Personal Capability Assessment results - two thirds of claimants failing
The FT published an article and comment earlier this week, with early results from the new assessments for would-be Employment Support Allowance claimants.
In short, the rumour is that around two thirds of new claimants for Employment Support Allowance are being rejected following a Personal Capability Assessment, rising to 90% in some high unemployment areas. This compares to two thirds passing before the new assessment. This is not surprising in some ways as the intent of the new system was partly to reduce entries onto ESA. Reasons for it could include:
- Rejecting more 'job ready' claimants - there's a widespread view, articulated by Dave Simmonds of CESI in the article, that many people who've been moving onto Incapacity Benefits since the early 90s have been capable of moving back into employment
- Rejecting more 'genuine' claimants - an alternative view, espoused by people campaigning against much of the current welfare reform, is that claimants who have genuine long term health conditions or disabilities affecting ability to work are being rejected
- Transition pains - there's a period during any benefit changes while everyone figures out how to get people through the hoops, so it's likely that the claims success rate will increase dramatically over time, once claimants and the people supporting them know what to do to maximise chances of success
The FT stories also consider the political impact on the official unemployment figures of shifting lots of people from IB/ESA to JSA, and the necessity of finding support programmes that meet the needs of the resulting JSA claimants with disabilities and health conditions, possibly by extending Pathways to Work to some JSA claimants.
Press fever
Following the story's publication, a rather less nuanced version swept across the right wing press:
- 9 in 10 on sick well enough to work (Sun)
- Up to 90 per cent of sickness benefit claims rejected under new system (Telegraph)
- Up to 90% of sickness claimants are fit for work (Daily Mail)
- 90% of sick claims bogus (Express)
- Benefits test shows 2.6m are really fit for work (Evening Standard)
In these stories, the newspapers take the results as proof that the vast majority of sickness and disability benefit claimants are well enough to work. In the more extreme cases, they're using it to justify the dole scrounger characterisations that have marred public debate on welfare reform for so long.
As a quick counter to this view, let's imagine the government introduced a new qualification to replace A Levels. Suppose that, in the first year, only 10% of people taking the exam get a pass grade. Does this mean that only 10% of students are genuinely worthy of passing their courses? Or does it mean that the new exam is both harder and not yet fully understood?
Comments
Quick note 1 - any posts whatsoever that castigate all benefit claimants as scroungers, or all JCP staff / providers as nasty, will be removed.
Quick note 2 - this isn't intended to be a partisan article. It is however very clear that the press coverage of this is political in tone.
It appears that this story came from the FT and is attributed to anonymous "welfare industry insiders". There is no official confirmation or further detail.
It's scarcely unlikely that more people would fail the new tests, since that is what they were designed to do, but without real data it's impossible to come to any reliable conclusions.
Thanks for the attribution Tim - I spotted a few references to the FT, but couldn't find a story on their site. I'm sure I've seen references elsewhere in the last few weeks though. Was there an early research report on the impact of the PCA published recently?
As you spotted, this isn't about the new assessment so much as it's about the biased media treatment of it. Whether this view of claimants will have an immediate impact is another matter. I don't know what happens to public sentiment regarding benefit claimants during a recession, but I would have imagined it becoming more sympathetic.
I wonder if the sudden flood of these stories is our government trying to detract attention away from all the questions being asked about the lack of equipment for our troops in Afghanistan?
That's very direct for a Satirist. It's remarkable how little control the government has over the news agenda though. I'm not at all convinced that civil servants (if they're the source of the rumour) could be prevailed upon to time their communication with the press to the benefit of the government, at this stage.
Newspaper rumours are that civil servants are building informal links with the likely incoming government, to the extent that government programmes running counter to Conservative policy are proving difficult to implement. Funnily enough, the article I read that said that also said that welfare reform is one of the areas still moving full steam ahead, as it had the full support of the Conservatives.
If I were looking to be cynical I would suspect PR chaff from Atos, given their anecdotally rather uninspiring performance on this contract.
My understanding is that Atos have taken over certain JCP admin functions for ESA. I wonder if some of the newly unemployed are being diverted to ESA. As claimants are paid (in many cases) ESA at the same rate as JSA prior to their assessments, there is rarely a difficult overpayment to consider once the assessment is finally done and they get switched back to JSA.
I've not seen any DWP research on the impact of the new assessments.
I work on Pathways to Work and have seen the dramatic increase in fail rates of the WCA. It is not unlikely that there are many claiming IB that could be capable of work, but I would suggest that basing that assumption on the current fail rates is fool-hardy. Anecdotally, we are seeing clients with severe mental health conditions and chronic physical conditions failing WCA. It has been suggested to me that this may be significantly impacted by a question on the ESA50 which asks if the client feels they could be in work in 6 months' time - a question many seem to feel compelled to answer 'yes' to, should that be their true opinion or not.
I have also spoken to clients who are adamant their face-to-face appointment lasted for 5 - 10 minutes as opposed to the 60 minutes stated in their WCA Report. Obviously I can't confirm which is correct, but this has come up again and again.
Update 17/7 - The article's been rewritten in light of the FT source story, which was far more informative and well balanced than the subsequent coverage. The rejigging of the assessment does raise interesting questions about the arbitrariness of the distinction between 'job ready' and 'non-job ready' candidates, although the counter-argument is that the shift is from looking at what people can't do to what they can do.
One obvious possibility that might help both claimants and providers would be to allow Pathways to Work providers to continue delivery to customers whose ESA claims are rejected during delivery.
To be fair, I would not call the FT articled balanced or informative.
The fact it was published at all was a damning indicator of the level of research that went into that article, it was only recently stated in the house of lords that it is to early to comment on this area, even though the press have been recently speculating about it (no doubt commenting on the press coverage covered in this article).
The article(s) did not cover at all the source of the information, nor provide any links to the data. Neither did they cover the amount of appeals, or statistics about the pass/fail rate of appeals, a vital area to cover, as its pointless covering how many people are being failed on medical, and making out its due to the claimaints, without covering the facts about how many of those decisions are upheld or not at appeal.
The article(s) only put forward views from people in favour of the changes, no mention of the fact that in 2007 the press reported that the new tests would be unfairly kicking many people of benefits, who should be unfit for work.
No mention of the problems being noted in the house of lords, and from the tribunal service, welfare rights advisors, claimaints etc about ATOS and their practises.
No claimaints or advisors consulted for their views.
It was a very biased set of articles, even the FT article, which started it all was very biased, and ill-researched with little detail of sources or data.
Im suprised anyone could state otherwise...