Government research exposes misleading Tory and Reform calls for more face-to-face PIP assessments

New government research has exposed misleading calls by leading Conservative and Reform UK figures who have repeatedly claimed that assessments carried out remotely are more likely to lead to a successful claim for disability benefits.

Politicians such as Helen Whately, for the Conservatives, and Nigel Farage and Zia Yusuf, for Reform UK, insist that assessments carried out via phone or video calls lead to more claimants wrongly being founded eligible for support.

But new figures published on Tuesday by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) show instead that their constant political attacks on assessment methods that may be more accessible for some disabled people are deeply misleading.

The figures show that 50 per cent of claimants were awarded personal independence payment (PIP) after being allocated a face-to-face assessment, with 50 per cent securing an award after a video assessment, and 49 per cent of claimants awarded PIP after a telephone assessment.

With the work capability assessment, 60 per cent of claimants were found to have limited capability for work-related activity (LCWRA) after a face-to-face assessment, with 61 per cent awarded LCWRA after a video assessment, and 58 per cent after a telephone assessment.

Neither the Conservatives nor Reform UK had responded to requests to comment on the results of the study by noon today (Thursday).

The trial – carried out between 2022 and 2023 but only published this week – analysed more than 350,000 initial personal independence payment (PIP) assessments and work capability assessments in England and Wales, but found “little evidence that face-to-face, telephone and video assessments produce materially different award outcomes”*.

It was carried out in the wake of the impact of the Covid pandemic, which saw DWP move away from face-to-face assessments and towards those mostly carried out over the telephone, for public health reasons, with a video assessment option added later.

The report concludes that the findings “suggest that telephone and video assessments can achieve outcomes that are broadly comparable to those observed through face-to-face assessments for claimants eligible for all three channels”.

It said that this “therefore supports the conclusion that assessment outcomes are largely independent of channel and are driven more by claimant circumstances than by the mode of assessment itself”.

Although other findings issued this week – on up-to-date monthly PIP award rates by mode of assessment – showed telephone and video assessment award rates were consistently higher than face-to-face award rates by up to five per cent, at least some of this difference is likely to be because “different types of claimant are more likely to choose different modes of assessment”, the report on PIP award rates says.

A report on monthly WCA decisions by mode of assessment reaches a similar conclusion.

*The trial findings include outcomes from mandatory reconsiderations and appeals

Picture: Helen Whately (left) and Nigel Farage