McFadden refuses to explain why he misled MPs over back-to-work benefits system

Work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden has failed to apologise after he misled MPs about his department’s system for pushing sick and disabled people into work.

McFadden yesterday (Wednesday) exaggerated the flaws in the current system, as he attempted to persuade MPs on a Commons select committee that it was necessary to cut benefit payments to disabled people applying for out-of-work benefits.

The current, longstanding system – which his government is attempting to reform – provides three groups for sick and disabled people who are assessed for their capacity for paid work.

They can be found fit for work – which places significant conditions on them, including spending 35 hours a week looking for a job – or found to have limited capability for work and work-related activity (LCWRA), which means claimants “do not need to look for work or prepare for work”.

McFadden (pictured) told the Commons work and pensions committee yesterday (Wednesday) that there were only these “two doors” for universal credit claimants who are tested through the work capability assessment.

He told the committee: “You go through one door and you’re in the intensive work support group, where you have your mandatory 35 hours of job search activity and all of that, and you go through another door [and] you don’t have any of that, and you get double the money.

“That is the system that we inherited, and it’s the system that we are trying to change on a couple of fronts.”

But in fact, the current system has three “doors”, not two, as there is a third potential destination, which is for those universal credit claimants found to have limited capability for work (LCW).

Sick and disabled people placed in this group are expected to “prepare to work in the future” – ever since the introduction of universal credit*, despite misleading statements made by politicians – for example through meetings with a jobcentre adviser, taking part in training courses, or carrying out other tasks ordered by DWP.

Despite this, McFadden told the committee that the government’s proposed policy change was to “narrow that gap” between the standard universal credit allowance and the payment made to those who receive the health element of universal credit, and to “match that with more employment support for those in that group, partly because of the system that I just described”.

He had been responding to a question from Liberal Democrat MP John Milne, who had asked how many disabled people ministers expected to find work after most new claimants of the health element of universal credit have their payments approximately halved from next April, which he said ministers believe will “incentivise pathways into work”.

Asked by Milne whether ministers had analysed what impact the cut would have on the debt levels of those new claimants receiving the health element from next April, McFadden said: “For those who don’t get jobs, they will get the support that they’re entitled to going forward, just like anybody else in the benefit system.”

McFadden later told another committee member, Labour’s Johanna Baxter, that “the two door system that we inherited was too content to just leave people forever”.

Debbie Abrahams, the committee’s Labour chair, asked McFadden to write to the committee to explain why ministers had decided “to draw disabled people into conditionality” through its reforms, compared with the last Labour government’s New Deal for Disabled People, which proved successful in the 2000s with its voluntary approach that “still managed to get tens of thousands of disabled people into work, and successful work”.

Asked why McFadden misled the committee by failing to mention the LCW group and claiming there were only “two doors” for disabled claimants, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) refused to say, instead issuing a statement that attempted – inaccurately – to clarify the potential WCA outcomes**.

Meanwhile, McFadden also confirmed that he was not ruling out cuts to personal independence payment (PIP) at the end of the ongoing review of PIP being led by Sir Stephen Timms, the minister for social security and disability.

He had been asked by Liberal Democrat MP Steve Darling, his party’s work and pensions spokesperson, why ministers had published updated terms of reference for the review earlier this month and whether this suggested that those engaging with the review “may fear that they are aiding the axeman in respect of PIP”.

As reported by Disability News Service, the new terms of reference strongly suggest that spending on PIP would not be allowed to be higher than “projections” published by the Office for Budget Responsibility, but could be lower.

McFadden told Darling: “It’s important to signal that, you know, the job of the Timms Review can’t be to come up with more expenditure on this, that it has to work within the budgetary parameters of the rest of the government, within the fiscal rules that the government abides by, and it was important to signal that at the start of the work.”

Asked again by Darling whether he could rule out further cuts to PIP, he said: “I’m not ruling anything out.

“I’ve only been in the job for three months and if I start ruling things out, I just close doors in the future, so I’m not ruling anything out.”

*A similar group – the work-related activity group – has always existed for employment and support allowance (ESA) claimants since its introduction in 2008. Claimants of income-related ESA are now being “migrated” onto universal credit

**The statement is included here as a footnote, as it failed to answer the question put to the department by DNS: “A universal credit claimant who undergoes a work capability assessment will either be found fit for work or not fit for work and fall within the LCW or LCWRA categories where they will have reduced conditionality.” This is not correct, as there is no conditionality at all in the LCWRA category. DWP had not corrected this statement by noon today (Thursday)

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