Boycott call after DWP wrongly claims DPOs helped devise punitive work scheme
Disabled activists have called on disability charities to boycott any further co-operation with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), after it wrongly claimed that disabled people’s organisations (DPO) had helped draw up its punitive new work scheme.
DWP claimed that DPOs“co-designed” plans to force new claimants of out-of-work disability benefits to take part in its health and work conversation (HWC).
Disability News Service (DNS) revealed in March that nearly all new claimants of employment and support allowance (ESA) would have to attend a compulsory HWC with a DWP job coach, and would face having their benefits sanctioned if they failed to take part in the session “without good cause”.
The HWC will take place weeks or even months before a claimant has had their abilityto work tested through the much-criticised work capability assessment.
The DWP’s plans have been described by disabled activists as “DWP skulduggery”, “pernicious”, “oppressive”, “punitive”, and “abusive”.
Details about the HWC, which is already being rolled out across the country, were revealed in slides used at apresentation delivered by two seniorDWP civil servants, and seen by DNS.
The two civil servants – Ian Anderson, DWP’s project and programme management head of profession, and Matt Russell, its policy advisor for disability employment strategy – claimed in their presentation that the HWC was “co-designed with the Behavioural Insight Team (BIT), health charities, front-line staff, disabled peoples’ organisations and occupational health professionals”.
But DNS has now obtained the names of those disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) and charities through a freedom of information request to DWP, andthose contacted by DNS have denied any such endorsement of the HWC.
One of the DPOs, Manchester-based Breakthrough UK, made it clear that it had not and would not endorse the HWC.
Peter Jackson, Breakthrough UK’s deputy chief executive, accused DWP of a “misrepresentation” of what had taken placeat a meeting with other disability organisations in a north London jobcentre about 18 months ago.
He said DWP had asked for feedback on a voluntary scheme in which job coaches would carry out informal conversations with ESA claimants about work and their attitude to employment.
He said: “There was no conditionality to it. It was entirely voluntary. There was no talk of sanctions for people who didn’t want to have that conversation.
“We would not have endorsed or supported anything that had any conditionality or potential sanctioning attached to it because that is completely and fundamentally in conflict with our approach.”
He said that any mention that ESA claimants would be penalised if they did not take part “would have sent alarm bells ringing”.
He added: “A big focus was on the fact that it was a voluntary thing.
“Quite categorically, there was absolutely no mention of conditionality or sanctioning in that meeting.
“That is definitely something that has been introduced since that meeting.
“I would be very annoyed if [DWP] were claiming that the organisations around that table had endorsed something that was basically not discussed in that meeting.”
Liz Sayce, chief executive of Disability Rights UK (DR UK), another of the organisations listed in the freedom of information response, said she was “not happy” that DWP had said that DR UK had helped co-design a mandatory HWC with sanctions.
But she said it was “important also to say we want government to involve disabled people early in policy making. We just need everyone to be clear how decisions are made.”
She said DR UK was “vehemently opposed both to the current sanctions regime and to any extension of it”, and had made that clear in meetings with ministers and civil servants.
She said DR UK was “consulted but did not agree with the proposal for mandatory work and health conversations”.
Jane Hatton, director of the user-led disability employment social enterprise Evenbreak, said she and other DPOs had stressed their opposition to sanctions at a DWP consultation event on the government’s work, health and disability green paper.
She said there was “much discussion about the sanction regime and how disabled jobseekers were terrified of being penalised for no good reason”.
She added: “I had attended the meeting as an opportunity to share my views, as had other participants. I suspect our views were both unwelcome and ignored.
“And yes, I am extremely concerned about the impact [of the HWC] on disabled people whose lives are already made much more difficult than they need to be.”
At another event she ran herself, to inform jobcentre staff about Evenbreak, she “made it very clear that Evenbreak should be a resource that people can choose to use, rather than it being something claimants have to commit to under the threat of sanctions”.
The mental health charity Mind, another of the charities listed by DWP, said it had been clear in its discussions with the department that any employment support “needs to be offered without the threat of sanctions, which we believe to be cruel, inappropriate and ineffective”.
Paul Spencer, Mind’s policy and campaigns manager, said: “We had hoped that the HWC would be an opportunity for people to discuss the support that could be put in place to help them achieve their ambitions, free from the damaging pressure of sanctions.
“Unfortunately, while the HWC has some good principles behind it, we are hugely disappointed that this support will not be voluntary.”
Disabled activist Rick Burgess said: “It’s clear the DWP are again acting dishonestly and misleading organisations they consult with. Which reinforces the need to boycott them.
“Hopefully in future, organisations will see this fraud being perpetuated by DWP and refuse involvement.
“The reputational harm done by being involved with the DWP will only grow, so better to get out now and side with disabled people, and not their oppressors.”
Another disabled activist, Gail Ward, from Black Triangle, who discovered the presentation slides and passed them to DNS,said DWP’s comments proved that it could not be trusted as it attempted to “hound” claimants towards the workplace before they felt ready.
She said that it was guilty of “breathtaking arrogance”, and backed the call for disability charities to boycott any further involvement with DWP.
A DWP spokesman refused to apologise for the claims by Anderson and Russell that the health and work conversation was co-designed by DPOs, when those organisationshad made it clear they were firmly opposed to sanctions, conditionality and a mandatory HWC.
Even though DNS had asked in the freedom of information request for the names of organisations referred to by Anderson and Russell as co-designing the HWC, the DWP spokesman said the names provided were just those that “were consulted during the development of the HWC”.
He said: “We used various feedback to help design the HWC – however not all contributions will have been used.
“It would be inappropriate to comment on who gave what feedback as part of the process.”
He said that any actions agreed by a claimant in the mandatory HWC would be voluntary, while there would be DWP “safeguards” to ensure “appropriate exemptions from attending the HWC”.
4 May 2017
EHRC confusion after minister appears to scrap disability commissioner role
The government appears to have secretly scrapped the post of disability commissioner at the equality and human rights watchdog, but is refusing to confirm that it has done so.
The decision only emerged following the government appointment of the disabled Tory peer Lord [Kevin] Shinkwin to the board of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).
His appointment came after the government advertised last autumn for a disabled person to replace another Tory peer, Lord [Chris] Holmes, as EHRC’s disability commissioner.
The appointment of Lord Shinkwin came more than three months after the post was supposed to have been filled.
It was assumed – and reported last week by Disability News Service (DNS) – that Lord Shinkwin would be the watchdog’s new disability commissioner.
EHRC failed to correct that assumption last week when answering questions about his appointment, but now claims the Tory peer has only been appointed as a “commissioner who has a disability” and not as the “disability commissioner”.
The commission appeared to be taken by surprise when DNS pointed out that Lord Shinkwin and the other disabled people who had applied for the position had been told in a government information pack that the successful candidate would “act as the Commission’s Disability Commissioner”.
After it was shown this information pack, the commission refused to answer a series of questions, including whether the government had told the commission it was scrapping the post of disability commissioner, and at what point it had done so.
It also refused to say if Lord Shinkwin had originally applied to be the disability commissioner, rather than just a commissioner, and when the commission was toldby the government that the peer had not been appointed to that particular post.
An EHRC spokesman said that it was “a government appointment so some of the questions you are asking would need to be directed to them”.
He said the commission’s statutory disability committee, which had been chaired by Lord Holmes and his predecessors as part of their roles as disability commissioners, was now being replaced by a non-statutory disability advisory committee (DAC).
He said the commission was “considering what arrangements for chairing and membership of the new DAC will ensure we are best-placed to develop strong arrangements for engaging with disability stakeholders for the future”.
Asked about Lord Shinkwin’s appointment, a spokesman for the minister for women and equalities, Justine Greening, who was responsible for appointingthe peer, refused to answer a series of questions, and said the department was “not at liberty to release information about individual applications”.
He said Greening had met the government’s legal requirement to appoint at least one commissioner “who is or has been disabled” to the EHRC board, but refused to say if the government had scrapped the role of disability commissioner.
4 May 2017
Election forces MPs to abandon PIP inquiry, but evidence backs up dishonesty claims
Statements submitted to MPs have provided further evidence of widespread dishonesty among healthcare professionals who carry out disability benefit assessments, but theirinquiryhas had to be abandoned because of the prime minister’s decision to call a general election.
Despite its inquiry into the personal independence payment (PIP) assessment process having to be scrapped,the Commons work and pensions select committee has published written evidenceit has received from PIP claimants and disability organisations.
The committee held an urgent evidence sessionabout the assessment process in March, a hearing partly triggered by a Disability News Service (DNS) investigation, before seeking further written evidence.
DNS had provided the committee with substantial evidence of widespread dishonesty among PIP assessors in the reports they prepare for government decision-makers.
The DNS investigation revealed that assessors working for the outsourcing companies Capita and Atos – most of them nurses – had repeatedly lied, ignored written evidence and dishonestly reported the results of physical examinations.
DNS has now collectednearly 200 examples of cases in which PIP claimants have said that healthcare professionals working for Capita and Atos produced dishonest assessment reports.
DWP has consistently claimed that there is no dishonesty at all among its outsourced healthcare assessors.
Inclusion London, the pan-London disabled people’s organisation, provided the most detailed written evidence of all the individuals and groups that contributed to the committee’s inquiry.
It said in its evidence: “Again and again Disabled people are reporting that assessors have ignored writtenand verbal evidence and that reports do not reflect what occurred in the assessment.”
Inclusion London quoted widely from evidence compiled by DNS, and concluded: “Theextent to which false information is included in assessment reports cannot be attributed to one or two negligent assessors but indicates systemic failings with the current PIP assessment process.”
It called for all assessments to be recorded, and for “a clear and accessible system for Disabled people to file complaints against assessors with an independent body and for complaint statistics to be made public”.
It also called for a new PIP assessment, based on the social model of disability and created in co-production with disabled people,which focuses on“barriers and the impact of impairment on daily life rather than functionality”.
Other written evidence submitted to the committee appears to confirm the conclusions of the DNS investigation.
Among those who responded to a survey by Disability Rights UK (DR UK) was a healthcare professional with afirst-class degree in physiotherapy.
They said they had been “shocked by the level of errors, inaccuracies, omissions and, quite possibly, lies” in the assessment report compiled for their PIP claim, according to DR UK’s evidence to the committee.
The respondent concluded that “the musculoskeletal assessment conducted was appalling and could not have provided sufficient information upon which a decision regarding my physical capabilities to carry out work for any period of time could be made.
“Lies were also told about the content of the musculoskeletal assessment – data was recorded for tests which were not conducted.”
Another DR UK survey respondent described how PIP decisions were often overturned on appeal due to “assessors making inaccurate statements, assessors making false statements, assessors incorrectly interpreting things the claimant said or did”.
In its evidence to the committee, the mental health charity Rethink said that respondents to its own survey on PIP “felt that therewas a discrepancy between what was discussed at the assessment and the content of the subsequent written report.
“We received several examples of PIP applicants claiming thatassessors haddeliberately misinterpreted them and in… somecasesincluded complete fabrications intheirreports.”
But the evidence compiled by the committee may now end up being discarded because the decision by Theresa May to call a general election on 8 June means that parliament was dissolved this week, leading to some committee inquiries having to be abandoned.
Mark Lucas, a PIP claimant who has spoken out repeatedly about the “shockingly poor and dishonest” assessment system, and has givenevidence to an inquiry into PIP assessments set up by Stoke-on-Trent City Council, said the decision to call an election was “another set back at the end of many set backs”.
He said: “Clearly the health professionals have been dishonest and the government has gone to great lengths to ensure the PIP scam is kept quiet for as long as possible.
“Everyone knows what has gone on is wrong but only few have voiced their concerns.
“I am sure if we continue to have the same government the rights of persons with disabilities will be further abused.”
A spokeswoman for the committee said the PIP investigation was “one of the inquiries that fell with the announcement of the election”.
When the committee is reformed in the new parliament – probably in September – it could choose to relaunch the inquiry, but will be under no obligation to do so, but if it does it could choose to “keep and use the evidence they have now”, she said.
4 May 2017
DPAC issues tactical voting plea to save country from five more years of Tory rule
Anti-cuts activists have called for disabled people to vote tactically at the general election, in a bid to remove the Conservative party from power.
Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) launched a campaign this week to “unseat” the Tory government, with a protest outside the party’s election headquarters in Westminster.
Although they failed to achieve their aim of occupying the building, they blocked traffic near Westminster Abbey for about an hour, in one of a series of DPAC protests likely to take place in the lead-up to the general election on 8 June.
Among DPAC’s plans for further protests during the election campaign is to make a “social visit” to the Maidenhead constituency of prime minister Theresa May on 3 June.
The campaign will draw attention to last November’s damning report by the UN’s committee on the rights of persons with disabilities, which found the UK government’s social security reforms had led to “grave or systematic violations” of the UN disability convention.
Linda Burnip, co-founder of DPAC, the grassroots network of disabled people that persuaded the UN to carry out its inquiry,said: “The government are supposed to make sure it is highly publicised [but] they have buried it.”