DWP white paper offers mix of ‘human catastrophe’ and overdue reforms

Nearly four years after announcing plans to reform support for disabled people, work and pensions ministers have published proposals for sweeping changes to disability benefits and employment support.

Some of the proposals – including plans to scrap the work capability assessment and expose severely ill people to the “whims of work coaches” – were greeted with anger and frustration by activists, who warned that they pose significant risks of harm.

Other measures, which could make the benefits assessment system fairer, are likely to be welcomed – if they are ever implemented – although questions will be asked over why it has taken so many years for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to agree to introduce them.

Ministers said this week that they wanted to “improve the overall experience of, and trust in, the benefits system for disabled people” through the white paper, Transforming Support.

But as chancellor Jeremy Hunt had also announced plans to toughen the sanctions regime, that pledge was dismissed by many disabled activists.

Dr Jay Watts said on Twitter that building this trust was impossible when “sanctions that deprive people of their capacity to eat, heat and have housing are on the table, let alone with the back cloth of abuse that the DWP has and does to claimants”.

Most of the media attention was focused on the plans to scrap the work capability assessment (WCA) and rely instead on the assessment for personal independence payment (PIP) to decide eligibility for out-of-work disability benefits, a move which disabled activists said would pose significant risks to sick and disabled people who were unable to work (see separate story).

But other proposals in the white paper affect areas such as Access to Work, the accessibility of jobcentres and the PIP assessment system itself.

The white paper says DWP is testing a new Access to Work package for disabled people “who need more support than the existing scheme can provide”.

It will offer “increased personal support, supervision in excess of what is usually required to perform work tasks” and ongoing support from a work coach.

The government also plans to expand the use of employment advisers as part of psychological therapy, through the NHS Talking Therapies service, another idea likely to prove controversial among disabled activists concerned about the government’s insistence that finding a job or returning to work is an important health “outcome” for those with mental distress.

The white paper promises to create “a more efficient service and a vastly improved claimant experience” for its PIP assessment system.

DWP is developing targeted help for those claimants of disability benefits “who need it most”, including those who do not have family or friends to support them, through a new Enhanced Support Service.

This has been tested in Kent, and will also now be piloted in Birmingham, Blackpool and King’s Lynn, and if it proves successful and “good value for money”, could be expanded into areas of high demand next year.

The white paper includes several other measures to improve benefit assessments that may be well received but are also likely to spark questions over why they have taken so long to be accepted by DWP.

It is testing the idea of sharing benefit assessment reports with disabled people before a decision is made on their claim, “offering them the opportunity to clarify evidence so that we can make the right decision as early as possible”.

The white paper says DWP wants to increase the number of decisions on benefits such as PIP that it gets right first time “by engaging people throughout their journey and ensuring we are obtaining more relevant evidence earlier”, including medical evidence.

It says: “This should lead to a reduction in mandatory reconsiderations and appeals and make it more straightforward to challenge the outcome of a claim.”

These suggested improvements are likely to anger and frustrate mental health system survivors, who fought for years through the courts to try to force DWP to address flaws in the assessment system that meant relevant medical evidence was often not collected before a decision was made on a claim.

These flaws were associated with countless deaths.

DWP is also moving to an IT system that will be able to record all assessments, including those carried out by telephone and on video, if requested by the claimant.

And it says that, later this year, it will begin testing how to match people’s primary health condition to an assessor who specialises in that condition, another demand long made by many disabled people.

DWP has also appointed architects to develop a new jobcentre design guide so that new and refurbished sites “will be accessible environments for customers, visitors and employees”.

The white paper was published soon after the chancellor’s budget speech.

The move to scrap the WCA had been announced by Jeremy Hunt, who claimed it meant “disabled benefit claimants will always be able to seek work without fear of losing financial support”.

He also announced a new voluntary disability employment programme, Universal Support, with the government spending up to £4,000 per person to support 50,000 disabled people a year to find appropriate jobs.

But details in budget documents released yesterday are likely to alarm disabled activists, with the warning that the Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast that the welfare cap will be breached by £4.1 billion in 2024-25.

The Treasury says in the documents that the government “remains committed to ensuring welfare spending is sustainable and is focused on meeting the welfare cap” by 2024-25, which suggests there will be further DWP efforts to cut social security spending over the next two years.

The budget documents also pledge to strengthen the DWP sanctions regime and ensure “that Work Coaches have the tools and training to implement sanctions as effectively as possible”.

The documents show the government plans to spend an extra £90 million in 2023-24 on “additional work coach time for incapacity benefits claimants”, with £145 million in 2024-25 and £240 million in 2025-26.

The measures mirror announcements made by previous governments seeking to clamp down on social security spending and cut the numbers on out-of-work benefits.

About 15 years ago, New Labour work and pensions secretary James Purnell warned that jobcentre advisers would be given more powers to impose sanctions on claimants and said those advisers wanted “greater freedom to use the sanctions that currently exist”.

That was taken up by the 2010 Tory-led coalition government, with employment minister Esther McVey bragging in November 2013 of how she wanted to end the “something for nothing” culture and that jobseeker’s allowance claimants had had their payments suspended 580,000 times in the first nine months after “new tougher rules” had been introduced in October 2012.

Just months earlier, in July 2013, David Clapson had died from diabetic ketoacidosis, an acute lack of insulin, three weeks after having his benefits sanctioned.

His electricity key had run out of credit because he had no money, so the fridge where he kept his insulin was not working.

An autopsy found his stomach was empty, and the only food left in his flat was six tea bags, a tin of soup and an out-of-date can of sardines. He had just £3.44 left in his bank account.

Mark Harrison, a member of the steering group of Reclaiming Our Futures Alliance (ROFA), said: “Benefit sanctions are at record levels and are used as a blunt instrument to bully and intimidate claimants to take slave labour jobs.

“The scrapping of the WCA will drag sick and disabled people into this brutal system where people can lose all their benefits/income at the whim of an unqualified job coach or an artificial intelligence computer programme.

“The DWP treats claimants far harsher than the criminal justice system, where if you are convicted and fined your income and ability to pay is taken into account.

“How can this be a compassionate and fair welfare system when it fails to provide a safety net for sick and disabled people?

“The UN was right, this is a ‘human catastrophe’ from a government which continues to commit grave and systematic violations of our human rights.”

Ken Butler, welfare rights and policy officer for Disability Rights UK, said: “Those disabled people who can work need support to do so, backed up by the provision of reasonable adjustments by employers.

“However, those disabled people who can’t work or can only work limited hours need protection from sanctions.

“The new employment programmes targeted at disabled people are welcomed but these need to be co-produced by disabled people with disabled people’s organisations involved in their implementation.

“What is not needed is the removal of no work conditionality with its replacement by a sanctions regime.”

Picture: Mark Harrison (above, left) and Esther McVey

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