In September last year we put out a call for evidence on the
medical assessments for disability benefits PIP and ESA carried
out for DWP by private contractors Capita,
Atos and Maximus. We asked claimants to share
their experience of the whole assessment process, and we launched
an online forum so people could submit their stories that way
too. The response was overwhelming: nearly 4,000 individual
submissions, the most ever received by a select committee
inquiry, by an order of magnitude.
The unprecedented response was also remarkable in the consistency
of the themes that emerged through the honest and often
distressing accounts from thousands of people navigating the
claims process, alongside, of course,
managing their disability and mental health issues.
We were so impressed and moved by the response we are today
publishing a collection of just a few of the thousands of stories
claimants shared with us. The stories cover the process from
beginning to end, from organising and attending the medical
assessments to final appeal at the Tribunal, where people have
gone that far. Since 2013 there have been 170,000 PIP
appeals taken to the Tribunal: Claimants won in 108,000 cases -
63%. In the same time, there have been 53,000 ESA appeals.
Claimants won in 32,000 - or 60% - of those cases.
One theme that emerged was claimants going through this process,
by their accounts often arduous and stressful, only to receive a
report that bore little or no relation to their circumstances or
what had occurred during the assessment. After reading her
report, Nikki told us: “Apparently I walk my dog daily, which was
baffling because I can barely walk and I do not have a dog!”
Mary told us that her assessor wrote in her report that “I ‘arose
from the chair without any difficulty’. I was in bed the whole
time (she let herself in) and I only have the one chair in the
room and she was sitting in it. She said that I had no difficulty
reading with my glasses yet I do not wear glasses to
read.”
How did you catch Down’s Syndrome?
Another common theme was the apparent ignorance of assessors
about the conditions claimants were living with. People with
Down’s Syndrome - a widely recognised congenital disorder with
associated learning disability - were asked how long they’d had
the condition, or when they’d “caught” it. Chad, who lives with
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, told us “The assessor stated in
her report ‘no signs of sore hands’ ‘no signs of repeated
washing’ ‘was well groomed’ ‘was well dressed’. Anyone with a
brain cell knows mental health isn’t always visible, and OCD
isn’t all about excessive washing of the hands! OCD is known as a
secretive disorder at the best of times and people in that
profession should know better when it comes to mental health.”
A great many of the stories we heard were harrowing, in some
cases just an account of trying to complete the forms to begin
the process. One person told us “For the twelve days we took
considering and writing on the form, my mother refused to eat,
drink, or sleep save the smallest amount. She began to self-harm
from the stress and cry in the despair of admitting how she is
limited, how she is constantly in pain, how she cannot complete
simple tasks—‘how her disability affects her’: the very name of
the form.”
Next Wednesday we will be publishing the final report of
this inquiry, with our recommendations to Government on changes
to the process. We are enormously grateful to the thousands of
people who shared their stories with us, to inform
the report, and we hope the Government will take
heed of this enormous response and act on our
recommendations. In its response to this first report,
we have called on Government to acknowledge
explicitly that it recognises each of the concerns and problems
we have set out, and tell us what, if anything, it is doing to
monitor and resolve them. /ENDS
