‘Fit for work’ test not fit for purpose

REPORT RAISES MAJOR QUESTIONS OVER BENEFITS CHECKS FUNDAMENTAL FAILURES IN NEW SCHEME

THE British Government should suspend the Work Capability Assessment until it can be shown to be fit for purpose, says Sinn Féin Foyle MLA Raymond McCartney after a report by the Citizens’ Advice Bureau raised serious questions over its efficiency and results.

The study, ‘Right First Time’, was carried out by the Citizens’ Advice Bureau and published in January. The report has major concerns about the accuracy of the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) test carried out by the company Atos to determine eligibility for Employment Support Allowance (ESA) and Personal Independence Payment (PIP), the benefits replacing Incapacity Benefit and Disability Living Allowance.

Citizens’ Advice became concerned after receiving hundreds of thousands of enquiries about the WCA, many questioning the accuracy of the test. Inaccuracies were creating huge difficulties for thousands of ill and disabled people who were being declared ‘fit for work’ despite the serious nature of their condition.

Many thousands of people appealed the WCA decisions that had thrown them off benefit. Of those decisions overturned on appeal, six out of ten involved cases where the claimant had originally been awarded no points by the WCA.

The frequency of failure and the wide margin by which people were being wrongly declared fit for work suggests the Work Capability Assessment is fundamentally flawed

In other words, appeals were overturning WCA decisions not just in cases where claimants had marginally failed to meet the WCA requirements, as might have been expected, but most often in cases where the test fundamentally failed.

The frequency of failure and the wide margin by which people were being wrongly declared fit for work suggests the WCA is fundamentally flawed.

Atos, the French IT company carrying out these assessments, is paid on the basis of the number of people processed. A refusal by the British Department of Work and Pensions to comment further on the Atos contract suggests there is currently no penalty for failure to carry out reliable assessments.

Sinn Féin MLA Raymond McCartney says:

“I am calling on the British Government and Work and Pensions Minister Iain Duncan Smith to suspend the reassessment process until such time as the Work Capability Assessment is shown to be fit for purpose.

“Systems failures are notoriously costly to the taxpayer. When that failure also involves the infliction of unnecessary distress on to some of the most vulnerable people within our community, it is doubly incumbent on those responsible to do something about it.”