Lords committee led by Tory banker calls for stricter assessments and conditions for disabled benefit claimants

Disabled activists have questioned the “draconian” conclusions of a Lords committee that has told the government to impose stricter conditions, more assessments, and a more “rigorous” work capability assessment on claimants of out-of-work disability benefits.

The calls by the economic affairs committee echo many of those made by politicians over the last 30 years, including the much-repeated demand for an assessment that examines what “an individual can do rather than… what they cannot do”, a phrase first used by Labour social security secretary Alistair Darling in 1999.

There were also concerns that the committee dismissed reports that increasing claimant numbers are at least partly due to rising levels of ill-health and NHS waiting-lists since the start of the pandemic.

The committee called for sick and disabled people who are signed off work for more than a month by their GP to “undergo additional or ongoing assessments”.

And it called for all those on “incapacity benefit” – which probably means the “limited capability” universal credit groups – to have a work coach for the first two years of their period on out-of-work benefits.

It said reform was needed “both to curb the increasing fiscal burden and to address the ever-growing social cost of hundreds of thousands of people dependent on benefits”.

But there was no call for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to research why claimant numbers have been rising in recent years.

And as with other recent reports, speeches and policy proposals, there was no mention in the committee’s findings of the years of deaths and other harm caused by successive reforms of the assessment process and cuts to benefits*, the harshness of the assessment systems, DWP’s chronic safeguarding failures, or the continuing risk of harm to disabled claimants.

The cross-party economic affairs committee based its report on just six oral evidence sessions, held last October, November and December, and it took no written evidence.

It took no evidence from any disabled people’s organisation, or from anyone who claims out-of-work disability benefits.

Instead, the committee heard from thinktanks, ministers, civil servants, academics and the Office for Budget Responsibility.

In a letter to work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall, the committee’s chair, the Tory peer Lord [George] Bridges, said the health-related benefits system was financially unsustainable.

Lord Bridges (pictured) is a former chair of the Conservative research department, and the party’s former campaign director, a former leader writer for The Times, and now a senior adviser to the Spanish bank Santander.

His letter was widely reported in the mainstream media, and adds to pressure on the government to announce cuts to spending in its forthcoming disability benefits green paper.

Linda Burnip, co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts, said there was “no economic sense in these draconian proposals” but “yet again, disabled people will bear the brunt of cuts if they are adopted”.

She said the committee appeared to “know nothing about how the social security systems work and most of their suggestions would involve large additional expenditure to achieve the goals the committee are proposing”.

She said: “DWP staff are already massively overworked, with lengthy backlogs for many claims, so to have a jobcentre coach involved after someone was off work for over a month and to have a jobcentre coach pursuing people to get into work for the first two years of any claim would involve recruiting many extra staff, which would cost more than any savings made.

“Changes to assessments, making them more stringent, would also necessitate additional funding for the corporations carrying these out.

“Added to that, pushing even more disabled people into further poverty would increase demands on the NHS, which we know is already under enormous pressure and that too would cost more in the longer term.”

Asked why there was no evidence from disabled people’s organisations, a spokesperson for the economic affairs committee said: “The inquiry was a short follow-up to the committee’s previous inquiry into economic inactivity so there was no formal call for evidence.

“As an economic affairs committee, the focus of the inquiry was on the economic and fiscal aspects of inactivity and so witnesses were invited who could specifically address those aspects of the issues explored.”

He said the committee “did not hear corroborating evidence that the rise in health-related claimants was primarily caused by a decline in the nation’s health”.

The spokesperson did not explain why there was no call for DWP to research the reason for increasing numbers of claimants, but he said that, because there was “insufficient evidence that the sharp rise in the number of claimants reflects a deterioration in people’s health”, its conclusions focused on “the extent to which the rise in caseloads might be explained by the structure and process of the welfare system”.

*The Department: How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence, DNS editor John Pring’s book on the years of deaths linked to DWP, is published by Pluto Press

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