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PIP investigation: Hundreds give evidence of assessment failings to MPs
By John Pring Disability News Service 2nd November 2017
Scores of disabled people and welfare advisers have told a Commons inquiry that disability benefit assessment reports completed on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions are filled with “lies and misinformation”.
The work and pensions select committee is carrying out an inquiry into the assessment process for both personal independence payment (PIP) and employment and support allowance (ESA).
By last night (Wednesday), more than 1,800 people had submitted evidence to the inquiry via an online forum, which closes on 10 November, although not all the posts were about dishonesty and many were about the work capability assessment, the eligibility test for ESA.
The forum posts provide further corroboration for the evidence compiled by Disability News Service (DNS) during a year-long investigation into claims of dishonesty at the heart of the PIP assessment system.
Only last week, DNS revealed that complaints about the PIP assessment process rose by nearly 900 per cent last year – from 142 in 2015-16 to 1,391 in 2016-17.
Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary, Debbie Abrahams, said last week that the “huge increase” showed that the healthcare professionals who carry out the assessments must be held to account.
Post after post on the forum describes how assessors working for the outsourcing companies Atos and Capita lied in reports they prepared for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) following face-to-face assessments.
One PIP claimant, “Paul”, said the report produced after his face-to-face PIP assessment was “a complete fabrication”.
He said: “I was lucky in the fact that the person who accompanied me was also a healthcare professional and they made notes on the assessment.”
He added: “The full account of my assessment has been written up by my companion of the day in question and it supports my contention that the medical report is to all intents a pack of lies, an examination that is reported actually never happened.”
Despite attending the assessment in his wheelchair, the report described how he was seen “walking normally”.
“Andrew Pole” said in his post on the forum: “I never thought I would see the day when a doctor told blatant and calculated lies about a sick and disabled person for his own financial benefit and the benefit of both ATOS and the DWP. That’s what happened to me.”
He added: “It is my opinion that ATOS behaved in a criminal manner when handling my assessment and also committed perjury at my appeal by including lies and false evidence about me which was signed by the same disreputable doctor.
“I won my appeal and the impression that the presiding judge gave me, before even speaking to me and upon observing how I mobilised, was why on earth has this man been forced to enter into an appeal process.”
Pam Stock, a disabled, retired DWP employment adviser, described in her evidence to the inquiry how she helped two friends with spina bifida appeal against their PIP decisions, after both had had their mandatory reconsiderations rejected.
She said: “In both cases the reasoning given on the reconsideration request was rejected and yet as soon as it became clear to the DWP that these claimants intended to go to tribunal, the decision was further reviewed and suddenly they agreed the claimants were right.”
She added: “I am also very concerned that in both cases, crucial information discussed at the interview, did not appear on the subsequent assessment report, and also some elements were clearly misrepresented.
“One claimant said they almost failed to recognise themselves on the report.”
In her post on the forum, “Anne” said: “It states in the assessor’s report that I had no breathlessness or wheezing – I am doing both continually with me having emphysema/COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease].
“He even stopped the assessment about three or four times due to my breathing and asking if it was ok to carry on.”
“Abigail Efnisien-Roberts” said in her post that she had been “horrified” to find that the response provided by the assessor to every question in her report “was the total opposite of the discussion we had in the office”.
Her report described how she had been seen waiting for the assessment in the waiting-room and “standing in a queue without discomfort”, even though she is “unable to stand for more than a few seconds” and was not in a queue but was sat in a chair in an empty room.
One welfare rights expert, “Stephen”, said: “I help people fill in their applications and appeals for a charity. The assessments are full of lies.
“The government have ignored the effect this has on people’s lives.”
Another welfare rights adviser, “Billy Durrant”, said he believed that “misrepresentation” of what claimants have said in assessment reports was “endemic”.
He added: “I am also sad to report that I have experienced a number of deliberately deceitful reports by assessors.
“Several claim to have carried out physical examinations and tests that were not done and then used the results of these phantom examinations to justify denying benefit.”
A third benefits adviser, “Allison Southall”, told the committee that the “vast majority of clients [who appeal] tell me that the report compiled by the assessor bares no resemblance to their memory of events or the information they provided.
“At appeal this report is routinely disregarded or discredited and broadly thought of as not fit for purpose.”
Posted by jeffrey davies on 03 November 2017
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stan I tried just now but got lost trying to find it but this was in one of the national news paper cut and pasted could be the independent but unsure but more news below its diabolical how they getting away with it
The government is acting like an abusive partner with claimants, whom it can beat at will, and claimants are too scared to be able to do anything to escape due to their chronic ill health or disabilities, says GAIL WARD Disability Campaigner with Black Triangle/DPAC
So the Tories have finally announced the new criteria for employment and support allowance (ESA) reassessments and while it is good news in one way, it has hidden horrors that many people are totally unaware of.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) skulduggery never ceases to amaze me any more, as it lies to the public that it protects “the most vulnerable in society,” claiming it is saving the public purse by scrapping unnecessary assessments — which cause so much stress that people are literally killing themselves — so they can focus on helping people into work.
Work is their primary focus, I hear people say: “Well what is wrong with that?” Well in theory, nothing at all provided the jobs are there.
Many chronically sick people and disabled people are not well enough to do so. In the last eight years this group has faced the worst of the welfare reforms which have lead to disabled people taking to the streets in protest.
Many disabled people’s organisations and charities have called on the government to stop these cuts, and have even taken their fight to the UN in Geneva, which called it a “human catastrophe” and found that they led to grave and systemic violations of the rights of disabled people.
First they had to deal with transitions to ESA, then the abolition of the independent living fund (ILF). Cuts to care packages have left people abandoned, isolated in their homes, then we have had cuts to personal independence payments (PIP), with many losing the cars they rely on to continue employment or to see family and friends, and now we have the debacle of universal credit.
With more cuts to come next year to families and the two-child cap and many other outrages, it is nothing more than conscious cruelty to those who need the most support.
Among the horrors of universal credit, behind the smokescreen of pleasantry to the claimant, is a brutal regime which will cause so much harm it is morally reprehensible to force the most fragile members of society into starvation or destitution or a choice between being unable to survive to the possibilities of taking their own lives as the only option left is a miserable existence and abject poverty.
Disabled people, according to the 2014 Scope report Priced Out, “pay on average £550 per month on extra costs related to their disability. As a result of these extra costs, disabled people are twice as likely to have unsecured debt totalling more than half of their household income.”
Yet many face severe cuts under universal credit, losing disability premiums totalling between £78-£140 a week if some are subjected to benefit cap as they underhandedly use a change of circumstances such as moving home to remove protections afforded to them — due to the severity of their disabilities — called transitional protections, which do not apply to “natural migration.” Only those on “managed migration” will get them.
“Natural migration: if you experience a significant change of circumstance that affects your benefit entitlement the opportunity will be taken to move you on to universal credit at that point.”
“Managed migration: if your circumstances don’t change, once universal credit has been established in every area for new claims, the DWP will begin to move people over to universal credit on a systematic basis.”
Considering this is meant to support those who are in severe need it is a funny way of showing it while deprivation of income, sanctions, foodbanks, leaving them without appropriate care needs is now the “norm.”
Many on universal credit are left for weeks without income and many lose their homes — the government’s response is to give them a loan and get them into further debt.
The government is acting like an abusive partner with claimants, whom they can beat at will, and claimants are too scared to be able to do anything to escape due to their chronic ill health or disabilities.
Failure to comply comes at a heavy cost with harsher conditions and it is affecting those already on it, and more children will suffer badly if their parents fail on some misdemeanour according to the all-powerful “work coach” — and that includes being late through no fault of your own.
In some areas parents are being targeted by social services for neglecting their children because they are unable to provide for them due to sanctions. While most people are responsible citizens and are either in work or looking, the government presents people as lazy good-for-nothing scroungers who idle their days away.
We are all a pay packet away from poverty but disabled people are more likely to live in poverty more than any other group simply because they cannot work because they are too ill, or too physically disabled to gain employment. Employers generally do not want disabled people in the workplace due to the fact they cost more to employ due to necessary adjustments or need time off when they need to attend health related appointments.
Sadly, work cannot set these individuals free from state-sanctioned abusive behaviour where the charade of assessments continue to fool society that the Tories are protecting the public purse from abuses of “claimants on the fiddle” from their hard-earned taxes, which is poppycock frankly.
Most claimants have paid into the system so rightly they expected support when times got difficult. The government has taken away the safety net and if you now fall through the cracks then that is just collateral damage and lives are seen as worthless unless you work and make your slave masters profit.
Many of those so far unaffected, who felt it was OK to punish claimants for their sins, are in for a big surprise next year when they start to become the next victims of a abusive government out of control. Especially if you are in zero-hours and low-paid work you will now face sanctions for not working hard enough, or earn £50,000 between the two of you— can kiss child benefit goodbye, as working tax credits are to be cut and many other sly cuts will hit those in work or families with children.
Pay-to-stay also starts being rolled out for those living in social housing and many face cuts to free prescriptions as the criteria for those have changed too. Not just pensioners claiming pension credit of mixed-age couples, the younger will face conditionality of the claimant commitment.
All these cuts hit the poorest in society, so welcome to Tory Britain where your government can abuse you with the consent of those in society who aren’t affected by them directly
Posted by jeffrey davies on 01 November 2017
