New claimants will have priority for telephone and paper-based disability assessments to ensure access to support, says Minister

Health professionals will also be moved on to the telephone systems to help cope with demand

New claimants will have priority for telephone and paper-based disability assessments to ensure access to support, the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work Justin Tomlinson has said.

Introducing an Opposition Day debate yesterday in the House of Commons - about statutory sick pay and protection for workers during the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak - the Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Margaret Greenwood asked - 

'The Government announced that they were temporarily suspending face-to-face assessments for sickness and disability benefits. That is welcome as far as it goes, and Opposition Members have been highlighting the major problems with how assessments are carried out for a long time, but the government have said that this approach would be replaced by telephone or paper-based assessments. That could risk increasing pressure on GPs at a time when they are already overrun, so can the government tell us clearly how assessments will be carried out during the outbreak?'

In response, Mr Tomlinson said - 

'The shadow Secretary of State talked about disability benefits and the announcement that we made earlier this week. The first decision was to remove face-to-face assessments, because we recognise that a significant proportion of those who could be claiming disability benefits are vulnerable. We want to avoid them needing to travel unnecessarily and to sit in busy waiting rooms, ​so we decided to stop face-to-face assessments. However, we do not want to stop new people gaining access to the support that they are entitled to, so we are seeking to continue to do paper-based and telephone reviews, but prioritising those who are new claimants, and looking at the workforce on a daily basis.'

Questioned further about how he will ensure that phone calls were dealt with in a timely manner, Mr Tomlinson added - 

'We anticipate unprecedented demand, which is part of the reason why we have looked at the work that we no longer need to do during this period—for example, there was the announcement on ending face-to-face assessments for disability benefits—so that we can move health professionals on to the telephone systems to make sure that we can cope with demand and remove the need for people to unnecessarily visit jobcentres. We are keeping a very close eye on that on a day-to-day basis.'

For more information, see the Opposition Day debate: Statutory Sick Pay and Protection for Workers from Hansard.