UK: Disability benefits (UC, ESA and PIP) - news and updates 2023 (including government plans to scrap the work capability assessment)

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Shadrach Loom

Shadrach Loom

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Split from the 2021-2 thread

From today’s Politico newsletter:

Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Jonathan Ashworth will deliver a speech to the Center for Social Justice think tank this morning, pledging reforms to out-of-work support. The Labour plans involve allowing people on sickness benefits to return to the same welfare regime if a job doesn’t work out, rather than undergoing reassessment, in order to give people the confidence to take a role without the threat of losing their funding if it isn’t right for them.

This sounds as if it could be quite useful for some pwME.
 
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We've done that in the US for a long time. If you're receiving SSDI and you return to work, you continue receiving full benefits for 9 months. If you stop working after less than 3 years, your benefits are reinstated immediately and if it's under 5 years, you need to reapply, but under a simpler procedure.
 
RedFox said:
We've done that in the US for a long time. If you're receiving SSDI and you return to work, you continue receiving full benefits for 9 months. If you stop working after less than 3 years, your benefits are reinstated immediately and if it's under 5 years, you need to reapply, but under a simpler procedure.
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LOL there's no way it will be like that here! if you got paid just £2 a wk they'd still deduct it from yr measely benefit amount.

From what i've read elsewhere (sorry no energy to go back find links now) it will be for 1yr - so if you start work & then cant continue within a yr, then you wouldnt have to be reassessed again. But you can bet it wont be that simple. I mean it sounds good - at this point if you started work for a couple of months & couldnt manage to continue you'd have to start again from scratch.

In any case this is only a proposal from a party that isnt even in power, so i take it all with a pinch of salt.
 
Shadrach Loom said:
This sounds as if it could be quite useful for some pwME.
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It would have been very useful for me. Doing part time fixed-term contracts could have meant I was able to stay in work longer, using a system of working for a few months and then claiming ESA during the obligatory recovery period before starting the next one.

The trouble was that if I was off the ESA allowance for more than 13 weeks, I'd be bumped down onto the assessment rate when I claimed again, which wasn't liveable-on (for example, using the current rates, it would pay £77.00 per week instead of £204.75).

If it's the commission I'm thinking of, I submitted evidence when these recommendations were being formulated. It's bizarre that people are forced onto benefits full-time because the rules mean it's not feasible for them to work. Even if I could only have managed five months a year, that's still five months that I wasn't claiming living costs and was able to pay a bit back into the system in income taxes.

There are no negatives in enabling disabled people to do what work they can, when they can. But given the ingrained attitudes now present in the Department for Work & Pensions, even if it were set up, interventions would creep in where people were pressured to work more weeks per year, or more hours per week. Which would quickly take the whole thing right back to square 1.
 
JemPD said:
In any case this is only a proposal from a party that isnt even in power, so i take it all with a pinch of salt.
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Absolutely.

I’ve worked at the intersection of HMG largesse and industry beneficiaries for a while, though, and I’m getting heavy deja vu from 2009, when public affairs professionals had far more interest in the opposition than in the government of the day. So I’m more interested in what Labour say than the current incumbents - although, of course, in 2010 all of us were blindsided by the coalition!
 
JemPD said:
LOL there's no way it will be like that here! if you got paid just £2 a wk they'd still deduct it from yr measely benefit amount.

From what i've read elsewhere (sorry no energy to go back find links now) it will be for 1yr - so if you start work & then cant continue within a yr, then you wouldnt have to be reassessed again. But you can bet it wont be that simple. I mean it sounds good - at this point if you started work for a couple of months & couldnt manage to continue you'd have to start again from scratch.

In any case this is only a proposal from a party that isnt even in power, so i take it all with a pinch of salt.
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In the US, if you earn above a certain amount, your benefits eventually stop. But your earnings never reduce your benefit amount. (This is for people who are receiving disability benefits based on their work history. For people who didn't/couldn't build up a career before becoming disabled, there's a different program with different rules)
 
Budget policies aim to get carers, disabled people and retirees back into work

Jeremy Hunt said yesterday that he was planning a “back to work” Budget aimed at increasing the numbers of people in employment.
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Mr Hunt’s move to scrap the Work Capability Assessment, touted as “the biggest reform to the welfare system in a decade”, is intended to allow disabled people to work without losing their benefits.

“The goal of avoiding labelling some people as unable to work is valuable, but no one should pretend this reform is easy – it will take years to implement,” said Torsten Bell, the chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, a think-tank.

But Mr Bell said that while some disabled people would benefit, others, such as those who are too ill to work but do not have a longer-lasting disability, would lose out.
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Budget policies aim to get carers, disabled people and retirees back into work (msn.com)
 
Its terrifying. i'd give so much to be well enough to work again, i find being too ill to work really distressing, but no amount of 'carrot or stick' is going to change my abilities.

The WCA is an abomination, but replacing it will only mean something worse I'm afraid
 
Full details will be released by Gov. on Wednesday a.m, these half trails released to media are often very misleading. Big question will be how quickly changes to ill health benefits can in reality be introduced - on past experience new rules will apply only to new claimants - it's not clear what the new review regime will be if the WCA goes - suggestion in some quarters is that PIP assessments will replace WCA and reassessment will follow PIP model.
 
I find it odd that the UK is making two major changes in just a decade. (The previous one was the phaseout of ESA?) Disability benefits haven't been reshuffled in the US in decades. Social Security began paying benefits to older disabled workers in 1956 and younger ones in 1960. SSI (for people who didn't work enough to earn SSDI) started in 1974.
 
RedFox said:
I find it odd that the UK is making two major changes in just a decade. (The previous one was the phaseout of ESA?) Disability benefits haven't been reshuffled in the US in decades. Social Security began paying benefits to older disabled workers in 1956 and younger ones in 1960. SSI (for people who didn't work enough to earn SSDI) started in 1974.
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A commentator on the Benefits and Work site wrote -

Creating a new assessment will have the effect of invalidating all legal precedents, which was the attraction to the govt of abandoning the existing measures of assessment when the WCA was introduced. That, I imagine, explains the interest. All relevant case law will no longer be relevant and will have to be established all over again, with many dying along the way. I suppose this is the govt's sadistic response to Long Covid and the looming prospect of a huge increase in the number of claimants.
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CRG said:
suggestion in some quarters is that PIP assessments will replace WCA and reassessment will follow PIP model.
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the models for reassessments/review is pretty much the same anyway so that doesnt really make sense to me.
CRG said:
on past experience new rules will apply only to new claimants
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initially. eventually everyone gets moved across. Although it takes a crazy amount of time, the major overhaul which introduced the WCA from the old Incapacity Benefit, which started 10-15yrs ago isnt even complete yet! with (as i understand it) some people still waiting to be transferred to ESA, which is now UC, which will now become....

They are just continually trying to reduce the welfare bill under cover of demonisation of claimants. Last time it was ministers saying there was "massive fraud in the benefits system" even while the DWP's own figures showed only 0.3% of claims were fraudulent. 0.3%
This time it's all about "saving the economy" by getting the inactive back into work.
So first we were a bunch of malingering scroungers & now we're being scapegoated for the country's economic problems. Sorry but i think its utterly shameful.

I hope that doesnt break the political forum rules, i cant even remember which party it was so i'm not trying to be political about it, but i accept if mods feel it needs to be removed.
 
I'm not going to comment to avoid party po1itics, but I think it is re1evant to mention the fact that the Hea1th Disparities White Paper was she1ved 1ess than 2 months ago. This seems significant as it wou1d have high1ighted the 1ink between hea1th and poverty.

https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-...-paper-disappearing-shows-a-dangerous-pattern

I actua11y fee1 sickened and very fearfu1 for the 1ong term by this 1atest announcement, even if it might take some years for any change to be imp1emented or effect me as a 1ong term ESA c1aimant in the support group.
 
Mr Hunt’s move to scrap the Work Capability Assessment, touted as “the biggest reform to the welfare system in a decade”, is intended to allow disabled people to work without losing their benefits.

On the face of it that is a good idea. One of the big issues the disabled face is how punitive and irrational social security systems are to those who can only work sometimes, and especially unpredictably.

But the devil is in the detail, and as we all know from long bitter experience it is rarely, if ever, done in a way genuinely designed to actually help people do what they can with what they have.

So excuse me if I agree with those who think this is just to work around established case law, and try to sweep the LC epidemic under the carpet.
 
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What worries me, and is of particu1ar concern for PWME, is that the DWP may decide that on1y those who meet the criteria for not being reassessed for the current WCA wi11 be protected from things 1ike conditionality etc.

To avoid a reassessment, claimants will have to satisfy, all four of the following:

  1. the level of function will always meet LCWRA criteria;
  2. the condition will always be present (some lifelong conditions are present from birth, but others will develop or be acquired later in life);
  3. no realistic prospect of recovery of function (with advice on this being based on currently available treatment and not on the prospect of scientists discovering a cure in the future);
  4. unambiguous condition (following all relevant clinical investigations a recognised medical diagnosis has been made).
If all the above four criteria and any of the LCWRA criteria are met, the HCP is to advise the decision maker that the claimant has a Severe Condition and has LCWRA.
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https://www.disabilityrightsuk.org/...-capability-assessment-reassessment-published

In 2017 any new c1aimant put in the 1imited capacity for work (as opposed to the 'support group') 1ost their disabi1ity premium (i.e. their out of work benefit is reduced to the same as hea1thy c1aimants). This was done to 'incentivise' c1aimants p1aced in this group (which was touted as for those with time 1imited hea1th conditions, a1though that isn't the rea1ity) back into work!

Claimants who are placed in the limited capability for work (LCW) group are those who the DWP consider are not currently capable of work, but who may be capable of work at some time in the future.

A claimant with a health condition or disability who makes a claim for UC on or after 3 April 2017, and who is placed in the LCW group following a Work Capability Assessment, will not get any additional payment of UC.
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It's very hard to score the maximum points on any sing1e criteria in the WCA (which passports a c1aimant into the 'support group') - there is no 'rea1 wor1d' test to judge if work is appropriate for a c1aimant. I think it's around 50% of ESA/UC c1aimants are put into the support group based on the 'exceptiona1 circumstances ru1e' (the claimant suffers from some specific disease or bodily or mental disablement and, by reasons of such disease or disablement, there would be a substantial risk to the mental or physical health of any person if the claimant were found not to have limited capability for work).

https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/universal-credit-uc/uc-faq/limited-capability-for-work

So I wou1dn't be surprised if the u1timate goa1 of scrapping of the WCA is to reduce the rate of UC/ESA to a sing1e rate, with no disab1ity premium. Or maybe to on1y give the premium to those deemed to have a 'Severe Condition' (using the DWP criteria).

This is why it's so important that ME is recognised as potentia11y a progressive and permanent condition with no current1y effective treatments or cure.
 
Sean said:
allow disabled people to work without losing their benefits.
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This was partly IDS idea behind UC. But its still a bit of a catch 22.

TBH I've lost track of what's what with regards to ESA.

They supposedly scrapped Income related ESA (although a lot of the recent help with cost of living, heating etc is only claimable for those on income related ESA) , to be replaced with UC, but it was also replaced with 'New Style ESA' which according to the gov website:

"You may be able to claim New Style Employment and Support Allowance with, or instead of Universal Credit, depending on your National Insurance record."
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/new-style-employment-and-support-allowance

Which is also in practice a bit of a nonsense, as that is the old 'contribution based ESA' which isn't really based on NI contributions.:confused:
 
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