Dear Laura, thankyou for securing a debate on PIP in Westminster Hall.
I understand the debate focusses on claimant experience. I want to comment that mine echoed the burocratic obfuscation evident in “I, Daniel Blake” which was a very literal depiction of the benefits process in the UK at the time (Jul 2016- Apr 2017) and not exaggerated. I did make a submission to the Work and Pensions Committee inquiry into PIP and ESA.
I am an Oxford university biosciences (zoology) graduate and have had ME CFIDS since 1986 during my degree when I was forced to take an extra year to prepare for finals. I never recovered and spent a decade in dire poverty, unable to work, before diagnosis. I am now under the care of Dr Sarah Myhill who specialises in helping patients with this kind of illness as a private GP. I hope you were able to attend the parliamentary screening of the “Unrest” documentary recently. My condition is primarily immunological but still not well understood by anyone, yet my illness is very real and very debilitating, both physically and neurocognitively.
The salient fact of my PIP experience is that I was forced to go to appeal without any help at all, (as the local advice shop people were too stretched) at considerable detriment to my health, to see my appeal upheld allowed on the papers, based on my doctor’s written evidence, which my assessor had from the very beginning, before the initial assessment interview. In other words I was misassessed and not for the first time, as this happened to me before in 2002.
The evidence I provided in good faith was ignored. There was evidence my written submission had not even been read. Moreover the assessment report in my case was provably self contradictory giving indications of inconsistent adjustments motivated by an apparent intent to reduce the monetary value of my award i.e. malfeasance hiding behind incompetence.
The Mandatory reconsideration likewise entirely failed to reconsider my doctor’s evidence, which given the explicit clarity of the evidence written by a doctor with experience of assisting with benefits assessment, indicates that the reconsideration process was disingenuous. It seems designed to give the appearance of reconsideration without providing a fair hearing and provides a further obstacle which has the intent of “weeding out” claimants by discouragement.
The HMCTS tribunal awarded enhanced mobility and standard daily living with a review date in 2021 instead of standard mobility until 2018.
Only the HMCTS tribunal provided a fair hearing, everything under DWP influence was biased against genuine claimants with the apparent intent of reducing the benefits bill.
My PIP assessment forced me into stressful contention with an unfair system which has had a detrimental affect on the disease progression i.e. my illness is more severe now due to the affects of stress due to appealing PIP and having to work so hard under time constraint to understand the rules and make my case in writing.
What I want to say is that PIP assessment is biased to the DWPs political and financial agenda when it should be a fair inquiry from the outset. This bias proceeds out of a Chomskyan pressure on the companies outsourced to do the assessments to earn the approbation of the DWP and repeat contracts. A similar pressure is evident in the decisions of DWP decisions makers processing mandatory reconsiderations.
Furthermore the harassment of claimants by disingenuous assessments and reconsiderations and overly frequent repetition of assessments evinces a governmental resent of the disabled and criminalises all claimants to victimise the weak under the guise of the polemics of austerity. This and an historic press campaign focussing on benefits malfeasance resulted in a measurable increase in disability hate crime in the country as a whole to such an extent that I have been afraid to ask for or use a blue badge. This is why I say the attitudes emanating from authority have been unconscionable and disgraceful and degrading to peace and the rule of law in our land.
Regarding party politics neither of the two major parties hands are clean in this matter and it behooves the fair minded in both parties to work across party boundaries to overcome the political short-sightedness behind these phenomena and clean up our act to treat the ill and disabled fairly and with compassion and encourage such attitudes in the press and among the public at large.
I hope all participating in the debate at Westminster Hall will be encouraged to reflect on the purpose of common morality in justice and governance and the responsibility of leadership to the nation.
Many thanks for your efforts, yours sincerely, Richard ... etc
It is an inhumane system designed to cut down on the number of claimants. The short time span is particularly cruel, as is the length of the form and the ridiculous questions designed to catch you out particularly if you have a fluctuating illness.
