Universal Credit/ESA Trouble Ahead

Reservations / Trouble ahead. Absolutely, the fears of a lot of people were summed up by the article written by the MDC’s own Alexandra Crampton :-

October 27, 2010 by Alexandra Crampton – MDC Leave a Comment

“It was announced today that over 3/4 of the people taking the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) have been found fit for work (or withdrew their application) – compared to 37% for Incapacity Benefit – and much higher than the government’s prediction of 49% of people being found fit for work.

We are concerned that this high rate may mean that people with complex, rare and often severely-disabling neuromuscular conditions will be incorrectly assessed as fit for work.

We have already got in touch with the government to recommend structural reform of the WCA here and here following the independent review that is currently being undertaken by Professor Harrington.

We have recommended that to ensure the process is fair for people with rare and complex conditions, additional medical information is accepted in the assessment process from your consultant – currently most people are assessed by health professionals who have no experience with muscular dystrophy and do not understand the condition.

We are also concerned that the WCA further fails in to take into consideration real-life context – it does not measure the availability of accessible and appropriate work, only functionality. The failure to assess real-life context when assessing ESA claimants points to a wider issue with the proposed reforms: for many disabled people who are able to work, it can be almost impossible to find, obtain and retain employment, due to inaccessible workplaces, transport and employer attitudes – as Trailblazers discovered in their Right to Work investigation.

Crucially, we believe that the transfer of all Incapacity Benefit claimants onto Employment and Support Allowance (due to be completed by 2014) cannot be based on the results of a test with such a high rate of failure, and has been found to be dangerously inaccurate for people with complex and long-term disabling conditions.”

75 % is a very big number. The figures seem to state clearly that many thousands of IB claimants just will not simply migrate, they will be “fit for work” and as part of the Work Related Activity Group will have their ESA time limited to 12 months. If you have a wage-earner or a small amount of assetts you will not get the means tested safety net of benefits. This will be a very major change for many thousands of disabled people. Most neutral observers agree this is just not fair. Aren’t you glad now that you paid all those NI contributions, just to be cast adrift.