Government backs down on some retesting for sickness benefits

Government backdown won’t apply to all but is an opening

The Work Capability Assessment (WCA) is highly damaging to those of us who have to go through it. Despite this, both main parties have consistently denied that there is any problem, and claimed that the WCA is necessary to weed out scroungers. That might be about to change.

Firstly, Labour announced at their conference that they would scrap the WCA altogether. This doesn’t mean much right now since they are not in power, but it is a major turnaround for a party that introduced the WCA in the first place and has refused to even oppose most benefit cuts in the last few years. Jeremy Corbyn called the WCA degrading. Debbie Abrahams acknowledged that it makes people feel worthless and dehumanised.

It’s not all good, since they still refuse to oppose benefit sanctions, and used the same old language about work being the goal for everyone, but it is a start.

Secondly, Damian Green, Tory Secretary of Work and Pensions, has told the media that the government will stop repeatedly retesting people who aren’t going to improve.

“If someone has a disease which can only get worse then it doesn’t make sense to ask them to turn up for repeated appointments. If their condition is not going to improve, it is not right to ask them to be tested time after time. So we will stop it.”

This is a huge reversal of policy. Continuous retesting was always the point of Employment Support Allowance (ESA) although there have never been enough resources to apply that to everyone.

Many people are celebrating this. However, there are big questions as the government haven’t specified any details. I’m not sure they even know yet. Reports imply that the exemption from retesting will apply to people with specific illnesses that are known to only deteriorate. If that is the case, then many people who have illnesses that are just as bad as those on the list but are not recognised as such, will miss out. So will people who have not yet been diagnosed, and that can mean people who are sick for years - or decades - before they find out the cause.

The more logical policy would be to apply this exemption to everyone who is in the Support Group, since this category is meant to contain people who have no prospect of improvement. In practice the Support Group doesn’t work like that, and people who will never improve are frequently placed in the Work Related Activity Group instead, thanks to DWP efforts to deny them support in order to keep costs down. If the exemption were to apply to the Support Group only then it would still be unfair to all those improperly placed in the WRAG.

Whether the Government decides who qualifies based on diagnosis, or based on support group, it will still be unfair. However, I do see this announcement as a big win. A Tory government minister said “constant reassessment is pointless” and “does increase their stress and anxiety levels” “causes financial insecurity” to describe repeated work capability assessments. That is a huge admission for the Tories, or even for Labour.

We can use this. We can attack the inconsistencies in the government’s argument. We can point out that the Work Capability Assessment is damaging to everyone. We can show that their descriptions apply to Personal Independence Payments too, even though they’ve spent six years attacking PIP’s predecessor, DLA as “abandoning” people so as to justify welfare reform and repeated reassessments. This isn’t an unqualified victory and won’t necessarily improve things for that many people (perhaps including myself) but this is a major event in the struggle against welfare cuts of the last few years.

Author: Latentexistence

The world is broken and I can't fix it because I am broken. I can, however, rant about it all and this is where I do that when I can get my thoughts together. Most of the time you'll find my words on Twitter rather than here though. I sometimes write for Where's The Benefit too.

One thought on “Government backs down on some retesting for sickness benefits”

  1. I have recently been through one of these assessment 5 weeks ago I have now been put in a group that will never be asked to work or attend assessments again but I still want to do something just to get me out the house and so the job centre have found me some unpaid work in there offices helping others which suites me I was a teacher and social worker for over twenty but I had an accident which caused my spine to be broken.
    I do not have a specific condition because what’s happening to me is very rare so it has no name.
    You say about DLA and pip well for it not changed because on DLA I was forced to reapply and be assessed every 3 years even when two consultant and there own doctor wrote I would never get better I would only deteriorate. But still they insist I go through the stress and strain of form filling and physical assessment
    Once you have been seen it should be a quick telephone chat has anything changed u Ave you got better or worse ? But once have been established you qualify for top award U should never need to be seen again. It’s degrading.
    Especially for people who suffer mental illness in the form of severe anxiety, this constant trying to prove you ill enough make you worse. I cannot understand why the people are so stupid who come up with these plans why not ask people like my self to come up with assessments and procedure let’s get the people who have go through the system to design the system. I offer my service free to them so we can get this right.

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