jeffs posts
John Pring Disability News Service 23rd November 2017
The healthcare professionals who carry out disability benefit assessments on behalf of the government should be held accountable for failing to report what they are told accurately, MPs have been told.
Members of the Commons work and pensions select committee were told repeatedly this week that assessors working for the outsourcing giants Atos, Capita and Maximus were producing reports that did not reflect what they had been told by the disabled people they were assessing.
They were hearing evidence from four welfare rights advisers as part of their inquiry into the assessment processes for personal independence payment (PIP) and employment and support allowance (ESA).
Disability News Service (DNS) has been carrying out a year-long investigation into claims of dishonesty at the heart of the PIP assessment system, and revealed last month that complaints about the process rose by nearly 900 per cent last year.
But Atos and Capita – which carry out PIP assessments – and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) have repeatedly insisted that there is no dishonesty in the system.
David Bryceland, from Oxfordshire Mind, told the committee yesterday that he and his colleagues saw “many inaccuracies”, including major factual errors such as someone who lived in a ground-floor, one-bedroom flat being described in an assessment report as living in a three-bedroomed house.
He said: “Those are not easy mistakes to make, those are not slips of the pen.”
Kayleigh Nor-Val, a benefits adviser for Citizens Advice in Merthyr Tydfil, told the committee that she and her colleagues came across “so many” inaccuracies in assessment reports.
Martin Richards, a disability benefits adviser for the charity Involve Northwest, in the Wirral, questioned why healthcare professionals should be telling so many “untruths” in their assessment reports.
He said: “I don’t understand the motivation for the reason behind that, because if I went to see my consultant and he wrote untruths down, then there would be civil actions and things in place.”
Richards said the healthcare professionals “need to be accountable” for what they write in their assessment reports, and he said he believed they were “acting under orders”.
He said that two clients with mental health problems in the last six months had been unable to cope when their benefits were reduced because of “inaccurate” assessment reports.
Both of them had been sectioned because their reduced income meant they had had to reduce their care packages and “they couldn’t cope”.
All four of the experts said they believed that Atos, Maximus and Capita should be held accountable when their assessors include inaccurate information in their reports, while Bryceland said he believed civil servants who make the final decisions on the benefit claims also need to “take responsibility”.
Richards said: “I would agree that the contractor should be the one that gets penalized because I believe the healthcare professionals are acting under orders.”
He said again that he believed there must be some kind of “motivation” for the assessors to record the information inaccurately.
But Nor-Val went further and said she believed that individual assessors should be held accountable.
She said: “There should be fines against healthcare professionals who are making inaccurate statements.
“There should be fines, there should be repercussions for those healthcare professionals and those contractors.”
Gary Edwards, from Southampton Advice and Representation Centre, said that “trust needs to come back into this system”.
He said: “The trust is lost between claimants and the providers, the private contractors that the DWP use.”
He pointed to a PIP appeal tribunal he had attended the previous day with a man with complex mental health issues, who claimed that his assessment had lasted just seven minutes.
Atos and DWP had refused to say how long the assessment had lasted.
The claimant had originally been given just two points (a claimant needs eight points to qualify for the standard rate and 12 for the enhanced rate, for both the daily living and mobility elements of PIP).
The tribunal ordered that he should be given 11 points and 10 points. Until this week, he had been without any PIP since June 2016.
Earlier, five disabled people who had themselves been assessed for PIP or ESA had also given evidence to the committee.
All five said they would like to see all face-to-face assessments recorded, and claimants given a copy of those recordings.
Three of the five raised concerns about assessors failing to produce accurate reports following their face-to-face assessments.
Thomas O’Dell said his ESA assessor was “like a smiling assassin”.
She had seen him being pushed into the room in a wheelchair by his father, and then take three steps while holding onto the table, but concluded in her assessment report that he could walk 50 metres.
He said she had touched his leg, and told him she would not continue with further physical tests because he was in too much pain, but then claimed in the report that she had completed a full examination.
O’Dell said she had “fabricated the whole assessment”.
He also said that one of his assessment reports had been altered by another member of staff who had not even been in the room for his assessment.
Another claimant, Amanda Browning, said her last assessment report had contained 21 factual inaccuracies.
She said: “At my appeal the tribunal noted that the assessor had been selective in reporting my capabilities and awarded in my favour.”
And Natalie McMinn told how the letter she received after her home assessment “was full of mistakes” and “contradicted itself”.
She said she had been “appalled” by her PIP assessor, and added: “A lot of the information I had given her as well as putting on the forms wasn’t reflected or was wrongly recorded in the award letter after her visit.
Posted by jeffrey davies on 24 November 2017
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oap
Around 1 in 4 British pensioners are having to use their Winter Fuel Allowance (WFA) to purchase food and Christmas presents, as new research reveals the financial difficulties faced by older people struggling to keep their homes warm as the mercury drops.
Research commissioned by the financial giant Provident found that over half of those surveyed are worried about covering the cost of their heating bills during winter 2017.
2,000 Brits were polled on their ability to cover the cost of heating bills during winter, as well as the struggles they face to do so, revealing those who are most at risk during the cold winter months.
The average household will face an estimated £655 heating bill this winter, and Provident's research reveals that 1 in 10 Brits aged over 65 cannot cover the cost of their heating on their current income, leaving many to rely on the Winter Fuel Allowance.
Understanding fuel poverty
And, while the Winter Fuel Allowance is designed to aid pensioners, 24% of those surveyed say they will use the money to pay for food and Christmas presents.
The study discovered that almost four in ten (39%) have forgone buying essentials, such as clothing, to pay their heating bills, while one in four (24%) are simply using the Winter Fuel Allowance for expenses other than heating.
Almost 40% of these confessed to buying food, while one in ten plan to spend the money on Christmas-related expenses such as presents and dinner, and over 12% have swapped feeling the heat in their homes for going on holidays.
However, this could be good news for retailers, as more money could be spent on items such as food, festive drinks and gifts in the run up to Christmas - paid for with the Winter Fuel Allowance.
Despite the Winter Fuel Allowance barely covering the cost of heating, and elderly people resorting to desperate measures to keep their bills down, the allowance could be cut by a staggering £100m in 2017/18.
Posted by jeffrey davies on 22 November 2017
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redwords by ex welsh minister
John Redwood criticised over advice to pull money out of UK
Labour criticises Eurosceptic MP for telling investors to ‘look further afield’ because of the state of the UK economy
its his party yet they all killing british interest
John Redwood has a £180,000 second job as chief global strategist for Charles Stanley. Photograph: REX/Shutterstock
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Monday 13 November 2017 14.03 GMT
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Labour has criticised the arch-Eurosceptic MP John Redwood for “talking down Britain” after he recently wrote a column of financial advice in which he recommended investors “look further afield” because of the state of the UK economy.
In the piece for the Financial Times, the Conservative MP – who has a £180,000 second job as chief global strategist for Charles Stanley – said the European Central Bank was promoting faster growth when the UK was seeing a squeeze on credit.
“Mario Draghi, ECB president, is now doing whatever it takes, not just to rescue the euro but to promote a much-needed economic recovery,” he wrote. He also compared the US and Japan’s approach favourably to the UK’s.
The piece was published on 3 November but came to greater prominence after a scathing comment piece was published over the weekend by a Forbes commentator, Frances Coppola, who wrote that the MP had “advocated a course of action by the UK government that he knows would seriously damage the UK economy”
Posted by jeffrey davies on 22 November 2017
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Question of Pharmaceuticals
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has ruled that Canadian pharmaceutical company, Concordia, has effectively been ripping off the NHS. Since 2007 Concordia has raised the price of a life-changing drug, for which it was the only supplier, by 6000%. The CMA’s ruling therefore raises deeper questions about the role of the marketplace in our public services.
Lack of competition
Until last year, Concordia was the only global supplier of Liothryronine, a drug used to treat hypothyroidism. Usually affecting those over the age of 40, the symptoms of hypothyroidism can be debilitating. They include weight gain, breathlessness and mobility issues.
When Concordia first sold its treatment to the NHS, in 2007, it cost £4.46 a pack. By 2017, this had increased to a staggering £258.19. For a single tablet this equated to a rise from 16p to £9.22. Yet the cost of producing the drug remained broadly the same during that period.
CMA Chief Executive Andrea Coscelli said:
Pharmaceutical companies which abuse their position and overcharge for drugs are forcing the NHS – and the UK taxpayer – to pay over the odds for important medical treatments. We allege that Concordia used its market dominance in the supply of Liothyronine tablets to do exactly that.
Nothing new…
The practice is nothing new for companies like Concordia. In October 2016 its CEO, Mark Thompson, resigned amid accusations of “aggressive price hiking”. In the past giant US firms like Pfizer and Flynn Pharma provoked similar scandals. British company GlaxoSmithKline was fined heavily for market rigging in January 2016. Such companies wield huge power. Against that, the underfunded and asset stripped NHS can do little to protect itself, or its patients.
A wrong-headed approach?
The CMA judgement is welcome but provides no long term solutions, as big companies will continue to abuse their position. Pharmaceutical corporations, like all corporations, aim solely to maximise profit for shareholders. This is the prevailing system. But it is not a sensible approach to healthcare.
Public services should be run for people, not profit.
Posted by jeffrey davies on 21 November 2017
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Coming Soon
Looks like insurance for care through legal and General. Names of independent experts invited by government to provide advice and support engagement in advance of the green paper:
Caroline Abrahams – Charity Director of Age UK
Dame Kate Barker – former Chair of the King’s Fund Commission on the Future of Health and Social Care in England
Sir David Behan – Chief Executive of Care Quality Commission
Dr Eileen Burns – President of the British Geriatrics Society
Professor Paul Burstow – Chair of the Social Care Institute for Excellence
Jules Constantinou – President-elect of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries
Sir Andrew Dilnot – former Chair of the Commission on the Funding of Care and Support
Baroness Martha Lane Fox – Founder and Executive Chair of Doteveryone
Mike Parish – Chief Executive of Care UK
David Pearson – former President of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services and Corporate Director for Social Care, Health and Public Protection at Nottinghamshire County Council
Imelda Redmond – National Director of Healthwatch England
Nigel Wilson – Chief Executive of Legal and General
Quotes Linda Burnip DPAC
Many income related benefits are being moved across to Universal Credit the governments flagship policy which is sinking fast as the holes in this policy are more flawed than the WCA where more complex claimant issues are exposing the holes in a policy which in theory was meant to revolutionise social security and catapult it into 21st century. Well now their focus are those on contributory JSA/ESA which they plan to be part of the Social Insurance Scheme and the only reason they have not done so already is quoted below
Had contributory benefits been abolished whilst UK social
security was bound by EU law, this would have exposed Universal
Credit (the significantly larger budget) to exportability. In light of the
British vote to leave the EU, however, there is now the possibility of
reforming contributory benefits without breaching EU law.
Employers and all those with a stake in this horrendous policy will not just be looking at savings made, but also the huge concern is denial when it comes to delivering on payouts as long as the state doesnt have to foot the bill. Insurance schemes around the globe are littered with claims of those who took out Insurance only to be denied it upon making a claim leaving many no option but to be destitute or borrow money to take companies to court to get what was rightly their’s in first place. We keep hearing that state support isn’t sustainable, NHS isn’t sustainable yet majority of the country fell for the last National Insurance Scheme which isnt paying out either, due to an empty pot, which is incredulous really given some dont live to collect a state pension, and those who do never get payments reflecting the thousands they paid in over 40yrs of their worklife.
The only winners here are the banks who underwrite such policies. However Legal & General have Capita to manage the shareholders assets Capita’s Shareholder Services Team is available to answer any questions that you have in relation to your Legal & General shareholding.
and non other than….
Group Health and Safety Committee – Chaired by Ian D Smith – Head of HR, Shared Services.
It sure as hell is a murky business, this government is up to its neck and following it mantra “we are all in it together”
So whats the crack I hear you all say get to the point, well this is how it meant to work:
The larger the number of premium payers, the lower the risk profile across the total claimant
population and the lower the total cost of enrolment. L&G estimate
a cost of around 0.5% of payroll earnings at approximately £11 a
month. Total pay-out would be £900 a month for a maximum period
of one year, with a 50% replacement rate.6
After one year, a claimant would return to the state benefit system.
A total of £10,800 could be claimed via the social insurance product.
Ultimately this ‘rainy day guarantee’ has been designed so that a
claimant would receive more than they otherwise would have on
state welfare, and so that significant costs are delivered to both the
taxpayer and to employers.
Individuals
previously eligible for contributory JSA and ESA would fall into one
of three categories: ‘full Universal Credit entitlement’, ‘partial entitlement,’
and, finally, ‘no entitlement’. The projected annual savings
from individuals who fall under ‘no entitlement’ and have no welfare
claim would amount to £60m from JSA and £290m from ESA per annum. Total savings over the 2015–2020 period would come to
approximately £1.66bn
So when many breathed a sigh of relief they were not included in Universal Credit , they soon will be under a different process.
Posted by jeffrey davies on 20 November 2017
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jeffs posts
Pennies instead of pounds: Could the Tories have underpaid YOUR ESA?
You should already know that the Conservative government has made enormous “mistakes” that have deprived around 75,000 claimants of the sickness benefit ESA of £500 million in benefits.
In This Site’s article about it a couple of days ago, I asked how claimants find out whether they have been underpaid – and how long it would take for them to get restitution.
The piece quoted tweets by Nick Dilworth, who writes informatively about benefits on his ilegal.org.uk site.
Little did I know that, as I was writing that article, Nick was probably already in the process of answering my questions – drafting a template letter for ESA claimants who want to contact the DWP to find out exactly what is going on and whether it affects them.
Here it is (Credit: Nick Dilworth @mylegalforum ilegal.org.uk):
[Your Address]
The Customer Complaints Manager
[Address of your Employment & Support Allowance Office]
*shown on your most recent correspondence from them
Date
Dear Sir / Madam,
National Insurance No:
Arrears of Employment & Support Allowance which may be owed to me through your official error
My attention has been drawn to some recent media coverage by the BBC entitled ‘Mistakes in benefits claims could cost up to £500m’ (dated the 17th November 2017). As a result of this I am making an official complaint, I believe I may be affected and entitled to arrears of Employment & Support Allowance.
The media coverage states:
“The errors identified by the Department for Work and Pensions affect the main sickness benefit, the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). The BBC understands that assessors wrongly calculated the income of around 75,000 claimants. Ministers say that they are aware of the problem and that repayments have begun to be made. The department, which says it discovered the mistakes last December, is understood to have contacted about 1,000 people so far. It says it is still trying to understand the scale of the problems with ESA, which is paid to about 2.5 million people, and will contact anyone affected.”
Having made some enquiries, I understand that I may be an affected individual because I underwent a ‘conversion’ assessment from older Incapacity Benefits / Income Support paid on the grounds of incapacity for work / Severe Disablement Allowance. My recollection is that this was subject to a decision made by you on or about the [insert date].
The conversion process should have been carried out in accordance with the Employment and Support Allowance (Transitional Provisions, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit) (Existing Awards) (No.2) Regulations 2010 and it is my understanding that in confirming your decision you should:
(a) have ensured I was entitled to the correct amount of ‘transitionally protected’ benefit at a rate whereby my converted Employment & Support Allowance award was equal to what I received before conversion and should have continued to be protected on a ‘mark time’ basis until the level of Employment & Support Allowance either caught up with my transitionally protected amount or until the 5th April 2020.
(b) As part of the conversion decision making and notification process you should also have checked any existing contributory award to see if I may qualify for an income based amount on the converted Employment & Support Allowance award as confirmed by the Upper Tribunal in [2015] UKUT 342 (AAC) where it was held [In considering Regulation 8 of Employment and Support Allowance (Transitional Provisions, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit) (Existing Awards) (No.2) Regulations 2010]:
“Given the unified nature of ESA as described in paragraph 25 above, the determination by the Secretary of State of the amount of ESA to which a person would be entitled on conversion under regulation 8(1) in my judgment must encompass consideration of both the contributory amount and the income-related amount.”
I am therefore asking you to confirm that neither of the above omissions (a) or (b) occurred as a result of any official error on my claim. If official error has occurred and I have been underpaid in consequence of that error, please ensure that you pay me any amounts owing to as a matter of urgency and without unacceptable delay.
Please note that this request is an official one which you must treat by way of an anytime review or supersession request.
I must further point out that this request applies to a retrospective decision and therefore applies in cases where there may have been a subsequent successful appeal against any initial decision to refuse or otherwise restrict the Employment & Support Allowance award made. Likewise, the fact that I have since stopped claiming Employment & Support Allowance or taken up another claim to other benefits does not prevent me from making this request.
So that I can check the accuracy of your records please treat this letter as a Subject Access Request and supply me with copies of my pre – conversion awards and all claim details pertaining to my Employment & Support Allowance claim from the point of conversion of my claim.
Please also consider this as a complaint of potential maladministration on my claim and consider issuing me with an appropriate compensatory or special payment.
On a final point, please make me aware of the effect which this may have upon any other benefits such as Housing and or Council Tax Benefit paid at the point of conversion.
I look forward to hearing from you and trust that you will look in to and act on this request as a matter of urgency.
Yours faithfully
[Name]
Posted by jeffrey davies on 20 November 2017
