There are many more areas of the benefits system where money could be saved, but they wouldn’t be popular, and would be vote losers, so they’re not even discussed. So before each and every round of ‘reform’ disabled people are given bad press in preparation for yet more cuts to disability benefits as a first option. As a result the cuts go through with very little opposition and almost no consequence for the government because most disabled people don’t vote Tory.
I think the face to face assessment has a place in the system where there is doubt as to the veracity of the claim, but there needs to be a change of thinking as to how the assessment is carried out. At the moment it’s done by medical staff recruited from NHS and given minimal training. This is reflected the poor quality of a lot of the decisions because the assessors are not doctors - they are in the main physios, paramedics and nurses and in many cases have no experience of the conditions they are supposed to be assessing.
If the DWP did their job and contacted the healthcare providers actually involved with the claimants and collected proper evidence on which to base decisions, there would be far fewer face to face assessments needed and the quality of decision making would be better. Just for clarity here, it’s not the assessor who makes the decision as to the benefit award. They provide the assessment report which goes to a case worker for DWP who is not medically qualified. The case worker then decides the award based mainly on the assessment report. And as a benefit adviser I’ve seen many assessment reports which directly contradict other medical evidence provided by the claimant, and which clearly demonstrate that the assessor hasn’t properly understood the condition.
To look at the reasons for the increase in appeals you have to go right back to when PIP was introduced. There was an assumption that DLA - it’s’ forerunner - was too easy to claim and that many disabled people were not ‘disabled enough’ (for want of a better phrase) to warrant the cost.
PIP was never intended to provide adequate support for the disabled - it was purely to save money by narrowing the eligibility conditions and introducing a much harsher assessment which was supposed to look at the actual cost of living with a disability. As anyone who has been through the assessment will tell you, there is little correlation between the way some of the activities are assessed and the actual cost. For example, incontinence is a huge expense. The assessment for it looks at how much help a person needs from someone else in dealing with incontinence (including stoma) by assessing whether you can get on and off the toilet unaided, whether you can adequately clean yourself afterwards, and what aids and appliances are needed. There is no examination of costs that feed into incontinence such as increased bills through extra bathing and laundry for example, the cost of specialist bed and personal padding and other peripherals needed. The assessment also doesn’t take into account the increased energy costs attached to specialist disability equipment that has to be charged overnight. For some, this would be unaffordable without PIP support.
As a result of the introduction of PIP, many of the more severely disabled people either lost their award or had it reduced. Not because their condition had changed, but because the eligibility had changed and support was removed or reduced purely as a result of that. Many disabled people lost their jobs because the loss of their motability vehicle meant that they could no longer travel to work. It was estimated at the time that if the motability scheme closed as a result, there would be a significant impact on the UK car industry.
So, predictably, many more people go through the appeal process because it’s the only way to get a fair decision. The first stage - mandatory reconsideration sees the claimant asking DWP to re-examine the decision, usually by asking a different case worker to look at the evidence. Inevitably most decisions stand and the next stage is tribunal, which is expensive and stressful for the claimant.
70% of PIP decisions which go to tribunal are overturned in favour of the claimant. And more and more frequently, the tribunal judges are directing criticism at the DWP for the quality of those decisions. There have been recent recommendations from upper tribunals that DWP should be fined for every decision overturned at tribunal, as a way of making them look more closely at the quality of the decision during the mandatory reconsideration stage, although nothing has been legislated for so far. But I have had experience of claimants who have got as far as getting a set date for tribunal, and as late as a couple of days beforehand they have been contacted by DWP to say that their claim has been looked at again, the award reinstated or increased, and the tribunal proceeding cancelled. I suspect DWP are now starting to look again at cases where they have no reasonable expectation of winning, and reinstating benefit to avoid the criticism.
The system is deeply flawed and weighted against the claimant. Instead of adding to the misery inflicted by the system itself people should be looking at the reasons so many disabled people are against the frequent reassessments of their condition - especially those with disabilities whose effects are unlikely to change. It’s not because they think it’s unfair that they should be assessed for benefits. It’s that they fear the inequality and bias built in to the assessment process itself.