Fit to Work?

David Fish passed me this item, from the Birmingham Post, August 2, page 8.

Government ‘fit to work’ advisor overseeing ‘fit for work’tests to step down after calling on Conservative government to make tests ‘fair and humane’.

 

Professor Malcolm Harrington has resigned after 60% of disability benefit claimants were found to be fit to work in the West Midlands.

 

Disabled people applying for Employment and Support Allowance have been rejected and they should look for a job instead.

In the West Midlands, Department for Work and Pensions figures show that decisions were made on 8,200 applications for Employment and Support Allowance, the benefit which has replaced incapacity benefit, over a three month period in the West Midlands.

4,900 were rejected so that 59% of cases where a decision was made resulted in the claimant being told they were fit for work. Another 1,500 people, 18 per cent, were placed in a “‘work related’ activity group” where they receive training and support, such as help with interviewing techniques, designed to help them join the workforce eventually.

Just 1,800 claimants, 22 percent of those claiming Employment and Support Allowance, were placed permanently on the benefit over a three-month period in the West Midlands.

And in the same period, another 7,100 claims were simply withdrawn before a decision was taken.

The figures refer to new claims. People who cliam old benefits which are being phased out, such as incapacity benefit, severe disablement allowance or income support paid on the grounds of illness or disability, are also undergoing assessments.

In April, the Government revealed that around a third of these claimants were also being categorised as fit to work following fresh tests.

The 13 week assessment, which tests physical fitness as well as mental skills, was first introduced by Labour.

Professor Harrington was called in to review the tests after thousands of disabled were successfully challenged their test results. He has admitted that some claimants who are genuinely unable to work had been through a “traumatic” experience because of the tests.

He told the programme: “I think people are being treated more like human beings now, but it is still difficult to go through it”.

The Government has not published regional figures for the number of initial decisions overturned on appeal, but nationally around 15 percent of initial decisions result in appeals and just under a third of these result in a decision being overturned.

(These so-called capability assessments are carried out by the notorious ATOS Healthcare, despised sponsors of the Paralympics. Employment and Support Allowance is, I am sad to say, a late-blooming fungus on the Labour Government tree. The test is exactly the same as the old Incapacity Benefit test, with all its ridiculous anomalies and inherent unfairness to those suffering mental health probolems, just rebranded and outsourced to a French IT company with targets to meet. The truth is, it's a test of your perceived ability to win the appeal.

I did hundreds of Incapacity Benefit appeals over my twenty years with the CAB. Never lost one.  RW)