Disabled people are being subjected to stressful checks and months of frustrating bureaucracy after being identified as potential benefit fraudsters by an algorithm the government is refusing to disclose, according to a new legal challenge.

A group in Manchester has launched the action after mounting testimony from disabled people in the area that they were being disproportionately targeted for benefit fraud investigations. Some said they were living in “fear of the brown envelope” showing their case was being investigated. Others said they had received a phone call, without explanation as to why they had been flagged.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has previously conceded that it uses “cutting-edge artificial intelligence” to track possible fraud but has so far rebuffed attempts to explain how the algorithm behind the system was compiled. Campaigners say that once flagged, those being examined can face an invasive and humiliating investigation lasting up to a year.Advertisementhttps://572bf69b7786a55f7aff47c7806f8708.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

A legal letter has been sent to the DWP demanding details of the automated process that triggers the investigations. Greater Manchester Coalition of Disabled People (GMCDP), which sent the letter with the help of campaign group Foxglove, said a “huge percentage” of the group has been affected by the system. The group believes the government has a legal duty to be transparent about how the algorithm works.

Concerns were raised by the charity Privacy International, which first found references in a DWP report to its use of “cutting-edge artificial intelligence to crack down on organised criminal gangs committing large-scale benefit fraud”. A 2019 UN report into the “digital welfare state” said algorithms were “highly likely” to repeat biases reflected in existing data and make them even worse. It added: “Inbuilt forms of discrimination can fatally undermine the right to social protection for key groups and individuals.”

The government has until Friday to respond to the legal letter.

“We’re tired of the fear of the brown envelope and tired of being repeatedly forced by DWP officials just to justify who we are,” said Rick Burgess of the GMCDP. “It’s time for the DWP to come clean about how this algorithm works and explain why so many disabled people are flagged for investigation. Disabled people need support – not being ground down by a brutal system that assumes we are fraudulent until proven innocent.”

Foxglove said: “The DWP algorithm seems to send poor and disabled people to the call centre from hell. The DWP needs to explain exactly how its algorithm works and what is done to eliminate bias – or be taken to court.”

Officials stressed that specialist staff were involved in any cases of suspected fraud and error and support was offered to those who needed it. A DWP spokesperson said: “The DWP will be responding to the letter written by the representatives of the GMCDP in due course.”

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

The UK branch of an Australian company heavily involved in the welfare to work industry is carrying out a combined PIP and WCA pilot with almost 1,500 PIP claimants in the DWP’s ‘Health Transformation Area’, the government has revealed.

As we highlighted in September, the DWP are to introduce a major change to the assessment system for PIP and the work capability assessment for ESA and UC, with just one company carrying out both assessments for any given claimant from August 2023.

The DWP say that are not planning to have a single assessment for both PIP and the WCA. But the same company will carry out both assessments using the same software platform and sharing information between the two assessments where possible.

In a written answer to a parliamentary question, minister for disabled people Chloe Smith revealed that Advanced Personnel Management Group (UK) Limited employs the health professionals currently working in the DWP’s Health Transformation area. This is a pilot area in which the new assessment system is being trialled.

According to Companies House, Advanced Personnel Management Group (UK) started out with the bizarre name of ‘Macbeth 22’ in 2003, before becoming Pertemps People Development Group (PPDG), which was a contractor on the Work Programme.

PPDG was bought out by the Australian company Advanced Personnel Management (APM) in 2015 and its name was changed to make it part of the APM group. APM appointed the late Alan Cave, a former DWP employee who ran the Work Programme, as the chief executive of its UK arm.

In Australia APM are one of the main providers of Jobactive, which aims to move welfare benefits claimants back into work.

In 2019 APM bought out another leading a leading UK government Work and Health Programme provider, Ingeus. At the time, APM Chief Executive Michael Anghie said:

“Around the world, governments are facing many challenges such as ageing populations, increasing mental health issues, pressured health budgets, migration and integration, and technology that is changing job opportunities. Some important solutions to these challenges relate to work, health and behaviour change, which is what Ingeus and APM both do really well.”

The DWP say that they intend to recruit their own healthcare professionals for the Health Transformation Area, but have given no timetable for when this might happen.

You can read Smith’s full written answer on the Health transformation Programme here

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

Claimant commitment sanctions have been reintroduced for new style ESA and JSA, the latest edition of the DWP newsletter Touchbase has revealed.

Sanctions relating to the claimant commitment had been suspended due to the pandemic. However, it is clear that it is now back to business as usual for the DWP, including sanctioning sick and disabled claimants.

According to Touchbase:

“This week a change was made to bring the obligations in new style JSA and ESA benefits in line with those in Universal Credit

“This will mean that, as is the case for Universal Credit claimants, if someone in receipt of new style JSA and ESA fails to do what they have agreed to in their Claimant Commitment without good reason – such as having or caring for a child, or a change to a health condition – their payments may be reduced for a set period. This is known as a sanction.

“All Claimant Commitments are tailored to a person’s personal circumstances and local jobs market, and claimants affected by this change are being informed of the introduction of the new process. Sanctions are only applied as a last resort when a claimant is not engaging with the commitment they have made. If someone disagrees with a decision they can ask for it to be looked at again.”

Around 100 people denied fast-tracked disability benefits for terminal illness died challenging the decision.

Currently, patients can access benefits more quickly if their clinician says they have six months or less to live.

In July the government promised to extend that to 12 months. Critics said it did not go far enough.

“Our priority is dealing with people’s claims quickly and compassionately,” the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said.

End-of-life charity Marie Curie said it had “serious concerns about the DWP’s ability to recognise when a claimant was approaching the end of life and was in desperate need of support”.

Dr Sam Royston, its director of policy and research, said if people died before their appeals were decided it was “highly likely they were living with a long-term or terminal illness”.

“Many of these people should have received fast-track access to support [originally],” he added.

Patients can currently access fast-tracked benefits at a higher rate by applying under the Special Rules for Terminal Illness (SRTI).

They need to submit a form signed by their clinician, saying it is probable they will die within six months.

The DWP said of those who applied “the majority received the highest possible award and were paid within three days of making a claim”.

But charities said the system was flawed.

The Motor Neurone Disease (MND) Association said the unpredictability of the speed with which a person with MND might deteriorate, meant it was difficult for neurologists to give accurate prognoses.

Susie Rabin, head of policy and campaigns at the MND Association, said that made it difficult for people to access benefits through the special rules.

Dr Catherine Millington-Sanders, the clinical lead for palliative and end of life care for the Royal College of GPs, added doctors “still faced uncertainty when determining exactly how long someone has got to live”.

“It makes little sense to have a rigidly set time cap to be a determining factor,” she said.

Affected families and charities said the current process was “overly complex and stressful” and it remained unclear when reforms would happen.

They have also called for the government to go further and scrap the requirement for people on terminal illness benefits to be reassessed every three years.

‘We’ve been forgotten’

Helena Reynolds, from Essex, who is terminally ill with intestinal failure, said the current six-month rule was “pointless” because “terminal meant terminal”.

“It’s like we’ve been forgotten. All we’re asking for is a little dignity; we shouldn’t have to beg for our benefits when we get ill,” she said.

Mrs Reynolds was aged 14 when she was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease and had 23 operations on her abdomen before she was awarded Disability Living Allowance (DLA) for life in 1991.

When Personal Independence Payment (PIP) replaced DLA in 2019, her benefits were initially cut, but later reinstated on appeal.

This year, although her doctor said her condition would “almost certainly…prove fatal at some point”, they could not say she had less than six months to live.

Instead, she had to re-apply for PIP under the standard route and was given a 10-year PIP award. The longest possible award under special rules would have been for three years.

Paul Alexander, policy manager at disability equality charity Scope, said: “This is a clear example of the system being overly complex, stressful and inconsistent.”

“It doesn’t make sense that someone would go from getting a ‘lifetime’ award, to being refused support from its successor benefit, despite being terminally ill,” he added.

Dr Royston from Marie Curie said few people awarded benefits under special rules lived beyond three years but for the small number who did it was “inappropriate and insensitive” they had to make a new application or risk losing support.

‘It was degrading’

Christine McCluskey, from Dundee, Scotland, had a history of illnesses including Crohn’s Disease, osteoporosis, and suffering a stroke in 2005.

She was told her PIP would be stopped and that DWP would try to recoup an overpayment of Employment Support Allowance after a physical assessment, which described her as having a “slim build” and being a “pleasant lady to assess”.

She weighed around 5st 6lbs (34.4kg) at the time and was being fed by a drip, her daughter Michelle said.

Then she received a terminal lung cancer diagnosis in July 2018.

She submitted a form from her doctor to the DWP about her separate terminal diagnosis but a letter came back in September 2018, a month later, to say that information – the form – required her to start a fresh claim. She died the same day aged 61.

Michelle believes the application process needs to change so fast-tracked support can be paid automatically to people with a terminal diagnosis.

It was “degrading” for a person to need to submit a form putting a time frame on their own death, she said.

Michelle, who previously shared pictures of her mother with national newspapers to highlight her experience, said: “You just have to look at her to see she wasn’t well and that was before she had cancer.”

In February 2019, a tribunal ruled Christine’s PIP should not have been cut. The DWP paid the arrears owed.

A new benefit called Adult Disability Payment was due to replace PIP in Scotland from spring 2022, which would use a clinician’s prognosis of their patient rather than any time limit.

Income-based benefits still administered by the DWP, such as Universal Credit, would however still use the DWP’s end-of-life definition, which has led to concerns of a developing two-tier system for people applying for benefits in Scotland.

What happens next?

Madeleine Moon, former Labour MP for Bridgend, previously sponsored a Private Members’ Bill in 2018 which proposed to remove the six-month time limit and replace it with a clinical judgment made by an appropriate health professional.

Parliamentary time ran out to discuss the bill beyond its first reading in the House of Commons and then Mrs Moon lost her seat. Jessica Morden, Labour MP for Newport East, has now taken up the bill again.

Mrs Moon, whose husband Steve died from motor neurone disease in 2015, said: “The cruelty, if not the inhumanity, of the current system is shocking.https://emp.bbc.co.uk/emp/SMPj/2.44.3/iframe.htmlMedia caption, Madeleine Moon gave an emotional speech in the House of Commons

“I’m glad the government has accepted the current rules are wrong.

“Most people in the initial shock [of receiving a terminal diagnosis] aren’t thinking about benefits, they are thinking what have I got to do to live whatever time I have left.

“You need to plan for the new future and you need to stabilise the family’s finances. What you can’t do is spend the time going through the long time to access PIP.”

Northern Ireland’s communities minister Deirdre Hargey has committed to bring forward legislation to widen the eligibility to people with less than a year to live, before the next assembly election is due in May 2022.

In July, then-minister for disabled people Justin Tomlinson said Westminster would make the same change for Universal Credit and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) next year and Attendance Allowance, Disability Living Allowance and PIP “when Parliamentary time allowed”.

The DWP reiterated it would make those changes “so more people could get the vital support they needed”.

University of York Professor of Law Charlotte O’Brien, a specialist in welfare law, said it was a different process to change the rules for universal credit and ESA because those rules were in secondary legislation regulations, whereas DLA, PIP and Attendance Allowance were set out in the Welfare Reform Act 2012, so a new Act of Parliament could be required.

“The chances of the government proposing a bill specifically for this are quite slight, as are the chances of them having the time and the Parliamentary bandwidth,” Prof O’Brien said.

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

Capita have paid ‘substantial’ compensation to the family of Philippa Day, a single parent who took her own life after she was told that she had to attend a face-to-face PIP assessment in spite of her anxiety, depression and agoraphobia and in defiance of pleas by her CPN. It is believed to be the first such payment made by a DWP health assessment provider.

Ever since her death in 2019, Philippa’s family have been fighting to make the DWP and Capita admit their role in her death and to change the way vulnerable claimants are dealt with.

In a call the DWP tried to prevent the coroner making public, a clearly very distressed, sometimes crying, Philippa told a DWP call handler she was “literally starving and cold”, “genuinely can’t survive like this for much longer”, was “in so much debt”, “literally cannot leave the house”, and needed “a reason to live”.

However, the call handler simply asked her if there was anyone in her family or a local charity who could help her and told her that she needed to talk to Capita about when she would have her assessment.

No note was made on Philippa’s file of the level of distress she was in and the DWP’s six-point plan to be used when claimants express suicidal intent was not used.

The call handler told the inquest that she had heard many claimants crying and saying similar things.

Philippa’s family sued both the DWP and Capita for negligence.

Capita have now settled out of court, paying a sum that will provide for Philippa’s son’s upbringing.

Following the settlement, Imogen Day, Philippa’s sister said:

“Our family have always maintained that my sister’s treatment by the Capita, on behalf of the DWP directly impacted her mental state and in the end is the reason for her death.

“Capita’s wall of bureaucracy, with no consideration for Philippa’s mental state, exacerbated her despair at her debt and poverty. She was met with cold, uncaring call operators who would not listen to her cries for help. However we welcome the opportunity to meet with Capita to discuss improvements to their service.”

“This settlement will in some measure provide for Philippa’s family and a materially stable upbringing for Philippa’s son, but he has lost his mother, and there is nothing Capita can do to put right the wrong that contributed to Philippa’s death.”

Leigh Day partner Merry Varney, who represented the family, said:

“Through this settlement, and the public investigation into how the DWP and its agents treated Philippa, a young mother with physical and mental health conditions which led to damning findings by the Coroner, the law has delivered some accountability for and recognition of the wrongs Philippa suffered and the devastating impact on her family.

“Capita has shown acceptance of their failures and a willingness to ensure their mistakes are not repeated, however there remain too many examples of the DWP, which controls the financial circumstances of the majority of people too sick to work, acting inhumanely to those receiving benefits and a continued resistance by the DWP to transparent investigations into benefit related deaths.

“Until the DWP changes its attitude, people like Philippa and her family remain at risk of gross human rights violations and ‘benefit related deaths’ are just another example of preventable deaths of people with disabilities occurring without any proper investigation or scrutiny.”

The DWP have refused to comment on the court case, which is now believed to be closed, but a Capita spokesperson told the Guardian:

“We are very sorry for the mistakes we made in processing Philippa’s personal independence payment (PIP) claim and the additional stress this caused her. In partnership with the DWP, we have considered and reviewed the coroner’s report and we are implementing all the recommendations that are relevant to us.

“Following this incident, we have strengthened our processes and we are working to continuously improve and deliver a professional, efficient and kind service for every PIP applicant we assess.”

The compensation payment is the first of its kind by a health assessment company to a claimant’s family and will no doubt cause major concern both to the DWP and to the assessment providers in case it is the first of many.

You can read the full story on the Leigh Day website and in the Guardian

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

The DWP are experimenting with a “Tailoring Up” approach to sanctions for disabled claimants which will allow job coaches to make activities either voluntary or mandatory on a personal whim. The DWP are doing no monitoring of the programme whatsoever to ensure that particular groups of claimants are not discriminated against.

The Tailoring Up programme claims to focus on “what a claimant can do, rather than what

they can’t”. It allows job coaches to make employment support activities such as training or work experience voluntary, so that the claimant is not at risk of being sanctioned.

However, job coaches are free to make the activities mandatory and therefore subject to sanctions for any claimant “where appropriate”.

Attending meetings with job coaches will continue to be a mandatory activity.

According to a response by minister for disabled people Chloe Smith to questions by the Commons work and pensions committee:

“Tailoring Up is a new way to deliver our existing conditionality policy for people with health conditions. The approach focuses on what a claimant can do, rather than what they can’t, and commitments are built up and tailored to the individual’s situation. Tailoring Up encourages a voluntary first approach to allow a claimant to test out employment support activities without risk of a sanction while they are still building their knowledge and understanding of the impacts of their health condition.

“The Tailoring Up approach does not remove the option to apply mandatory conditionality. The approach is tailored to each individual dependent on their personal circumstances. Many people will have a blend of commitments, some voluntary and some mandatory, and we retain the mandatory requirement for claimants to attend any interviews set.

“All commitments are agreed in advance with the claimant and Tailoring Up reduces the likelihood of any sanction referrals by applying a voluntary first approach where applicable. However, claimants may still be set mandatory commitments if the work coach feels it is appropriate; and should the claimants fail to comply without a good cause, they could be subject to a sanction.”

There are many objections to this approach.

The most obvious is that if you want to make claimants feel safe to try out work-related activities then the only sensible thing to do is remove the threat of sanctions altogether. The rates of benefits like ESA, JSA and UC are now so low that the idea that a significant number of claimants would prefer to remain in poverty on benefits rather than work if they could is far-fetched.

The Tailoring Up approach applies not just to claimants “found to have Limited Capability to Work following their WCA, on both New Style ESA and Universal Credit”. It also applies to “everyone on the health journey providing medical evidence before their WCA”. In other words, claimants who will eventually be placed in the support group can still face an arbitrary risk of sanctions at the whim of a job coach, whilst they are waiting to have their WCA.

It’s also clear that this new approach makes discrimination, both at the institutional level and at the individual job coach level, even more likely and virtually impossible to expose.

Under Tailoring Up, job coaches have the power to choose how many sanctions threats they choose to load on any individual claimant. Where a job coach is sceptical about, for example, ME/CFS, Long Covid or mental health issues they will have the power to make more activities mandatory for claimants with those conditions.

Smith was unable to answer a whole range of questions about the scheme from the work and pensions committee because:

“We do not collect data which identifies how many claimants are in receipt of voluntary as opposed to mandatory commitments.”

This means the department will have no way of checking whether the sanctions regime is being applied in a discriminatory way, with claimants with particular conditions or from particular ethnic backgrounds, for example, being more likely to be subject to sanctions.

So far, no guidance has been published on how job coaches should decide who will be subject to mandatory activities. This means that claimants will have no way of measuring whether they are being treated fairly and according to DWP policies.

Benefits and Work has requested copies of any such guidance, but the DWP often ignores the rules when it comes to Freedom of Information requests.

The Tailoring Up approach is initially being trialled in 11 Health Model Offices, with a view to rolling it out nationally. The 11 offices are:

Aberdare, Croydon, Fraserburgh, Gosport, Grantham, Leeds Eastgate, Paisley, Slough, Stourbridge,

Sunderland, Wigan.

Benefits and Work members concerned about facing sanctions can download a copy of our 35 page guide to Ways to prevent and overturn ESA and UC sanctions from the ESA and UC resources page.

You can read the correspondence on Tailoring Up here.

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

A disabled claimant died underweight, ‘unkempt and dirty’ after the DWP wrongly stopped both his ESA and PIP. The DWP left the destitute claimant to be supported by their elderly, disabled parent who themselves needed daily carers and meals delivered. £14,000 in backdated PIP was eventually paid to the claimant’s next-of-kin, the Independent Case Examiner (ICE) has reported.

According to ICE, the claimant had severe depression and physical health problems and was classed as vulnerable by the DWP.

For a long time, their elderly parent was their appointee for benefits purposes. But the parent became too ill to continue and informed the DWP.

At this point the DWP should have found another appointee for the claimant themselves, as their guidance requires, but they did not do so.

Over the following months the claimant’s ESA and PIP were repeatedly stopped due to failure to attend assessments and then restarted following interventions. However, the DWP seem to have lost the evidence showing why the claims had been restarted

Sometimes letters were sent to the claimant’s address and sometimes to his former appointee’s, making it even harder for the claimant to meet their obligations.

The DWP repeatedly failed to follow their own safeguarding procedures throughout this period, even though they knew the claimant was vulnerable.

At one point the claimant’s sibling even contacted the DWP to say that the claimant’s GP had sent them for psychiatric assessment due to a deterioration in their mental health.

The sibling explained that they had been to the claimant’s house and found unopened post and said they weren’t fit for a PIP assessment.

Nonetheless, another PIP assessment was arranged by letter, the claimant didn’t answer the door and their PIP was stopped.

The same thing had also happened in relation to their ESA claim.

At the time of their death the claimant had been without ESA for 3 months and PIP for three weeks.

The claimant’s sibling told ICE that when they had last seen the claimant they had lost weight and were unkempt and dirty. Their elderly parent had been giving the claimant money for food, providing support even though they themselves had a care package, meals prepared and carers attending daily.

Following a complaint by the claimant’s sibling, the DWP made a payment of ESA arrears and £3,000 of backdated PIP.

The sibling then took the case to ICE, resulting in a further payment of £10,700 in PIP to the claimant’s estate and a consolatory payment of £2,500 to the family.

The ICE report doesn’t give the claimant’s cause of death.

But there can be no doubt that the continual stopping and starting of their benefits will have exacerbated the claimant’s mental health issues as well as causing considerable distress to their family.

It’s worth noting that even when ICE drew the DWP’s attention to their own guidance, which said they were responsible for ensuring the claimant had an appointee, the DWP continued to dispute this.

Had the DWP provided an appointee and not ignored their own safeguarding procedures on multiple occasions, it is entirely possible that this story would have had a very different ending.

As it is, we can only hope that the Court of Appeal in the Jodey Whiting case will take note that ICE is once again identifying failures by the DWP to follow its own safeguarding procedures. How many more times does this need to happen before it is accepted that it is an entire system that is failing and not just isolated incidents?

You can read the full account in the ICE annual report (See: case study 3)

A disabled man who had his welfare benefits paused when he spent more than 28 days in hospital, is hoping to challenge the rule in court.

Cameron Mitchell, 20, from Carlisle, cannot walk or speak, and has seizures. He spent 128 days at the Royal Victoria Infirmary.

Current rules mean he lost his payments while still needing carers, and he has applied for a judicial review.

The Department for Work and Pensions has been contacted for a comment.

‘Needs don’t change’

Mr Mitchell receives Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and his mother and carer – Nicola Clulow – receives a Carer’s Allowance.

Under current regulations, known as the “hospitalisation rule”, a person’s entitlement to their benefits is suspended if they have received care in hospital for more than 28 days.

Legal firm, Leigh Day, has applied for a judicial review – where a judge considers the lawfulness of a decision or action by a public body – to challenge the current regulations.

Ms Clulow – who is communicating on her son’s behalf in this case – said the payments were stopped even though the hospital relied on her for her son’s care.

She said staff asked her to spot when Mr Mitchell was about to have a seizure, to interpret his pain and to be available at all hours to assist with his care when asked.

The family said they lost more than £5,000 in benefit payments while spending about £100 a week on food and transport.

Mr Mitchell argues the DWP’s failure to provide an exception to the rule for disabled people, whose needs do not change, discriminates against them and breaches their human rights.

Ms Clulow said: “Cameron requires the constant care and knowledge of his needs from a known carer whenever he is in hospital.

“This doesn’t change on day 29, but the financial means to enable us to provide this support does.”

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

The DWP stand accused of having taken a lesson from ‘kidnappers’ in order to verify universal credit claimants’ addresses, by requiring them to take multiple photos of themselves, including one with them holding a copy of the current day’s local paper.

The Public Interest Law Centre have tweeted an extract from a claimant’s UC online account and suggested that ‘Point 5 is what kidnappers do, which seems appropriate’ .

The extract itself is a list of 5 demands the claimant must meet in order to have their UC claim considered:

Further to today’s phone call. I now require you to provide the following information. If you don’t provide all of the information that we’ve requested your claim will be closed.

1. A photo of your ID card or passport open on the photo page.

2. . A photo of your ID card or passport open on the photo page held next to your face.

3. A photo of you stood outside the front door (open behind you) of the property you live at. Ask someone to take this from the street so that the whole property can be seen.

4. A photo of you stood next to your street sign with you [sic] right hand holding it. Ask someone to take this photo from a few metres away so that the background can be clearly seen.

5. A photo of you holding your local newspaper for the area you live (not a national tabloid newspaper). This should be dated the same day you upload the photo.

As other posters point out there are numerous problems with this approach including: many areas don’t have a local paper anymore, you can’t put your hand on a street sign if it’s halfway up a building, you can’t take a photo of yourself in the front door of your property from the street if you live halfway up a block of flats, you may not know anyone who could take a photo of you and may be unwilling to hand your phone over to strangers.

The bizarre series of instruction appears to be a way of trying to verify a claimant’s identity and address without having them attend an interview.

But many would argue that copies of items such as utility bills and tenancy agreements are as reliable as a series of images that could quite possibly be photoshopped.

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

Homelessness charity Groundswell have contacted us to warn that the DWP appear to be introducing a four hour slot system for telephone assessments, instead of giving a fixed-time appointment for a call.

Staff from the charity came across the practice in connection with a work capability assessment (WCA) for a universal credit applicant.

The 4 hour window raises huge problems for organisations who wish to provide a support worker to assist with giving evidence at the assessment, because few charities can afford to have a staff member sitting at a claimant’s home for up to four hours waiting for a call.

In addition, the protracted wait is likely to cause enormous distress to some claimants, especially those who experience anxiety.

The DWP’s explanation for the four hour window is that sometimes assessments overrun, so it is difficult to give a precise time when an assessor will be available.

The only concession that appears to be being made is that claimants can ask for a 9am or 1pm appointment in order to be first on the list for the morning or the afternoon. But clearly these slots will be in short supply.

We don’t yet know if this practice is now widespread and whether it also applies to WCAs for ESA and for PIP assessments.

If you have had a similar experience we’d be grateful to hear from you either with a comment below the line or by using our feedback form.

The Adult Disability Payment (ADP) is a new benefit scheduled to be delivered by Social Security Scotland next year that will replace Personal Independence Payment (PIP) for Scottish claimants.

The new benefit will provide additional financial support to people of working age across Scotland with a disability, long-term illness or mental health condition. It will initially be piloted from spring, 2022 before becoming available to all Scottish claimants in the summer of the same year.

Scottish claimants who currently receive UK Government disability benefits, delivered by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), will be transferred to the new devolved system in stages after the new benefits are introduced. Full transfer of benefits from the DWP is expected to be completed by 2025.

Read More

• DWP issues new face-to-face assessment guidance for Universal Credit, PIP and ESA claimants

Social Security Scotland will deliver three new forms of Disability Assistance

• Child Disability Payment will replace Disability Living Allowance (DLA) and is due for a full roll-out starting in November, 2021 after an initial pilot scheme launched in July
• Adult Disability Payment will replace PIP and is due for full roll-out by summer 2022
• Pension Age Disability Payment will replace Attendance Allowance and a roll-out date has still to be confirmed

The Scottish Government assumed responsibility for these benefits alongside Severe Disablement Allowance and Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit in April 2020.

However, due to the impact on the Scottish Government, Social Security Scotland and public services in managing Scotland through the Covid-19 pandemic, a decision was made to delay the launch of Disability Assistance.

For now, disability benefits will continue to be delivered by the DWP.

The change to PIP will only affect Scottish claimants.

Below is our quick guide to Adult Disability Payment and includes everything you need to know about eligibility, payment rates, assessments and making a claim.

Who will be eligible to make a claim for the Adult Disability Payment?

Eligibility criteria is similar to PIP.

This benefit is for people who meet the following criteria:

• You are aged between 16 to State Pension age (now 66 for both men and women)
• You have difficulties with daily living or getting around outside your home (or both)
• You have had the physical or mental difficulty for at least 3 months and expect it to continue for at least 9 months

If a person is terminally ill these qualifying periods do not apply.

How are claims assessed?

Social Security Scotland will make decisions about entitlement for ADP using the applicant’s account of their circumstances and existing supporting information, where possible.

The number of face-to-face assessments will be significantly reduced and will only be necessary when it is the only practicable way to make a decision.

Most consultations will be carried out over the phone, but can be face-to-face in a GP surgery or even at home – whatever works best for the person applying.

And claimants will no longer be asked to carry out tasks to demonstrate how their disability, long-term illness or mental health condition affects them as part of the application process.

Research into how people felt about the current DWP assessment consultation was carried out before the new system was devised by Social Security Scotland.

People who have undergone assessments for DLA and PIP told Social Security Scotland Experience Panels it was the “most stressful part of the overall process.”

However, a DWP spokesperson recently commented: “Our latest survey shows that 82 per cent of PIP claimants are satisfied with the overall service they receive from us and we continue to work closely with stakeholder groups and assessment providers to continuously improve the overall experience.”

Examples of supporting information

This will be used to help make a decision about your claim and will include:

• a social care needs assessment
• a report from a community psychiatric nurse
• information from a carer

Payment rates for Adult Disability Payment

Social Security Scotland will provide the same rate of all forms of Disability Assistance as the current rate of the equivalent UK disability benefit (PIP) and will increase in line with inflation each year.

Based on 2021/2022 rates the weekly amounts of Adult Disability Payment are:

Daily living

• Standard rate: £60.00
• Enhanced rate : £89.60

Mobility

• Standard rate : £23.70
• Enhanced rate : £62.55

How often will my award be reviewed?

Unlike DWP payment awards which are reviewed regularly over a fixed-period of time, the ADP will be rolling, with no set end date.

Reviews will be ‘light touch’ and as non-intrusive as possible.

Will I still be able to swap all or part of my mobility payment for the Motability Scheme?

People who get the highest rate of the mobility component of ADP will be able to transfer either the whole or part of the money they get for the mobility component to access the Accessible Vehicles and Equipment Scheme .

This new Scottish scheme will provide a service similar to the current Motability scheme, with a range of cars, wheelchair accessible vehicles, scooters and powered wheelchairs on affordable leasing terms, with a range of adaptations at little or no cost.

Clients who have an existing Motability lease will be able to retain their vehicle until the end of that lease.

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When can I apply for Adult Disability Premium?

New claims will be accepted initially in the pilot scheme from spring, 2022.

Anyone who needs to claim for additional financial support due to a disability, long-term illness or mental health condition should apply for PIP from the DWP.

We have a dedicated section for all things PIP-related to help claimants understand the benefit with guides on how to apply and complete the claim form – browse the topics here.

Find out more about all the new Disability Assistance being delivered by Social Security Scotland website here.

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

Therese Coffey, the secretary of state for work and pensions has said that PIP has “grown in a way that was not anticipated” and that it needs to be targeted “even more so to people who need that help”. She also refused to rule out merging PIP with universal credit and said that the benefits system needs to stop “encouraging people to show how they really cannot do any work at all”.

The comments made at a meeting at the Conservative Party Conference, will dismay all those who have already endured the move from incapacity benefit to ESA, based on the idea that ESA would focus on what claimants could do rather than what they could not do.

Many of those same claimants have also faced the move from DLA to PIP, based on the claim that PIP would be better targeted on those who needed support.

Coffey’s comments are particularly ironic given that PIP was promoted by the DWP as being more effective at providing help to claimant with mental health conditions.

Yet the example Coffey chose to give of where PIP is failing was the increased help for young people with mental health issues.

“PIP has certainly grown in a way that was not anticipated when it was introduced.

“To give you an example, three out of four young people who claim PIP have their primary reason being mental ill health.

“That in itself is 189,000 young people who currently receive benefit focused on that. There may be other benefits they receive as well.

“So that’s one of the things where I’m very conscious one of things I’m trying to do as Secretary of State is very much the issues we face are downstream, and what are the things we need to do to get more upstream.

“And I hope that might give us the headroom then to… how is it that people can think the benefit system is fair.

“And I think by being able to target that even more so to people who really need that support, may improve that prospect of public perception.”

In relation to ESA, Coffey said that the original expectation was that only 25% of claimants would be in the support group rather than 80% and that she wanted to change the focus to “what people can do, rather than the benefit system being driven currently by what you cannot do”.

When asked if there were any plans to merge UC and PIP, Coffey refused to rule it out, saying that “everything is on the table”.

You can read the full report in the Mirror

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

A new £500 million Household Support Fund (HSF) for vulnerable UK households was launched by the DWP on 6 October. It will last until 31 March 2022 and may be a very important lifeline for some Benefits and Work readers over the winter.

However, the fund is being administered by local authorities who have very wide discretion in how they distribute money, so local research will be needed to discover if you might be able to get help.

The Household Support Fund (HSF) was launched with virtually no detail at very short notice to head off a potential backbench conservative revolt against the ending of the £20 UC uplift last week.

It has been condemned by charities as merely a sticking plaster and a hastily cobbled together attempt to save face by ministers.  But for struggling households even this short-term support cannot be ignored. 

In England the money is being given to county councils and unitary authorities. The devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will decide how to distribute their share of the funds.

Each local authority can draw up its own procedures and targets for awarding payments, as long as they stay within the DWP’s overall guidelines.

The money should be primarily be used to help pay for food, energy and water bills for vulnerable households, but other costs can also be covered. 

Amongst the possible items listed in DWP draft guidance are:

• sanitary products,
• warm clothing,
• soap,
• blankets,
• boiler service/repair, purchase of equipment including fridges, freezers, ovens,
• broadband and phone bills,
• clothing,
• essential transport-related costs such as repairing a car, buying a bicycle or paying for fuel,
• housing costs

At least 50% of the money has to go to households with children. But the remainder can go to households without children, including people living alone. The funds are not restricted to people in receipt of benefits. Not is there any requirement that you must be employed or that you must be unemployed.

Councils can identify households they regard as vulnerable using data they already hold, request applications for support from other agencies or from individuals or use a mixture of all these methods.

So, it is likely that some authorities will accept grant applications from individuals and others will not.

Awards can be made to the same household for different types of expense and multiple awards can be made to the same household.

Whatever approach they use, councils must have “a clear rationale or documented policy/framework outlining their approach including how they are defining eligibility and how households access the scheme.”

Councils have until 29 October to provide the DWP with a plan setting out how they will distribute their share of the funds.  At some point most will hopefully publish information online as well.

At the moment it is likely that most local authorities are scrabbling to come up with a plan to award the funds. We would be grateful for any information from readers about what is happening in their local area.

There is a press release on the Household Support Fund on the .gov website

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.

The government is breaking its own rules on publishing research in order to hide evidence given by 120 disabled claimants about how they are treated by the DWP. The cover-up comes as the DWP fights to prevent a further inquest into Jodie Whiting’s death, which would look at whether there are life-threatening flaws in the way disabled claimants are supported.

Stephen Timms MP, chair of the commons work and pensions committee, wrote to Theres Coffey, DWP secretary of state in August, asking for a copy of a report entitled The Uses of Health and Disability Benefits, which interviewed 120 claimants about their experiences of receiving PIP, ESA and Universal Credit.

The report was completed in 2020, but has still not been published and no reference has been made to it in any subsequent green paper relating to disability or benefits.

In an entirely dismissive two sentence response Coffey relied to Timms that it was not necessary for the government to publish the report and it did not intend to do so.

However, Timms has written back to Coffey asking again for a copy of the report.

He has pointed out that when the research was commissioned, the bid pack stated that the successful bidder would have to create:

“A final report of the research findings for publication” and “a one-page summary of the research for the DWP website”

Timms has also pointed out that the government has a protocol for the publication of social research whose principles include the following:

Principle 1. The products of government social research and analysis will be made publicly available.

Principle 2. There will be prompt release of all government social research and analysis.

Principle 3. Government social research and analysis must be released in a way that promotes public trust.

The government is clearly breaching all of these principles and Timms has now asked for an explanation from Coffey by 11 October.

As Timms himself says:

“Some 120 disabled people gave up their time—at DWP’s request—to talk about their experiences of the benefits system, in the expectation that they were taking part in research that would be published and used to inform policy. DWP should be listening to the voices of disabled people. Instead, the Secretary of State seems to have simply brushed this important report under the carpet.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Government is refusing to publish this research because its findings are too embarrassing. It must now publish the report without further delay.”

It may be that there is nothing in the report that relates to the avoidable deaths of claimants. But if a picture is painted of an organisation that is institutionally cynical, disablist and incompetent then it may be very relevant indeed.

On the basis that when it comes to pressure, every little helps, Benefits and Work has made a freedom of information request for a copy of the report. Given that the bid required a report to be written for publication there can be no possibility of the department pleading cost or confidentiality issues.

The DWP will drag it out, but eventually they will almost certainly have to hand over a copy.

Meanwhile, you can read the full correspondence on the work and pensions committee website

With many thanks to Benefits And Work.