Almost 65,000 disabled people, including those with profound mental health problems, are at risk of losing their homes because of a cut in mortgage payment support for vulnerable people, according to the body representing housing associations.

The benefit, which pays the interest on a mortgage, is to be reduced from its present value of 6.08% to what the government says is the Bank of England average mortgage rate of 3.67% – a cut that means a loss of £1,300 annually for every £100,000 borrowed.

The National Housing Federation says that at least 64,000 people will be at risk of falling behind on payments, with those affected struggling to “keep up with their mortgage payments, falling into arrears and eventually losing their home”.

Ministers announced the cut in interest payments in the June budget as a part of the deficit reduction programme, but the federation argues that the coalition has yet to publish a comprehensive assessment of how the changes will affect those with disabilities – undermining government claims that it would shield the poorest from cuts in public spending.

Experts said the savings, estimated at £60m, are tiny compared with the size of the welfare budget of £87bn. But the Department for Work and Pensions said the current system meant 92% of recipients receive more help than they need.

The federation’s chief executive, David Orr, said that this was a “particularly harsh way to try to bring public spending down”. He added: “The government says that it will try to protect the most vulnerable as it makes spending cuts, but this policy will hit thousands of people with disabilities, cutting off many from the prospect of owning their own home.”

Around 59,000 disabled people use the benefit to help them pay mortgages on homes they have bought. A further 5,000 people with profound physical disabilities and mental health problems have used the state payments to secure niche mortgages to pay for shared ownership homes – provided by housing associations – through which buyers purchase a fraction, usually more than a quarter, of the property and pay rent on the rest.

Since many of the claimants would not qualify for the best deals from high street banks, the scheme allows them to access rates which are comparable to those available to people who are not disabled. At 6.08%, the interest support compares favourably with the starting rate of 6.49% offered by Countrywide, Britain’s largest estate agency, for the most common mortgage taken out by customers last month.

Most of those who take up the benefit are first-time buyers with a total household income of less than £60,000. A sizeable minority are home owners who can show that their houses are no longer suitable for their needs. They may have long-term support needs, have a full-time carer, or need to live close to a medical facility.

In many cases the decision to curb the payments from October will strip from the most vulnerable a chance of leading an independent life.

Gloria Cornwall’s 23-year-old daughter, Faith, was planning to move to a two-bedroom flat with a full-time carer as part of a shared ownership scheme with a housing association in east London. The mortgage the family had secured was £100,000.

Mrs Cornwell said: “Faith was born with Down’s syndrome. She needs full-time care. I am 68 and my husband 72. Our health is failing and this was a chance for Faith to live on her own. We won’t be here forever. How can the government just take this away? We do not understand it.”

Helen Goodman, Labour’s frontbench spokeswoman on housing benefit, said: “Once again we see the terrible effects of the coalition government’s ill-conceived and crude approach to cutting public spending regardless of who it hurts. In the case it is the most vulnerable.”

A disturbing sleight of hand within the revised benefits system has been performed on the electorate and particularly on the sick and disabled. It goes like this: Labour replaced the previous incapacity benefit (IB) with the new employment support allowance (ESA) in 2008 and introduced a fiendishly hard new medical test, followed by members of the government applauding their success in identifying record numbers of incapacity benefits claimants who are fit for work.

The coalition government have foolishly allowed this to continue. And so the new work capability assessment (WCA) has apparently been successful at weeding undeserving claimants out. Just look at the statistics: only 6% of claimants are now found so ill or disabled that they are eligible for full support. This compares with around 83% who passed the previous incapacity benefit test.

The public are led to believe they are forking out money for a nation of benefit scroungers. But the reason why such claimants are failing is that the test is now so stringent and mismanaged that seriously ill people are regularly being declared fit for work: the government has reached a desired answer simply by altering the question, and we take this foregone conclusion as proof that most claimants are undeserving of benefit.

Labour predicted its new ESA medical test would cut IB by 20%. It excelled even these expectations by about three times this amount. They took a good idea – to get the long-term sick back into work where possible – and ruined it by creating a test unfit for purpose. As a result, some of the sickest and most disabled people in society are failing to get the benefit they deserve. They risk falling off the welfare radar and, in effect, cease to exist. It is surely the system that is sick to the core.

Meanwhile, the Citizens Advice Bureau is deluged by sick and disabled claimants requesting help with appeals. So far, around 40% have appealed successfully. Bearing this in mind, it defies belief that Atos, the private company contracted to undertake the work capability assessments, issued the following statement in response to one claimant’s freedom of information request:

“In March 2010, a department-led review of the WCA found that generally it is accurately identifying individuals for the right support.”

The Citizens Advice Bureau is, in contrast, extremely scathing about the new test. This year, they published a document about the ESA work capability assessment, endorsed by major disability groups. It’s called “Not Working”, and its three main findings are:

• Seriously ill people are inappropriately subjected to the WCA

• The assessment does not effectively measure fitness for work

• Application of the assessment is producing inappropriate outcomes

Atos conducts its medicals without an impartial, independent body present. Atos itself is monitored and audited by its employer, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), from which it earns a robust £500 million for its seven year contract. Atos employees are well aware of DWP targets, even if these are not explicitly demanded or linked to their remuneration.

Claimants complain that the opinions of their GPs and consultants appear to play second fiddle to the conclusions of the Atos staff during their snapshot medical assessments. These staff may not be qualified doctors; a further statement by Atos in response to an freedom of information request is telling:

“All healthcare professionals (HCP) regardless of primary qualifications are fully trained in Disability Assessment Medicine … A customer may submit evidence from their doctor or specialist, however, unlike the more widely known type of examination, the HCP’s assessment is not concerned with diagnosis or decisions about treatment and therefore specialist diagnostic qualifications are unnecessary.”

Atos are simply concerned with fulfilling the narrow criteria presented by the WCA, the findings of which are then presented to the DWP and used to judge whether a sick or disabled claimant is fit for work or not. Many claimants complain that the Atos reports bear little resemblance to what was said in their medical assessments.

Are there alternatives? Of course there are. I am not against revising the sickness benefits system, which I went through myself. When I tentatively tried to return to work after a long period of illness (ME) I discovered it was an all or nothing system – either you could work or you couldn’t. As I wrote at the time, what is needed is primarily a sensitive medical assessment that takes greater account of the opinion of a patient’s consultant or GP, one that is sensitive to fluctuating conditions such as ME and MS and recognises and supports people who are genuinely too ill or disabled to work.

But the system also needs to be able to help sick people back into work. To date, it still doesn’t allow a person to work part-time indefinitely, for as many or few hours as they are able. Such people could simply have some of their benefit deducted according to how much they earn over the year, as already happens with housing benefit and working tax credits. Instead, claimants are told they have to work over 16 hours or not work at all in order to qualify. This is a ridiculous disincentive for those with chronic conditions to return to part-time work.

I’m afraid the future looks alarming. The coalition government is pushing forward with plans to “migrate” all incapacity benefit claimants onto ESA and will, next year, begin re-assessing all existing disability living allowance (DLA) claimants as well with, I expect, new tougher medicals. The system is likely to go into meltdown with such a workload. All this should spark a well-deserved revolt from disability groups and fair-minded MPs. In the meantime, the most vulnerable and sick in society are the most at risk.

Work and pensions minister Chris Grayling is conducting an urgent review into a new medical test for incapacity benefit after fresh figures showed only 6% of those tested were deemed to be totally incapable of working.

The figures, covering all new claims from October 2008 to the end of November 2009, show 39% are being tested as fit for work and a further 37% are dropping their claim before the assessment is complete. The figures are widely out of line with estimates initially made by officials from the Department for Work and Pensions.

The figures suggest that either tens of thousands of incapacity benefit claimants are not as ill as they claimed, or that something is wrong with the way the tests are being applied. So far the tests have applied only to new claimants for the employment support allowance, the successor benefit to incapacity benefit, but ministers are planning to apply the test to nearly 1.6 million people already on incapacity benefit over the next three years or so.

Speaking to the Guardian , Graylingtoday did not seize on the figures to claim there was an army of scroungers, but said instead many people had been made anxious about the figures. He did not suggest there was an army of scroungers, but said: “We do not think and nor does anybody else think there is anything wrong in principle about these tests. Almost every major group working with people suffering long-term disability or sickness wants them to have the opportunity to get back into the workplace. But we have to look at how [the tests] are working in practice.”

“There is quite a lot of anxiety around about the details of these tests, and whether we are categorising correctly. These tests need to be applied sensitively, especially in cases of depression or mental health. A lot of organisations such as the CAB and Mind have come to us to say they are concerned about how the tests are being applied.”

A new scrutiny group set up by Grayling met for the first time yesterday to advise him on claimants. Its members believe the tests are not being applied sufficiently flexibly. The scrutiny group is due to report by the end of the year with proposals for reform to medical tests.

Paul Farmer, Mind’s chief executive and a member of the scrutiny panel, welcomed the Grayling review. “Simplistic use of the basic figures around failed ESA (employment support allowance) applications only serve to fuel the negative rhetoric around benefits, which in itself can have a devastating impact on people with mental health problems who find themselves labelled as ‘benefits scroungers’ regardless of their genuine needs,” Farmer said.

Grayling defended the principle of the tests. “Nothing has been done about the 2.2m people that have been on IB (incapacity benefit). Many of them have not been seen or been in contact with the state for a very long time.

“They have been on the fringes of society being paid benefits every month but actually with no help, guidance or support at all. Our plan is to put 1.6m of these people through an independent medical assessment between 2011 and 2014. It is a huge challenge and has never been attempted before.”

The remainder – approximately 600,000 – will not be tested since they are due to reach retirement age before the test can be applied to them.

Those that are deemed fully capable of work are put straight on to jobseeker’s allowance, and those deemed potentially capable of work will be put in a higher rate form of employment support allowance.

From today’s Guardian:

Children with special educational needs could lose out under government plans to allow all schools to become academies, Labour has claimed.

Shadow schools minister Vernon Coaker said provision could be damaged if special schools were also allowed to opt out of local authority control.

MPs are debating the Academies Bill which could revolutionise the way schools in England are run.

Minister Sarah Teather said all schools should have the same freedoms.

Under the academies programme, the government wants all schools to be able to become independent state-funded schools with greater freedom over their budgets, curriculum and the pay and conditions of staff.

Academy status would also mean that schools would have access to funds previously spent on their behalf by local councils on services such as those for children with special educational needs.

Labour had tabled an amendment to take away the right of special schools to become academies, but it was defeated.

Law fast-tracked

Children and Families Minister Sarah Teather said 50 special schools had expressed an interest in finding out more about the academies programme and that an advisory panel had been set up to consider the details of issues raised.

Because of the need for careful consideration of special educational needs provision, no special school would convert before 2011, she said.

The government expects the first of its new breed of academy schools to convert this September. All will be schools rated outstanding by Ofsted.

It is pushing legislation through the Commons in a week so laws can be changed in time for this to happen.

Mr Coaker said: “This bill inverts the way in which we pursued the academy programme. We established academies in areas of poor education performance, in areas of social disadvantage.

“This bill actually turns that on its head and allows outstanding schools to fast-track to academy status, allows primary schools for the first time to become academies… allows special schools to become academies, something that we think could damage the provision of education, particularly the provision with respect to special educational needs.”

He said there was no evidence that giving special schools academy status would bring improvements, so the government was taking a “leap in the dark”.

Former Labour minister Barry Gardiner said: “The centre will not be able to hold here. What we will lose is precisely the ability of a central provision through the local authority to co-ordinate the needs of all children with special needs.”

Deny freedoms

Ms Teather said: “If we believe it is a good thing for schools to have freedoms it does not seem obvious to me why we should deny these freedoms to others.

“We think special schools should have access to freedoms we are offering to others.

“We are treating special schools in a different way. It is a longer process. We are not expecting any to convert before 2011. The secretary of state has set up an advisory group to try to work through the details of some of the issues raised.”

She said giving special schools freedoms would allow them to make changes suitable for pupils and their parents.

Amendments added to the Academies Bill by the government include one which says pupils with special educational needs have the same rights as other pupils. Another says if an academy is named on a child’s statement of special educational needs as the best place to send them, they should get a place there.

Ms Teather added that this was an improvement on the current situation.

Admissions

Dozens of amendments have been tabled to the Academies Bill. Key issues being raised include concerns that faith schools might be given extra freedoms under the legislation to teach Creationism – denied by the government – and increase segregation by changing their admissions policies.

Others include concerns about the fairness of admissions policies and those on excluding pupils.

Labour’s Vernon Coaker said he was concerned that the legislation could allow schools to “select covertly” and “exclude more easily”.

Schools becoming academies will have to comply with the School Admission Code, which sets out guidelines designed to ensure fairness in how school places are allocated, the government has said.

Both Labour and a group of Conservatives raised issues about grammar schools – from opposite sides of the debate.

Labour claims the legislation will open the way for more selection because grammar school which become academies might expand.

But senior Tory MPs, led by Graham Brady, are concerned that grammar schools, if they choose to become academies could later change their status to become non-selective without consulting parents.

It’s these few who make the many of us who are telling the truth about needing DLA suffer.

A man was filmed at greyhound race, while still claiming disability living allowance after his condition eased.

Derek Davy, 67, of Hafodyrynys, near Newbridge, Caerphilly county, admitted receiving more than £3,700 since 2006.

Newport Crown Court heard that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) investigated Davy and secretly filmed him at the greyhound event in Coventry.

Davy was sentenced on Monday and given a conditional discharge for two years. He must pay £100 costs.

The court was told he had claimed disability living allowance since 1998, saying he could not walk any distance without experiencing pain.

He also could not stand up for long periods and used a walking stick.

But his condition had eased, the court heard, and he had pleaded guilty at a previous hearing to failing to notify the DWP of a change in his circumstances.

Timothy Evans, prosecuting, said the DWP investigated Davy in 2006 following information from members of the public and “it was plain the defendant wasn’t as disabled as he was originally claiming”.

The DWP was told that Davy and his wife, who has since died, appeared to be managing a racing kennels, said Mr Evans.

“In video footage, Mr Davy was seen carrying a bucket after mucking out the dogs and carrying cumbersome bags out of the back of his car,” said Mr Evans.

“He was seen at a racing greyhound event in Coventry where he did not appear to be suffering from any kind of discomfort.”

Mr Evans said the defendant was interviewed by the DWP in 2007 and admitted he did not take painkillers every day.

He also said he had been involved in greyhounds for a long time, but as a hobby.

‘Serious matter’

Defending, David Elias, said Davy was taking the same medication he had always taken and there had been side effects.

He said Davy’s claim had not been fraudulent from the outset and he had pleaded guilty at the first opportunity.

“At the time of the indictment he had some good days and some bad days which wasn’t the position he was in initially,” he said.

He added: “It [greyhound racing] was not a business, it was a hobby. He made no money out of it.”

Judge Philip Richards said the case was a “serious matter” because Davy had “dishonestly obtained public money”.

Davy was conditionally discharged for two years and ordered to pay £100 costs. He has also been paying the DWP the money back.

The DWP said after the case that Davy was paying back almost £24,000 in overpayments in disability living allowance made since 1998, including the £3,700.

DWP spokesperson Mike Davies said: “Clearly, theft against the Department for Work and Pensions is a criminal offence and we will continue to act on information provided by the public, as in this case, to root out theft of public funds.”

I’ve been hearing for about a week that:

Ministers want doctors to club together in consortia to take charge of billions of pounds of funds for mental health, hospital and community services.

It would represent a major change but they believe GPs are better placed than managers to respond to patient need.

This proposal is due to be published in a White Paper later today. Health Secretary Andrew Lansley supports it.

What do you think of it, UK readers? Many of us are the users of the services they want to hand over to GPs. Would this move mean that we would be more likely to access the services we needed? Would it speed up the process? Or would it make no difference at all? Please leave your comments below.

When the Office of Budget Responsibility lost its supremo, Sir Alan Budd, this week it was over claims that the private sector would create 2m new jobs in the next few years – soaking up all those workers forced off the government payroll because of its ongoing austerity plan. The net effect, said the OBR, would be to leave the economy 1m jobs better off.

But there is evidence that that rosy outlook may be undermined from within. Yesterday, Iain Duncan Smith laid out his ambitious welfare reform programme to senior civil servants.

By taking people off out-of-work benefits such as incapacity benefit and putting them on to jobseekers’ allowance, Duncan Smith raises the prospect of a US-style workfare model where people “take personal responsibility for accepting work when it is there”.

However, economists say that the OBR estimates of the number of unemployed do not take account of the welfare reforms announced in the emergency budget. These measures, according to a paper by the thinktank Inclusion, show the jobless figure could jump to 3m by 2014, because the proposed shake-up will transfer 2m lone parents and sickness-benefit claimants on to the dole.

“In 2014, we could have roughly the same number of people on sickness benefits as we had in 1979,” said the thinktank.

In effect, says Inclusion, the government will be shifting people from “inactive” to “active” welfare benefits, where claimants are required to look for work to get money from the state. While this process was started by Labour, the coalition runs the risk of an explosion in the number of JSA claims, which would leave it politically exposed to charges that it had returned to the “get on your bike” policies of the 1980s.

Of course this may be part of the plan. Budd was Margaret Thatcher’s economic advisor and plunged Britain into, his words, a “cold-bath recession” 30 years ago.

“Rising unemployment was a very desirable way of reducing the strength of the working classes,” Budd recalled many years later. “What was engineered – in Marxist terms – was a crisis in capitalism which recreated a reserve army of labour and has allowed the capitalists to make high profits ever since.”

All this brings us to an interesting piece of Duncan Smith’s speech. The cabinet minister says that by extending the retirement age by just one year, the country could increase its GDP by 1%, that is around £13bn. By getting people to work harder for longer, so that wealth is created, might be an unappealing thought for the stressed-out millions – unless you happen to own a business. It is also what occurred in the 1980s.

A 12-year-old boy with muscular dystrophy has addressed a panel of MPs to campaign for better healthcare.

Murray Field, suffers from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy which affects his heart, limbs and lungs.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Muscular Dystrophy said care for patients with muscle-wasting disorders can be “inadequate and not acceptable”.

Murray, from Droitwich, Worcestershire, said he wanted his life to be “as good as possible”.

He told the MPs at Westminster how the illness has affected him and that he wants NHS care in the West Midlands to improve.

“I love the new splints I’ve got for my legs and I’m lucky because they’re going to stop me needing an operation on my legs.

“But lots of children aren’t as lucky as me and can’t get things like this that they really need.

“I want the doctors to hurry up with treatments for us.

“I know I won’t be able to walk again but I want my life to be as good as possible.”

There are more than 60 different types of muscular dystrophy and related neuromuscular conditions, affecting some 60,000 people across the country by causing muscles to waste and weaken.

The all-party group said last August that people with the illness often faced long waits for wheelchairs and having to pay for physiotherapy.

It added that patients often found there to be a “postcode lottery” when it came to life expectancy.

They concluded that official guidelines needed to be given to trusts to ensure high standards of care as well as a review of skills in the health workforce.

A spokesman for the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign said it was very proud of Murray, who has been invited to address the same group of MPs.

The government’s plan to force everyone receiving disability living allowance (DLA) to undergo a medical assessment is deeply misguided. If allowed to go ahead, the consequences could be catastrophic for people with mental health problems.

Looked at alongside George Osborne’s assault on incapacity benefit, capping of housing benefit (it was the Conservatives whose abolition of rent controls led to soaring rents in the first place), and the decision to link benefit rates to the consumer prices index instead of the retail prices index, it is hard to escape the conclusion that these changes constitute a cynical attempt on the part of the coalition government to manipulate public prejudice towards those least able to speak up for themselves.

Around half of all people claiming benefits because of illness have mental health problems. The cost of providing for them is considerable. And essential. Any decent society should be urgently concerned with ensuring those affected receive the support they need to lead full and rewarding lives.

In some cases, this will involve working with people to help them develop the skills and confidence they need to return to the workplace or to enter it for the first time. Where such schemes exist, they are largely confined to the voluntary sector, often run by people with personal experience of the challenges involved, and always oversubscribed.

It is a fallacy, and a deeply offensive one, that people with mental health problems do not want to work. According to a report published in 2004 by the Social Exclusion Unit, mentally ill people have the highest “want to work” rate of any disability group. It also found that fewer than four in 10 employers would consider offering a job to someone with a history of mental illness.

Providing people with the help they need, and addressing the stigma that holds them back, is no easy task. It takes time, thought and significant financial investment. How much easier to harness the stigma and turn it to political advantage! The welfare system is overrun with work-shy benefit cheats. The “allegedly disabled” (as Jeremy Paxman put it recently on Newsnight) are living it up on taxpayers’ money, claiming benefits to which they are not entitled. We must reassess everyone, weed out the scroungers! What objection could anyone have? Unless they’re cheating.

Let’s think about that. DLA exists to help those with serious long-term health problems pay for the additional support they need as a result of their condition. It is not means tested. Many working people receive DLA. It is often DLA that enables them to work. It isn’t easy to get. Claimants must complete a lengthy and personal form covering everything from toileting needs to suicidal urges. A statement is required from the claimant’s doctor as well as someone who knows them well – often, in the case of psychiatric patients, their social worker or community psychiatric nurse. Fewer than half of all claims are successful.

Now, with the openly stated aim of reducing the benefit bill, the government will employ its own assessors to decide who is worthy of help. NHS psychiatrists, who have the right to deny people liberty and to medicate them against their will, are not to be trusted when it comes to providing an accurate statement of an individual’s support needs.

As history has shown, the intangibility of mental illness, the lack of a definitive test, provides opportunities for exploitation. Unmarried mothers, troublesome offspring, homosexuals, all have been detained in psychiatric hospitals. “Proof” of mental health or ill health is impossible to provide. An assessment inevitably involves a subjective judgment on the part of the assessor. And when the assessor has an outside agenda – reducing the benefits bill, say – the lack of objective proof leaves mentally ill people vulnerable.

The awkward truth is that mental health problems are real. They cannot be bullied or wished away. If support is removed, this doesn’t mean support is not required. It means that as a society we have chosen to look away. We must not allow this to happen. The fight is on.

Reforming benefits for the sick and disabled is a difficult operation that obviously needs to be undertaken with care, given that this affects the most vulnerable in our society.

The previous British government established the employment support allowance (ESA), which simplified the system by replacing two separate benefits. More significantly it offered a personalised and non-coercive support and engagement process (designed by me) to help people return to work, instead of a system that forgot about the disabled for years at a time once they passed the incapacity assessment. These are positive steps forward.

However, ESA also has a new assessment to determine people’s eligibility and this work capability assessment (WCA) is causing increasing concern. Such assessments are very tricky to get right and sensibly the government set out to trial it for around 18 months before the planned application to the 2.5m existing claimants of incapacity benefits, due to start this autumn.

The new test has seen far fewer people being deemed eligible than was expected. Among new claimants, just over a third of claims undergoing the WCA assessment were passed. This was about 20% fewer than expected. Meanwhile, increasing numbers of anecdotal cases were coming to the fore suggesting serious problems with the test. Citizens Advice has highlighted serious concerns with the test and its implementation, and estimates that among those undergoing the process around one person in five is seeking help from them.

Similarly large numbers of those being found fit for work under the WCA test are appealing and reports suggest that in some 70% of represented cases the appeal succeeds, as well as 40% of cases where the claimants represent themselves.

Signs that the government is aware of problems are shown by two significant changes to the assessment introduced in the last three months, concerning dealing with those with acute mental health problems and those about to receive chemotherapy. Furthermore, Michael Harrington is to undertake a review so that the process is transparent and people are treated fairly.

It goes without saying that the disabled community is both outraged and scared, and the government is not doing itself any favours. The statements made by George Osborne, about getting people off incapacity benefits and on to lower-value unemployment benefits, clearly lead disabled people to conclude that the aim is to save money rather than get people into the right place for appropriate help and support.

The deeper concern here is that all this will undermine ESA itself, as it will make it almost impossible to get people on ESA to take work, because they will fear that they will never be able to get back if things go wrong. Also, a large number of people with significant health problems will be moved on to jobseeker’s allowance (JSA), which is designed for those who are job-ready and offers no help with condition management and no engagement and support from advisers for at least six months. In contrast, those people on ESA receive tailored, individual support programmes from day one.

This will clog up the JSA system and delay appropriate support to these groups, delaying rather than enhancing a return to work. Somewhat unbelievably, the government is not tracking those who fail the WCA test to see what happens to them; are they claiming JSA, getting work or disappearing from the benefit system entirely?

This isn’t a party-political issue. The process and concerns it raises straddle the old and new government. Rather there is a deep issue here of making sure the process is working before it is unleashed on the 2.5m claimants of incapacity benefits. The recent changes to the WCA process and the newly announced review need to be assessed in the field to check that they have improved matters, and the assessments of MS and Parkinson’s disease under the test also need to be checked. This means delaying the reassessment of existing claimants under the new ESA regime. Not only this, but the tracking of WCA failures needs to be undertaken to gain insight into what is happening to them.

Finally, the potential to fast track those with health problems but not deemed eligible for ESA, in order for them to gain access to earlier support under JSA, needs to be considered. The worry here is not that people are going to lose £25 a week in benefits inappropriately, or that unnecessary stress will be placed on ill people as they fight to keep the support they deserve, but that the haste and claims of huge welfare savings will undermine rather than enhance the goal of helping disabled people into work.

In the longer term, closing the gap in benefit rates between ESA and JSA would help remove much of the mutual suspicion of “gaming”, either by government to get people off ESA or by claimants to get on to it.

Multi-organ failure left me disabled but I am afraid that the government’s plans to slash the welfare bill coupled with ‘efficiency savings’ at my council could leave me with no support