Crippen Cartoons cartoons at the cutting edge of disability

WTF?!

Labour are once again preparing to roll out policies which are basically those started by the Tory government. These include reinstating contractors for health and work assessments such as Capita, Serco and Ingeus UK and the possible merging of benefit assessments and/or the scrapping of the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) along with further changes to Personal Independent Payment (PIP).

These assessment companies will take over from disgraced DWP PIP contractor Atos. However, as reported in the Canary, these private outsourcing firms, particularly Serco and Maximus have a long history of harm towards chronically ill and disabled people.

In Maximus’s case, it has overseen some of the government’s WCAs with often fatal effect, including running the process leading to the deaths of multiple people. On top of this, Serco, Maximus, and Ingeus have all run a key government back to work programme. Not only have they failed to meet low government-set targets, but they’ve also harmed chronically ill people in the process.

If Labour stick to the Tory plan, these changes will be used as a pretext setting the stage for other harmful DWP reforms which significantly the new Labour government has failed to rule out.

Crucially though, these changes are set to deny hundreds of thousands of chronically ill and disabled claimants their vital benefits. This is because, as policy adviser Ken Butler at Disability Rights UK told the Disability News Service (DNS):

“The health element proposals will mean that around 632,000 disabled people who receive the employment and support allowance or universal credit support component will lose this as they do not receive PIP or DLA.”

Specifically, as the Canary’s Steve Topple detailed, this will most likely impact chronically ill people and those living with mental health conditions. He explained that the reason for this is that many of these people:

“Do not fit into PIP’s rigid criteria box!”

Despite calls from disability rights campaigners for the new government to ditch the Tories’ plans, Labour has yet to signal it will indeed do this. To the contrary, it has in fact somewhat rebutted their efforts to challenge the former government’s reforms.

Significantly, as the Disability New Service (DNS) revealed, government lawyers are still planning to appeal the information commissioners order to release the previous government’s assessment on its plans to do away with the WCA. Therefore, as DNS noted:

“This could add to fears that the new government has no plans to scrap Conservative work and pensions policies such as abolishing the WCA, tightening the assessment in the short term, or reforming PIP.”

Moreover, we still don’t know if Labour will continue with the merging of benefit assessments and/or the scrapping of the WCA.

Topple also pointed out how the then Tory government might use this to push chronically ill people into work. Critically, he wrote that:

“There are now over 360,000 more people who are chronically ill and not working than before the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. The government classes these people as “economically inactive”. It’s currently on a drive to get some of the nine million people who are economically inactive into work.”

Given this, he suggested that:

“By removing the WCA and just relying on PIP entitlement, the DWP will be able to strip some of these economically inactive people of their entitlements. This will leave many with little choice but to try and work.”

Of course, this rhetoric now neatly aligns with DWP PIP boss Liz Kendall’s back to work agenda which will affect 2.8 million “economically inactive” people off work due to long-term sickness.

So, it’s unclear whether any of the other Tory-instigated plans will continue. But given Labour’s rhetoric, they may well do.

Watch this space!

You can read the full story in the Canary.

Description of cartoon for those using screen reading software

Labour’s new chancellor Rachel Reeves is standing alongside an old car wreck which has a large sold sign upon it. Written on the car is ‘Old Tory policies’, which is crossed out and replaced by ‘New labour policies’. Rishi Sunak is standing at the other side of the car with a wad of money in his hand. He is saying to Reeves: “There you go Rachel – a lick of paint and no one will know the difference!”