The Department for Work and Pensions – Politics and Insights

Section 102 and Schedule 11 of the Welfare Reform Act, (Clause 99) is the (State) power to require revision before appeal. People who wish to challenge a benefit decision will no longer be allowed to lodge an appeal immediately. Instead, the government introduced mandatory revision or review stage, during which a different Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) decision maker will reconsider the original decision and the evidence and, if necessary, send for more information.

Many of us have campaigned since 2012 to raise awareness of Clause 99. During the Consultation period, I wrote a set of responses to the government’s proposals, which many people used as a template for their own responses. I remember that we ALL RAISED THE SAME CONCERNS.

In summary, the main concerns were that basic rate Employment Support Allowance was to be withdrawn during the mandatory review period, leaving sick and disabled people with no money to live on, whilst the DWP reconsidered their own “fit for work decisions” that were wrong.

I know that our consultation responses were ignored by the government. The changes were introduced anyway, despite our grave concerns. Since October 2013 people have to apply for mandatory review separately before they can lodge an appeal. We were also very worried that no time limit was established for the DWP to undertake and complete the mandatory review. Our concerns were fully justified, as it’s emerged that people are waiting 7-10 weeks for the mandatory review decision. Meanwhile, these people cannot appeal. And have no money to live on.

An added concern is that this system as it stands demands such a lot from people who may be very vulnerable, seriously ill and/or have mental health problems. Their difficulties are exacerbated by cuts in legal aid for welfare rights advice and cuts in local authority grants. There is a significant contraction of the availability of help for those who need it the most from advice agencies.

A Benefit Sanctions Briefing was released on 18 February 2015 by the Department of Work and Pensions, comprising of an update of sanctions statistics up to the end of September 2014, and for the first time it also included the outcomes of Mandatory Reviews (or sometimes called “reconsiderations.”)

Dr David Webster, Senior Research Fellow at Glasgow University, said: “The Mandatory Reconsideration system (MR), introduced on 28 October 2013, has fundamentally changed the whole appeal process, introducing additional steps and a new Jobcentre Plus structure. MR has cut the proportion of Job Seekers Allowance sanctions which are challenged by claimants from about one third (33%) to about 20-25%. Employment Support Allowance sanction challenges have returned to below their pre-MR level, at about 45%.

The independent element in the system offered by Tribunals has been effectively destroyed, completely in the case of Employment Support Allowance and almost completely for Job Seekers Allowance, where only 0.14% of sanction decisions are now being taken to a Tribunal.

MR has had no overall impact on the proportion of Job Seekers Allowance sanctions overturned, which remains at about 13%. But the proportion of Employment Support Allowance sanctions overturned has fallen from about 35% to about 20%.

The most disturbing possibility is that Employment Support Allowance claimants’ medical conditions are rendering them unable to cope effectively with the phone calls made to them by DWP officials at home during the MR process.”

He also said: “Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) Reconsiderations and Appeals: The revised DWP statistics show much lower claimant success rates at both internal DWP reconsideration and Tribunal appeal. However, success rates for the few who appeal to a Tribunal have risen and successful Tribunal appeals are at an all-time high. For a claimant prepared to go all the way in the appeal process, the probability of overturning a sanction is now 51%.

Employment Support Allowance (ESA) claimants have higher success rates than JSA claimants at reconsideration and appeal.

In 2013 their reconsideration success rate was 56.1% and their appeal success rate was 26.1%. A higher proportion of ESA claimants than JSA claimants ask for reconsideration. This proportion has been rising rapidly, from below 10% up to March 2011, to over 40% during 2013.

The proportion appealing to Tribunals is lower, only about 1%. In 2013 there were 8,428 reconsiderations or appeals where the claimant was successful in overturning an ESA sanction.

The big surge in ESA sanctions during 2013 was due to penalties for failure to participate in work-related activity. By December 2013 this reason accounted for 87% of ESA sanctions, the other 13% being for failure to attend a work-related interview.

This is in contrast to the experience under the Labour government, when the only reason for sanction was failure to attend an interview [without good reason], and there were no sanctions in relation to work-related activity.”

Dr David Webster has submitted evidence to the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee Inquiry into benefit sanctions.

Many of the key issues with the mandatory review can be seen summarised here, here and here. Sheila Gilmore and Dame Anne Begg have covered these extensively during the ongoing Work and Pensions Committee ESA inquiry, as well as during the course of the many separately tabled debates.

Clause 99 – Mandatory Review – was undoubtedly introduced to make appealing wrong decisions that we are fit for work almost impossible. Sick and disabled people are effectively being silenced by this Government, and the evidence of a brutal, dehumanising, undignified and grossly unfair system of “assessment” is being hidden.

It also hides the crass unfairness and terrible consequences of Tory draconianism – the using of behavioural modification techniques in the form of benefit sanctions that have now been integrated into welfare “conditionality” criteria, and imposed on people who are already struggling materially, some of who are sick and disabled.

Most of those people claiming benefts do so through no fault of their own. To punish people by removing all of their income – and thus their only means of meeting basic survival needs – so arbitrarily, is obscene in a so-called civilised society.

The only way for a tiny group of people to become obscenely rich is for huge masses of others to be kept chronically poor. The tories have spent five years lying to us about who “deserves” what, but the bottom line is this: almost every tory policy has intentionally resulted in money being taken from the poorest or money being handed to the [already] wealthiest and most powerful. (See: Follow the Money: Tory Ideology is all about handouts to the wealthy that are funded by the poor and ‘We are raising more money for the rich’ revisited: some thoughts.)

Clause 99, Catch 22 – State sadism and silencing disabled people

Clause 99, Catch 22 and Penning is telling lies

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Pregnant and sanctioned just in time for christmas… Sanctioned and frozen to death….The latest news from Ashton Under Lyne Jobcentre.

Rachel Reeves promises to remove benefit sanction targets with a Labour Government

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Benefit sanctions are not fair and are not helping people into work

Rising ESA sanctions: punishing the vulnerable for being vulnerable

Many thanks to Robert Livingstone for the memes.

Tory ministers are considering drastically cutting the main Employment and Support Allowance sickness (ESA) benefit, internal documents seen by the BBC suggest.

New claimants, judged to be capable of work with appropriate support, could be given just 50p more per week than people on job seekers allowance.

Current recipients get almost £30 per week more. This is to meet additional costs that arise because of a person’s disability.

The Department for Work and Pensions said the ESA proposals were “not government policy.”

The documents reveal that the government has also been forced to hire extra staff to clear the backlog on the benefit.

Some 100 healthcare professionals are being hired to carry out fitness-for-work tests. The staff, who will be employed through the Pertemps agency, will help to reduce a backlog of more than 600,000 cases.

They will be in addition to any extra staff brought in when a new contractor is announced shortly to replace ATOS. The American firm, Maximus, has been awarded the contract. Controversies and scandals have been unearthed by UK researchers since Maximus was handed the lucrative contract in July to deliver the government’s new health and work service in England and Wales.

Leaked documents over the summer showed that ministers considered ESA – formerly known as incapacity benefit – to be “one of the largest fiscal risks currently facing the government”.

They also revealed “concerns” about claimants moving off jobseekers allowance onto ESA.

Giving consideration to cutting the differential paid to ESA recipients in the Work Related Activity Group (WRAG) – individuals who have to prepare for employment – is a reflection of that concern. However these are people that have been declared unfit for work by their doctor. They currently receive £28.75 more per week but the documents show plans are being discussed to cut that to just 50p more than jobseekers allowance. People receiving JSA, who are aged 25 or over, currently get £72.40 per week.

However, disabled people do have have additional needs and higher living costs, which is why ESA was set at a higher amount than JSA. Furthermore, because ESA is paid to people who can’t work, that means they are potentially reliant on benefit to meet their living costs indefinitely, and certainly longer term than those claiming JSA. ESA wasn’t designed to be such a temporary means of support as JSA was.

Employment and Support Allowance is paid to approximately two million people. Claimants have to undergo an extremely controversial Work Capability Assessment (WCA) to determine whether they are eligible and at what level.

Many people have been wrongly assessed as fit for work, and have been forced to appeal in order to receive the benefit that they are entitled to, and the high success rate of appeals in itself indicates that the WCA is deeply flawed. People have died within weeks of being told they are fit for work, also indicating that this assessment process is heavily weighted towards ensuring that sick and disabled people lose their lifeline benefit.

Labour MP, Dame Anne Begg, who chairs the Commons Work and Pensions Select Committee, said she would support overhauling the delivery of ESA but: “did not envisage any reduction in the value of the benefit.”

She added: “That’s not reform, that is just saving money. I hope that is not something the government is going to come forward with.”

Of course the Conservatives have used the word “reform” as a euphemism for severe cuts since 2010.

Dame Anne Begg MP‏ has recently called again for a cumulative impact assessment during debate on government’s policies towards disabled people. She has also fought to keep the the Independent Living Fund that supports around 21,000 people with severe disabilities to help them live independently at home has also been closed to new applicants, and will be shut down completely by 2015. This is despite a court ruling in May that stated closure of the fund is unlawful, as it breaches the Equality Act 2010, which was introduced by the Labour Party.

If we look at how the Coalition austerity cuts have been targeted, we see that:

People in poverty are targeted 5 times more than most citizens
Disabled people are targeted 9 times more than most citizens
Disabled people needing social care are targeted 19 times more than most citizens.

Further cuts to benefits are neither feasible nor justifiable.

Sheila Gilmore MP has responded:

“When Labour created the Work-related Activity Group in 2008, the rationale was to ensure that sick and disabled people who couldn’t work in the short term but might be able to in the future weren’t simply written off. Those in this group would receive support from Jobcentres and be encouraged to do appropriate training.

However we were clear that up until their next reassessment – which would occur at least every two years – these people were still unable to work. This is something Tory Ministers now seem keen to ignore. By cutting payments to those in the Work-related Activity Group by nearly £30 per week, Ian Duncan Smith is effectively saying that these people are only a hop, skip and a jump away from being a fully fit, able-bodied Jobseekers Allowance claimant.

This just isn’t the case in reality, as has many people who are placed in this group have serious mental health issues or are recovering from serious accidents.Cutting the benefits of sick and disabled people who are unable to work through no fault of their own is cruel – Ian Duncan Smith and his Tory Ministers should be ashamed.”

I suggest that the government looks at reducing the £107,000 each per annum that the Tories have awarded to millionaires in the form of a “tax break”, using money taken from the public purse. Cameron pledged in 2010 that only those with the “broadest shoulders” would be expected to carry the burden of austerity cuts. Perhaps he needs someone to explain to him that this doesn’t actually mean handing out tax payers’money to millionaires, whilst savagely cutting vulnerable people’s lifeline benefits and services.

After all, it’s not millionaires that are losing their dignity, health and well-being. Living in desperation is pushing the most vulnerable people to join the queues at food banks. Diseases associated with malnutrition, which were very common in the Victorian era in the UK, became rare with the advent of our welfare state and universal healthcare, but they are now making a reappearance because of increasing numbers living in absolute poverty. This is a direct consequence of Coalition policies, which basically take money from the poorest and provide generous handouts to the wealthy.

Oxfam’s director of campaigns and policy, Ben Phillips, said: “Britain is becoming a deeply divided nation, with a wealthy elite who are seeing their incomes spiral up, while millions of families are struggling to make ends meet.”

“It’s deeply worrying that these extreme levels of wealth inequality exist in Britain today, where just a handful of people have more money than millions struggling to survive on the breadline.”

Many are now below the breadline.

Chris Leslie MP, Labour’s Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury points out that the Coalition have raised taxes 24 times. Whilst millionaires have been given a huge tax cut, ordinary people are paying more because the Tories have raised VAT and cut tax credits and other benefits.

“Independent figures from the IFS show that by next year families will be at least £974 a year worse off because of tax and benefit changes since 2010″. Meanwhile, the cost of living continues to rise, and Cameron still won’t rule out raising VAT again to pay for £7 billion of unfunded tax promises.

The Conservatives aim to dismantle our welfare state and National Health Service. They have already drastically cut public services and provisions down to the bare bones. Their regressive ideology is all about looking after those who don’t need support – the very wealthy – at the expense of the poorest.

My grandmother once said to me that when she was younger, there was no welfare state, no national health service, and that people had to “make do”. I said that I always thought that our post-war settlement reflected the very best of us as a society, and that ensuring vulnerable people are supported and cared for distinguishes us as civilised. She thought about it, and said: “Yes, I always wanted better than we had for my children and grandchildren.”

We did have better, we evolved and we recognised that anyone could become vulnerable at some point during their lifetime, through no fault of their own. Illness, accident, losing a job – these are events that may happen to anyone. So we each paid for our own provision to ensure that everyone is supported if they need it.

And that is in our human nature: to want better for each generation, to evolve and make progress as a society.

This is the lesson that we need to teach the Tories, once and for all. They invent problems and maliciously scapegoat the poor to justify their dislike and resentment of our supportive provisions and to justify dismantling them. Yet our public services and support, owned by us for us, ought to be a source of pride, and we mustn’t let them get away with taking it all away.

Many thanks to Robert Livingstone for all of his excellent memes

Politics and Insights

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Tag: The Department for Work and Pensions

As predicted, Mandatory Review has effectively destroyed independent Tribunals

Cuts to employment support allowance are being “considered” by ministers

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