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This is the Government response to Professor Michael Harrington's Independent Review of the Work Capability Assessment (ISBN 9780108509476). The Government fully supports the recommendations made in the Review and will look to implement them over the coming months. Central to the recommendations is the role of the Decision Maker and while the Government has already started to improve the decision making process it will now go further, incorporating the Review's recommendations. It also plans to ensure that Atos will provide 'champions' with additional expertise in mental, cognitive and intellectual conditions and endorses piloting of audio recording of Atos assessments. This report summarises progress to date and future plans including that Professor Harrington will be reappointed as independent reviewer and will be given a wider remit for the next review
The Work and Pensions Committee supports the Government's objectives for the incapacity benefit (IB) reassessment, which are to help people with disabilities and long-term health conditions to move back into employment, while continuing to provide adequate support for people who have limited capability for work or are unable to work. However, the report finds that the Government's positive messages about the IB reassessment are not getting through to the public. The report argues that that the Government should be more proactive in explaining its aims for the process and in emphasising the range of support which will be available. Current incapacity benefit claimants are being reassessed to decide whether they are able to work. The inquiry looked in detail at the Work Capability Assessment (WCA), the test which is used to assess whether an incapacity benefit claimant is capable of work, or work-related activity. WCAs are carried out by Atos Healthcare as part of a contract with the Department for Work and Pensions. It is widely accepted that the WCA was flawed, in the form in which it was introduced in 2008 for new ESA claimants, leading to a high proportion of inaccurate assessments and poor decisions by Jobcentre Plus. Many of these decisions were overturned at appeal. The report acknowledges that many welcome improvements have been made to the reassessment process as a result of the review by Professor Malcolm Harrington and the trial of the process carried out in Aberdeen and Burnley, before it was introduced nationally.
The Government's Welfare Reform Bill includes measures to introduce a new benefit in 2013: the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) will replace Disability Living Allowance (DLA) for working-age claimants, to help meet the additional living costs of disabled people. A new eligibility assessment process will also be brought in. But this report finds that the Government should not introduce Personal Independence Payment (PIP) assessments nationally until it has satisfied itself, in the planned initial roll-out of the new assessment in a limited geographical area, that the assessment is empathetic and accurate. The report highlights a number of areas of concern. The current draft criteria on which the assessment will be based are still too reliant on a "medical model" of disability, and may fail to take sufficient account of the impact of social, practical and environmental factors, such as housing and access to public transport, on disabled people's ability to participate in society and the additional costs they therefore incur. The Committee believes that the Government should listen to the views of disabled people and their representative organisations and conduct a further trial before the criteria are adopted and the new assessment is introduced. Once the initial assessments for PIP have been completed in the first geographical area, the Government should look again at the value of face-to-face assessments for PIP claims where claimants' conditions are severe and unlikely to change. It is also important that DWP gets the contracting process with the private suppliers right.
The Government welcomes Professor Harrington's second review of Work Capability Assessment (ISBN 9780108511103). Its response deals with the four main areas of his review: progress in implementing the year one review; the work on the descriptors that underpin the Work Capability Assessment; findings from the year two review and recommendations to improve the process further; and further work for the year three review. The annex sets out the detailed Government response to each of Professor Harrington's 23 recommendations.
What does day-to-day life involve for those who receive out-of-work benefits? Is the political focus on moving people from ‘welfare’ and into work the right one? And do mainstream political and media accounts of the ‘problem’ of ‘welfare’ accurately reflect lived realities? For whose benefit? The everyday realities of welfare reform explores these questions by talking to those directly affected by recent reforms. Ruth Patrick interviewed single parents, disabled people and young jobseekers on benefits repeatedly over five years to find out how they experienced the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, and whether the welfare state still offers meaningful protection and security in times of need. She reflects on the mismatch between the portrayal of ‘welfare’ and everyday experiences, and the consequences of this for the UK’s ongoing welfare reform programme. Exploring issues including the meaning of dependency, the impact of benefit sanctions and the reach of benefits stigma, this important book makes a timely contribution to ongoing debates about the efficacy and ethics of welfare reform.
Dated November 2012. The third Review (ISBN 9780108512087) is published alongside this response. Also available are the first review (2010, ISBN 9780108509476) and Government response (Cm. 7977, ISBN 9780101797726) and the second review (2011, ISBN 9780108511103) and Government response (Cm. 8229, 9780101822923)
With the Conservative Party breaking new ground in forming a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats, this book examines the development and content of the Conservatives' approaches to social policy and how they inform the Coalition's policies. Chapters cover the development of Conservative Party social policy and specific policy areas. The book will be of interest to academics, undergraduate and postgraduate students, and everyone with an interest in the Conservative Party and the Coalition government's social policies.
The Work and Pensions Committee report that there is still a level of uncertainty around the impact of the proposed changes to Housing Benefit and their cumulative effect on households. The report examines the wide-ranging reforms to the Housing Benefit system proposed by the Government, and in particular for claimants in the private rented sector, in receipt of Local Housing Allowance. The Committee accepts the Government's desire to slow the sharp rise in Housing Benefit costs, particularly in the private rented sector, and thereby to influence the private rental market. However, it expresses some concerns about the availability of private rented accommodation in certain localities, which tenants are likely to be able to secure at the new Housing Benefit levels.
The Stationery Office annual catalogue 2011 provides a comprehensive source of bibliographic information on over 4900 Parliamentary, statutory and official publications - from the UK Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly, and many government departments and agencies - which were issued in 2011.