In September, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) will roll its suite of functional health assessments into one. Specifically, this means that DWP contractors will look at claims for Personal Independence Payment (PIP), as well as the health-based component of Universal Credit and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) through one singular assessment. While the move in isolation isn’t specifically a cause for concern, what it signals might well be. That’s because previous Tory governments planned to use it as a pretext setting the stage for other harmful DWP reforms. In particular, this involves its plans to scrap the Work Capability Assessment (WCA). Significantly, to date, the new Labour government has failed to rule out these reforms.
DWP PIP: change coming in September
On 29 August, the Independent reported on a key change the DWP is set to make to disability benefit assessments in September. It wrote that:
The change will see all benefits that require a functional health assessment rolled into a ‘single assessment’ as part of the DWP’s Health Transformation programme. This means PIP assessments, as well as Work Capability Assessments for ESA and Universal Credit, will all be assessed in the same way and at the same time.
Purportedly, the government is doing this to:
create a seamless customer experience. By improving how we gather evidence and by enabling the re-use of information, the new integrated service will provide DWP agents and Healthcare Professionals with easier access to relevant information. This will reduce the burden on customers to provide complex information and reduce the need for them to provide it more than once.
However, this is not the only reason – nor likely the main one. The Tory-led DWP set this in motion as part of its broader plans to reform the WCA and PIP. In particular, rolling these assessments together was a stage of its goal to scrap the WCA entirely.
Crucially though, this was set to deny hundreds of thousands of chronically ill and disabled claimants their vital benefits. This is because, as policy adviser Ken Butler at Disability Rights UK told the Disability News Service (DNS):
The health element proposals will mean that around 632,000 disabled people who receive the employment and support allowance or universal credit support component will lose this as they do not receive PIP or DLA.
Specifically, as the Canary’s Steve Topple detailed, this will most likely impact chronically ill people and those living with mental health conditions. He explained that the reason for this is that many of these people:
do not fit into PIP’s rigid criteria box.
Notorious private contractors crop up again
Now, under the new Labour government, the DWP is commencing this initial step as originally planned. Specifically, the Tory-led DWP had intended to initiate this when new assessment providers took over the contracts this year.
As the Independent reported, this includes:
- Scotland and North England: Maximus UK Services Limited (currently Atos)
- Midlands and Wales: Capita Business Services (currently Capita)
- South West England: Serco (currently Atos)
- South East England, London and East Anglia: Ingeus UK Limited (currently Atos)
- Northern Ireland: Capita Business Services (currently Capita)
Naturally, many of these companies have taken over from disgraced DWP PIP contractor Atos. However, as the Canary has also pointed out before, these private outsourcing firms are also notorious – and not in a good way either. Crucially, the likes of Serco and Maximus have a long history of harm towards asylum seekers, chronically ill, and disabled people.
In Maximus’s case, it has overseen some of the government’s WCAs. As we previously underscored however it has done so to sometimes fatal effect, including running the process leading to the deaths of multiple people.
On top of this, Serco, Maximus, and Ingeus have all run a key government back to work programme. Not only have they failed to meet low government-set targets, but they’ve also harmed chronically ill people in the process.
A sign of Labour’s plans for DWP PIP and the WCA?
Despite calls from disability rights campaigners for the new government to ditch the Tories’ plans, Labour has yet to signal it will indeed do this. To the contrary, it has in fact somewhat rebutted their efforts to challenge the former government’s reforms.
Significantly, as the Disability New Service (DNS) revealed, government lawyers are still planning to appeal the information commissioners order to release the previous government’s assessment on its plans to do away with the WCA. Therefore, as the DNS noted:
This could add to fears that the new government has no plans to scrap Conservative work and pensions policies such as abolishing the WCA, tightening the assessment in the short term, or reforming personal independent payment.
So while the DWP shunting the functional health assessments into one this September was always part of the department’s plan, it might also indicate the new Labour government will stick to – at least some of – the Tories’ dangerous reforms for the WCA. In particular, its plan to scrap it altogether.
Topple also pointed out how the then Tory government might use this to push chronically ill people into work. Critically, he wrote that:
there are now over 360,000 more people who are chronically ill and not working than before the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. The government classes these people as “economically inactive”. It’s currently on a drive to get some of the nine million people who are economically inactive into work.
Given this, he suggested that:
So, by removing the WCA and just relying on PIP entitlement, the DWP will be able to strip some of these economically inactive people of their entitlements. This will leave many with little choice but to try and work.
Of course, this rhetoric now neatly aligns with DWP PIP boss Liz Kendall’s back to work agenda. Early on post-election, Kendall also raised the 2.8 million “economically inactive” people off work due to long-term sickness.
In other words, the seemingly innocuous DWP PIP and WCA change could be a sign of dangerous reforms yet to come under Labour.
Feature image via Youtube- the Times and Sunday Times/the Canary
