To think that this survey is at odds with what the government is telling us ?

You still haven’t answered my question upthread as to what you believe self reporting to be. Because PIP is only self reporting in the first instance - the application stage. At the assessment stage you have to be able to justify everything you’ve said and the medical evidence and balance of probabilities has to support it. And again, given that PIP doesn’t directly consider the disability itself, but the impact on daily life, any assessment of disability has to include self reporting. So if not via the claimant, then who ? Who will know better than the claimant as to how their own disability impacts their life ? You seem to be discounting it as an option based purely on the assumption that the claimant might lie, without factoring in that there are inbuilt safeguards designed to catch out the lies/inaccuracies.

I worked for DWP - specifically in disability benefits. I’m now in disability support as an outreach worker. The fraud figures from DWP are very low and it’s accepted that deliberate fraud isn’t the problem. It’s a number of factors. The main one of which is the sheer number of claimants. It ballooned because PIP was opened up to stand alone mental health claims and has ballooned again since the pandemic.

It’s not that people are claiming fraudulently it’s that the benefit was opened up to those who were unable to claim under the previous system. So it was inevitable that costs would rise. But as ever, when governments are trying to push through unpopular reforms, the rhetoric doesn’t reflect the facts. Much easier to cut disability support by presenting disabled people as feckless and fraudulent, than genuinely reliant on help with the sometimes overwhelming cost of living with a disability.

There are also support agencies and disability outreach workers like myself, who assist with applications, reconsiderations and appeals. Presumably we’re all complicit in the wholesale fraud that’s apparently taking place under our noses.

And, like I said, I think many people would welcome an increase in fraudulent claims investigation. Why would anyone not want that??

Because fraud isn’t the problem. The financial returns from successful fraud investigations wouldn’t support the cost. The problem is the sheer numbers eligible and claiming. Which creates another problem because the only way to effectively reduce these numbers is to tighten eligibility. Which means that many disabled people will be denied support because they aren’t disabled enough.

Why is anyone who questions the ever increasing benefit bill labelled by some as spiteful or a terrible person? It’s just nonsense.

it depends on how it’s being questioned doesn’t it ? I personally don’t think it’s particularly helpful to assume that the bill is increasing because people are committing fraud. The statistics don’t support that, so investing wholesale in fraud investigation isn’t going to save a brass penny.

Are you under the impression that it’s possible to claim PIP with no supporting medical evidence whatsoever, because that’s certainly the impression you’re giving ?

Fraud isn’t the problem. The problem is that in 2013 when PIP replaced DLA, the coalition government of the day decided it should be open to those with mental health problems.

DLA was predominantly for those with physical conditions and only a few, severe MH conditions were eligible and required robust medical evidence. I’m not saying that MH conditions shouldn’t qualify for PIP, but that government should have realised that by opening up the benefit in this way it was obvious that the cost would increase, and it probably wan’t the best choice give that PIP was supposed to save money.

Investing in more fraud prevention would only increase costs. If the government was serious about reducing costs and providing genuine support then the starting point is better assessments with better qualified medics. This would improve the decision making so that more claimants would get the right decision first time and the need for hugely expensive appeals tribunals would be vastly reduced.

We’re talking about PIP - it’s not means tested so you don’t have to declare income. Or are you talking about ‘self reporting’ ? If the latter, it’s because the whole PIP system is built around the claimant reporting the effects of their condition on the aspects of daily life that the DWP use to assess the impact of the disability and translate it into the likely extra cost involved. What they report is then tested for it’s veracity by the assessor - PIP isn’t just given out like sweeties just because you’ve applied for it.

Doesn’t claim benefit and has no idea how the PIP system works, angry at being accused of swallowing the government rhetoric, but unable or unwilling to say how they have otherwise formed their opinion.

And once more l’m asking you what you understand to be ‘self reporting’. PIP isn’t decided on the basis of the actual medical condition, but its effects on daily life, via a series of descriptors designed to give DWP an overview of the impact of the claimants’ condition.

So given that it’s the claimant who experiences the effects who do you think would be more qualified to report ? And as l’ve pointed out several times, it’s self reported at the application stage. At the assessment stage the claimant has to justify what they’ve said and be able to provide evidence to support it. You seem to think that assessors just blithely accept whatever a claimant says, which, as anyone who has been through this assessment will tell you, is not the case.