Tory MP brands plan to scrap WCA and allow work coaches to decide fitness for work ‘a crazy idea’

A Conservative MP has branded government plans to scrap the work capability assessment (WCA) and hand jobcentre work coaches responsibility for deciding if someone is fit for work “a crazy idea”.

Nigel Mills (pictured) made the comments as the Commons work and pensions committee was taking evidence from campaigning organisations on the government’s employment plans.

Under plans announced last spring, the WCA will be scrapped and disabled people who cannot work will only be able to qualify for a new health element of universal credit if they also receive personal independence payment (PIP), disability living allowance (DLA), or, in Scotland, adult disability payment (ADP).

But this would leave it to DWP’s over-worked work coaches – who will usually have no health-related qualifications – to decide if a disabled person should carry out work-related activity.

The WCA will not be scrapped until after the next general election and not until 2026 at the earliest, DWP has said.

Mills, a Conservative member of the committee, said yesterday (Wednesday): “My experience of constituents is they don’t generally have a great deal of time or regard for their work capability assessment medical professional.”

But he added: “The idea that I’m going to trust a work coach and share my biggest issues and concerns and seek their support and want their counselling if they’ve just told me I’m not getting the extra benefit is extraordinarily unlikely, isn’t it?

“It’s just going to destroy the relationship between them and the claimant.

“I just can’t imagine many work coaches are going to fancy this sort of flicking through the file and going, ‘You do get the extra money… you don’t.’

“It seems like a crazy idea.”

Ken Butler, welfare rights and policy adviser for Disability Rights UK, replied: “You said it, really.”

Butler said it would be good to discover the views of work coaches about the government’s proposed reforms.

He said there was already “a great deal of mistrust” of work coaches and assessors among claimants, while work coaches were working “under extreme pressure and don’t have time to actually discuss things properly and form a working relationship”.

Mills suggested that those giving evidence to the committee yesterday might fear that the government’s “well-intended” plans to scrap the WCA “might end up making the situation worse for the people you represent”.

But Butler said: “I wouldn’t say it was well-intended necessarily. One of the most clear outcomes of it… is to save money.

“Scrapping the work capability assessment has always been an aim of many disability organisations, but not scrapping it and having nothing else in its place, and replacing it with something [an assessment for PIP, DLA or ADP] which isn’t intended to be a work benefit and resulting in quite devastating income cuts as well.”

Disability News Service (DNS) is still trying to obtain a copy of the equality impact assessment carried out by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) on the decision to scrap the WCA.

The information commissioner decided late last year that the department should release the assessment because “the public is entitled to scrutinise a decision such as this at an early opportunity”, but DWP has appealed the decision.

DNS has been seeking the information from DWP since March 2023, when the move to scrap the WCA was announced in the spring budget, with details included in the government’s Transforming Support white paper.

Later in yesterday’s evidence session, the mental health charity Mind raised serious concerns about government reforms to tighten the WCA in the years leading to its eventual abolition.

Although ministers no longer plan to scrap the criteria that protects those seen as being at “substantial risk” of harm if found able to carry out work-related activity through the WCA, they still aim to amend this safety net so that it only applies in “exceptional circumstances”, protecting those with “the most severe mental or physical health conditions”.

Nil Güzelgün, interim head of policy and campaigns at the mental health charity Mind, raised concerns about the changes to the substantial risk criteria, and stressed how important the current protections are.

She highlighted the case of a disabled man who was found ineligible to be placed in the limited capability for work-related activity (LCWRA) group of universal credit, following a WCA.

He had both physical impairments and mental distress related to sexual abuse he suffered as a child after being abducted from a bus.

Mind supported him through a mandatory reconsideration of the decision, but DWP told him that although he was too unwell for more intensive work-related activity he could still do “light touch work-related activity”, and suggested that he research new bus routes and test out bus journeys.

A subsequent tribunal appeal was told that this suggestion would re-traumatise him, and the tribunal decided that he should be placed in the LCWRA group on the grounds of “substantial risk”.

Güzelgün said the case highlighted the “lack of understanding of mental health problems” by DWP’s work coaches and its private sector assessors.

She told the committee that the safeguards were “critical for people with mental health problems so they cannot be retraumatised or hospitalised because of activities that are required by the jobcentre or work coaches”.

She told the committee: “To weaken the LCWRA substantial risk regulation would mean that you would push people to engage in work-related activity which will deteriorate their mental health or really put them at risk, and for people with mental health problems that risk is real and they can die and some people have attempted suicide.

“This is a real risk and I think it is really dangerous to introduce these changes.”

She said the substantial risk regulations played “a crucial role” in reducing harm, and the government’s proposed changes reduced that protection.

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