”” https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/15/hunts-disability-plans-put-1m-at-risk-of-losing-350-a-month-ifs-says

Daniel Tomlinson: “The govt have said they will provide full transitional protection to existing claimants. But, if this system were fully in place now 630,000 people would be £350 a month poorer. A sense of the scale of this reform’s long-run impact on disabled people’s living standards. DWP aware that this is just unacceptable in some cases ...” https://twitter.com/dan_tomlinson_/status/1636009594278297607

What will happen to the work allowance in UC?  Will it be linked to the new element?

With the increased focus on “helping” people with long term conditions into work I’d be concerned about the risk to health etc provision in the WCA - Will DWP argue that their WRA is now better tailored to the needs of disabled etc people and narrow the window for who can get an award under this rule?

More people pressured into unsustainable WRA until their health deteriorates far enough to qualify…

I don’t think there is anything to suggest that any version of the “substantial risk” rule would be retained at all and that group are not mentioned in para 153 of the white paper. It would, I assume, be left to a work coach to decide whether a person’s health would be put at risk by requiring them to participate in WRA. Perhaps a different picture will emerge when the legislation is produced.

(Para 94-100 of IM v SSWP (ESA) [2015] AACR 10 might be worth a look in this context…)

Work and Pensions Minister Tom Pursglove said yesterday in the Commons:

‘The detail of our proposed approach needs to be worked through.’

😕

We will make a stupid and unworkable proposal

We will boot it into a new Parliament as we are too busy at the moment with our previous stupid and unworkable proposals.

We will revive it if we defy the polls and get back in, then ‘listen’ to protests, and after ‘listening’, we will propose something marginally less insane.

And you lot will accept it, thinking you have ‘won’.

Buwahahahahahahahaha!

I have an idea to stop people worrying about losing sickness benefits if work doesn’t work out - introduce linking rules so people can go back to their previous entitlement
oh that sounds a bit familiar!

From CPAG:

Briefing: The future of the work capability assessment

Carri Swann considers the implications of the proposals in the DWP’s new Health and Disability White Paper to end the work capability assessment and replace current rules on limited capability for work and work related activity.

More: The future of the work capability assessment

in a nutshell it is one of the biggest welfare cuts planned for quite some time.

UC claimants lose the LCWRA Element if they do not have a PIP award (I assume at least the standard rate daily Living?) and, this means that many will effectively lose access to the Work Allowance (?) if they are single and try to return to do some work which they can keeping the LCWRA as long as their earnings currently do not go over £658 / month (2022-2023)  or living with a partner who is working but would not otherwise qualify: i.e. they do not have children or qualifying young people included in the claim.

Furthermore, it affects (or will) all those on NS ESA as the benefit is time-limited to 52 weeks if they are not in the Support Group, i.e. not determined to have Limited Capability for Work or Work-Related Activities in a WCA. So once abolished all those on NS ESA who do not pass to get a PIP award, will have their NS ESA limited to 52 weeks

And it makes a mockery (as far as I can see) of Schedule 9 of UC regulation 2013 and in particular (3) for cancer patients in treatment by way of chemotherapy or radiotherapy, or due to receive such treatment in the next 6 months or in recovery from such treatment. These had access to the LCWRA element without the face-to-face assessment after the 3 calendar months assessment phase. Well now, they need to meet the qualifying period for PIP and go through the PIP process and it can be refused (and it happens in my experience) and the decision at the MR is maintained… so on we go to a 1 years waiting for a tribunal and even if this is overturned how are we going to a) backdate all of this and b) repair the damage of being at the merci of work coaches who do not have a clue or may be “too big for their boots” / have too much power… and it goes on.

So much for protecting claims, increased sanctions, boot camps and all this in the name of protecting claimants and protecting them from “the fear of losing benefits if they try to return to work”.... What fear? They will have simply lost them before they even try and while they are struggling to survive for dear life…. and by the way this is a lie.. because I guide my clients currently through the process with ‘Permitted Work’ when on NS ESA and also to take up some work as long as they stay under £658 / month when they want to try out a phased return to do some work after recovering from Cancer Treatment… But NOW they can FEAR!

This White Paper does not have the air of something that has been properly thought through. The DWP policy makers at least have a couple of years now to make it coherent. Presumably DWP has had to convince the Treasury that there are savings to be made but it seems to me they could easily unravel. Here’s a few reasons why: if only 75% or so of UC LCWRA/support group recipients get PIP, and PIP is the only gateway to the extra money in UC, there may well be greater take-up of PIP. Conversely, current PIP recipients who get UC but don’t meet the criteria for LCWRA, get the extra UC money anyway. Then there will be UC recipients who are not eligible for PIP who are manifestly in need of the extra payment and may well have political clout. Take someone earning £30k and paying £1k per month rent. A model worker by the government’s standards. They have an accident and are out of action for 6 months. Ineligible for PIP. Rent way above the LHA. A catastrophic, possibly irrecoverable, effect on their finances. And then there is the analysis by the IFS that the cost to the taxpayer of getting a disabled claimant into a job will be between £35k and £140k per job. It makes no sense in value for money terms.

As Paul Stockton says this has the feel of not being thought through. WCA outcomes are baked into far too many entitlements including those like cancer patients getting Chemo etc who have LCfWRA automatically. Just spent the morning going through that and interaction with travel costs for treatment.

Cannot just be waved away.

Perhaps not as half baked as the back of a fag packet plan for abolishing the role of Lord Chancellor but hopefully they’ll have time for DWP policy people to make it work.

Agree. This could be disastrous for many claimants.  The LCWRA element has been a godsend for many in getting people just being able to live. It has always been the case that many people with a high level of disability can work - think wheelchair users for a start - and equally that many people without an identified disability cannot.  When the original Disability premium was removed the argument was that the people who most needed it would get a higher amount (the LCWRA element).  And now this will be removed as well?

Already preface all assisted claims with ‘x is a vulnerable claimant by virtue of xyz and reasonable adjustments apply under EA’. Followed by a list of what this translates as.

Can now see adding ‘and by the way Article2 of ECHR is engaged and as such the SoS has a positive obligation to take appropriate steps to safeguard x’s life’.

In the meantime will probably be doing a ton of safeguarding referrals to the LA..- after all this is where Coffee signposted to if anyone thought a claimant to be at risk….and it leaves and evidence trail even if we know that’s all it does for the most part.