Repost - How did so many MPs come to minunderstand the ESA cut in the same way?

Earlier this month, the House of Commons voted to proceed with a hefty cut to employment and support allowance (ESA) (the name for incapacity benefit and income support) since 2008).

To remain on ESA after the initial assessment, a claimant must score 15 points from these descriptors. Since 2008, anyone scoring 0, 6, or 9 points is moved onto jobseeker's allowance and is 'fit for work'. Qualifying for ESA is getting past a high bar.

The legislation passed abolishes the 'work-related activity component (WRAC)' (which replaced the disability premium in income support for people unable to work). The 'support component' remains, which also replaces the disability premium but for a slightly different subset of ESA claimants. (The difference is small and arbitrary, and is essentially whether the claimant scores all 15 points from one activity.)

The naming is Orwellian and does not describe the subject matter in a way easily understood. The thinking appears to be that by generously adding the words 'work' and 'employment', ill people unable to work would be persuaded into employment anyway.

Since most claimants are in the work-related group rather than the support group, the removal of the WRAC leaves the level of ESA the same as jobseeker's allowance for most claimants.

This week, I was appalled to see that the new Secretary of State put out a grossly misleading and false statement, claiming that people on ESA with a work-related activity component have been found to be fit for work.

I then noticed that my local MP, Andrew Turner, has put out a suspiciously similar statement.

Further investigation uncovered no less than 13 MPs who has all repeated almost the exact same statement, often ironically decrying the 'misunderstanding' that the cut affected people who are ill.

It seems clear that MPs were lobbied on a factually incorrect basis and were misled into voting for the cut under false pretences. Even Conservative MPs had threatened to vote down the budget over proposed PIP criteria changes so cannot be taken to fully behind all benefit cuts. But on almost any analysis, the ESA cut is harsher than the proposed PIP changes and may affect much more vulnerable and ill people.

Email to Andrew Turner MP

Dear Mr Turner

I am writing concerning the vote tomorrow (Thursday 17th Nov) proposing to reverse the abolition of the work-related component of Employment and Support Allowance.

Although I am not a supporter of your party, I consider that you are an honourable man who have voted and spoken with your conscience in the past.

The previous vote to cut the ESA component was, I contend, tainted by a dishonest briefing of MPs by the government at the time as to what the proposal was, assisted by the deliberately confusing terminology. Many MPs, including I believe you, were told that the cut affected only those found fit for work. This was a lie as it affected only those found unable to do any work as defined under the stringent ESA criteria.

It was said that the money cut would be reinvested into supporting claimants to work. It has not been explained how this is possible when the people the money is to be taken from have been found unable to work.

It was said that the cut brought ESA into line with jobseekers Allowance. This was not true, as a disability premium is available to disabled JSA claimants. The ESA component is the equivalent of this for people too ill to claim JSA. The cut therefore makes ESA less than JSA for the same claimant.

I feel strongly that a vote by Parliament tomorrow to keep the cut would be an endorsement of the government lying to MPs and as such, the only proper course is for Parliament to overturn the cut pending a full and honest reassessment of it.

I trust you will do what is clearly right.

Yours faithfully

Tom Evans

My response to the PIP consultation to reduce the points for aids and appliances

Iain Duncan Smith resigned this week, ostensibly over the plans announced by George Osborne to reduce the score for claimants who need to use some aids and appliances in Personal Independence Payment.

IDS implied that this was a new policy that had taken him by surprise.

This is odd because his department had announced such a policy in December 2015, and had made it clear that the initial plan was for a larger reduction than was ultimately agreed following the public consultation. In fact, the final proposal he apparently considered unconscionable was more generous than any of the five options offered in December.

This was my response to the consultation in December:-

Response to Consultation — Aids and Appliances in Personal Independence Payment

From the Welfare Rights Department of  --------

Issue one – the number of claimants scoring solely through aids and appliances

1.       We note that one of the concerns raised by the consultation is the number of claimants scoring all of their points through a need for aids and appliances. Our experience of PIP assessment reports suggests that this figure may be misleading because of a trend for assessors to favour the aids and appliances descriptors over descriptors indicating a need for help from another person, where both descriptors are met.

2.       At present the difference is frequently not material to the outcome, and where this is the case, goes unchallenged. Should the qualifying criteria be changed in any of the ways suggested, we would anticipate that a significant proportion of those presently being scored as needing only aids or appliances would have grounds to challenge the selection of the aids or appliance descriptor. An example would be a client of ours who could not cook and prepare food for himself safely (due to blackouts) being scored as needing an aid or appliance. Because he was happy with the overall award level, there was no need for him to challenge this descriptor.

3.       We would also note that Paul Gray’s Independent Review does not specifically raise this as an area of concern in the sense implied. The Review raised a concern that claimants might be awarded a scoring descriptor where they had chosen to use an aid or appliance but did not need to use one. This is a valid operational concern, as the PIP criteria already do not support an award in those circumstances. We do not consider that the Review was recommending any change to the qualifying criteria.

Issue two — the claimed broadening of the meaning of aids

4.       The consultation raises particular concern that the meaning of ‘aids and appliances’ has been broadened by upper tribunal decisions. We do not agree that this has occurred.

5.       The PIP2 form has acknowledged from the beginning that a perching stool is an aid or appliance, as did the 2012 consultation on the criteria, so it is clear that seats and chairs were intended to be included in the definition. Lighter pans are also mentioned specifically. The important question is whether the claimant needs to use the aid to achieve the relevant, fairly undemanding, daily activity and not whether they possess or have paid for one.

6.       We would also note that it was clear to the drafters of the regulations that ‘spectacles or contact lenses’ would come within the meaning of aids or appliances if not specifically excluded from Activity 8. The decision not to exclude chairs, perching stools, and other everyday devices was therefore a deliberate policy choice.

7.       In conclusion, we do not agree that this premise of the consultation is factually accurate.

Issue three — the assessment of extra costs

8.       One of the solutions raised by the consultation is to replace the daily living component with a lump sum payment to purchase aids and appliances. We consider that this reveals a misunderstanding of the concept of extra costs, which was perhaps prompted by a single sentence in Paul Gray’s Review.

9.       It is made clear in the 2012 consultation that the criteria for PIP are considered to be a proxy assessment of a representative cross section of the claimant’s functions:

38 The activities have been carefully selected to act as a proxy for participation, levels of need and likely extra cost. We have not sought to assess each and every activity an individual might perform on a daily basis but rather we have selected a range of activities which cumulatively act as a good proxy. For example, individuals who have difficulties dressing and undressing are likely to have difficulties in other areas that involve bending and reaching, while individuals who have difficulty preparing food are likely to have difficulties carrying out other activities that require manual dexterity.

10.   The intention appears to be that a claimant who has some difficulty bending and reaching, for example, should score under dressing to reflect this limitation in bending across daily life.

11.   The extra costs may come in an almost open-ended number of ways such as needing to have purchases delivered, to shop locally at higher cost, to pay for domestic help, gardeners, simple home maintenance, heating, extra living space, taxis et cetera; combined with probable reduced earnings and reduced opportunities for work. The PIP assessment is the proxy for qualification but is not an assessment of the amount of the costs.

12.   The Review (somewhat by the way) mentioned the low cost of purchasing some aids and appliances, and this appears to be have been taken up by this consultation in its claimed Illustrative Examples. However, PIP is not intended literally to reflect the cost of purchasing aids and appliances, but to reflect extra costs in general via a proxy assessment of functional difficulties. In the examples given, needing to sit to prepare a simple meal, breathlessness dressing, and needing to use a sink for support just to get off the toilet are indications of significant disability rather than direct financial costs. To suggest otherwise is to misuse the nature of the assessment within its own stated terms.

Issue four — the options

13.   In light of the above, we consider that options one to three are flawed as they are founded on mistaken premises that the rate of PIP is related to direct financial need arising from activities 1-12. (There would presumably be no equivalent mechanism under these options for people who can demonstrate that their direct financial costs from these activities are in excess of £139.75 per week to claim for these costs through PIP.)

14.   Options four and five are logically valid if the aim is simply to restrict the number of people who qualify by raising the bar. Provided this is openly acknowledged to be the aim, this may be a legitimate policy but will cause hardship. We would suggest that two of the stated changes in PIP: face to face assessments and regular reviews, have found more people to qualify than was assumed would be the case and that this should also be openly acknowledged for any changes to have a legitimate foundation.

15.   We would however urge for proper consideration to be given to an option of making no changes to the criteria, along with an acknowledgment that the original assumption that face to face assessments alongside regular reviews would lead to a large reduction in awards appears now to have been incorrect.