"The DWP conned us, and our members" says a visibly upset Employment Related Services Association

"dangling the carrot of 'easy money' for 'helping' those out of work find work, and now we find we are expected to actually do something for the money, it isn't fair..." or if you prefer the properly balanced BBC version of the tale:

Work Programme 'not doing enough'

"The costs of helping jobseekers on ESA back into work are significant and cannot all be met by the Work Programme," says the Association's chief executive, Kirsty McHugh. "In order for there to be a significant step change in performance in helping these jobseekers into employment, we need greater use of skills and health budgets."

And to give the BBC credit it manages to sum up that plea from ERSA very nicely indeed :-

The call for spending from other parts of the public sector to be channelled in to support the Work Programme is an embarrassment for this flagship government scheme.

Well yes, another example of the "do it so much better" private sector asking that it be allowed to pass the burden of doing what it is contracted to do over to the failing "public sector" whilst this not impacting on its "payment by (sic) results" profits.

But interestingly ERSA are not castigating Atos, holder of the DWP issued contract for reassessing Incapacity Benefit holders for ESA, and new ESA claims, which is resulting in all these "people declared not ill and suitable for undertaking work" who are now being directed at the Work Programme providers to actually complete the chain and find them that work.

The Department for Work and Pensions says the payment-by-results contracts agreed with Work Programme providers already give them "a clear financial incentive to support the hardest to help into work".

Oh dear, the initial DWP response to the "can we renegotiate the entire contract two years in" plea from ERSA seems to be a firm, if carefully worded "no way". Wonder how long that line will be maintained.

a paradoxical situation in which an individual cannot or is incapable of avoiding a problem because of contradictory constraints or rules.

The DWP issued a Press Release today,  Employment and Support Allowance for claimants who challenge a decision containing the response to an FoI request.

The request was "We have confirmation that the DWP is actively considering axeing  employment and support allowance (ESA) payments for claimants who challenge a decision that they are fit for work.  Instead, claimants will have to try to sign on for jobseeker’s allowance, where they will face a harsh new regime which, from later this month, will include potential benefit sanctions of up to three years.  Please clarify if any of these assertions are true?"

And the response was, in part, "Following the introduction of mandatory reconsideration, payment of ESA will cease once a decision is made that the claimant does not have limited capability for work. If the claimant wishes to dispute this decision they must request that the decision maker looks at it again (mandatory reconsideration).   Whilst the decision maker is reconsidering the decision, ESA cannot be paid as there is no legal basis to do so.  ...... During the mandatory reconsideration process, whilst ESA cannot be paid, claimants have the option of applying for alternative benefits, such as Jobseekers Allowance, however they must meet the conditions of entitlement."

The conditions for claiming and receiving JSA? 

To qualify for JSA you usually have to be:

• 18 or over (but below State Pension age)
• able and available for work

When you apply for JSA, you must go to an interview to complete your claim.

To keep getting JSA you must go to a Jobcentre office (usually every 2 weeks or when asked) to show how you’ve been searching for a job. This is known as ‘signing on’.

So, perfectly clear then ... if you are challenging a decision on your claim for ESA or the reclassification of your Incapacity Benefit status, which has declared you "fit for work" you can't receive ESA, but you can claim for JSA, provided you can give an assurance that you are (1) able and (2) available for work, and (3) show evidence you are actively and conscientiously looking for work.

Joseph Heller, who he? 

So, what did Dave say, and what did he mean by it?

On Monday 27th May the Independent published an article under the heading How benefits crackdown ‘humiliates’ Britain's disabled Army war veterans. The article opens:

Degrading back-to-work welfare assessments that are stripping former soldiers of their benefits have been denounced by leading veterans’ charities. Thousands of ex-servicemen are being pushed to the breadline after being judged fit for work by the government-appointed company Atos. Severely wounded veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, who were once entitled to incapacity benefits, are being told they no longer qualify under new assessments carried out by Atos on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Today the Daily Mail has also published a similar article:

Anger as record number of maimed troops are denied disability benefit in Government's controversial assessments

A record number of wounded war veterans have been denied disability benefits in the past year after undergoing tests carried out by the Government’s controversial assessment company. Hundreds of injured ex-soldiers are being declared fit for work by Atos Healthcare in spite of physical and mental injuries they suffered in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Last night, the Royal British Legion (RBL) announced a 72 per cent annual rise in former soldiers having their applications to receive Employment Support Allowance (ESA) turned down.

One Daily Mail reader reacted to the story thus:

"Both IDS & Cameron publicly stated last year, that any service personnel injured on active service would be exempt from the ATOS procedure and that both their benefits and any War pensions would remain unaffected.... How do you know when a Politician is lying?......Their lips move!
- JoeBlogs, Bournemouth, 02/6/2013 10:52"

And actually when the Indie piece appeared it had brought to mind a memory of David Cameron making some form of pledge concerning the benefits treatment of injured ex-servicemen. And sure enough I was able to retrieve Severely injured troops exempted from extra disability tests under new benefits from The Guardian on 18th July 2012.

Severely injured soldiers are to be exempted from tough new disability test as David Cameron moves to ensure that controversial welfare reforms do not apply to the military.

Downing St has persuaded the Ministry of Defence to ensure only the results of existing military tests – covering the most badly wounded troops – will be needed for assessments for the new disability benefits.

Seriously injured troops will also be given a guaranteed disability payment worth around £131 a week under the reforms.

But in fact despite the G using the phrase “new disability benefits” that Guardian piece was all about a pledge from Cameron that injured ex servicemen and women would not be subjected to the “new test” related to the introduction of the Personal Independence Payment – the successor to Disability Living Allowance, and NOT a pledge to exempt them from the Work Capability Assessment.

The WCA was devised when the Labour Party decided to phase out Incapacity Benefit and replace it with Employment Support Allowance by having a test designed to ascertain whether Incapacity Benefit recipients should be switched to receiving either full unconditional Employment Support Allowance, because they were judged as expected to remain “unfit to work” or a lesser conditional level of Employment Support Allowance payable to those who although adjudged not presently fit to work when tested were expected to become fit to work or with Job Seekers Allowance in the cases of those given the WCA and adjudged immediately fit to work.

The PIP test – the process which Cameron had actually declared would not apply to ex – servicemen - does seek to ascertain how someone’s disability or injury limits their ability to live “normally” and provides additional support towards mobility etc. People both in and out of work are eligible.

Bodies representing ex-servicemen obviously believe those injured or disabled on active service should be exempt from all "degrading" welfare conditionality tests– those relating to the extent of their disability and also those relating to their “fitness for work”. It will be interesting to see whether a “public campaign” along those lines develops, and what the reaction of Number 10 and the DWP to it is.

And what the logic and arguments for “agreeing with” or “disagreeing with” the campaign to exempt former service personnel from conditionality tests which are "degrading" are, depending on which way Number 10 and the DWP decide to go.

"What's so wrong with 'creative statistics"" asks a bewildered Grant Shapps

"Picky Picky Picky Bureaucrats once again making everything unnecessarily difficult and complicated by this insistence on factual facts as opposed to propagandist fiction" says Conservative Party Chairman, adding "no wonder this country is in such a mess, when a respected government Minister gets upbraided for putting his name to a SpAd generated fairy tale designed to reinforce the shirkers, skivers, scroungers and cheats message the party has never peddled".

(Ha ha ha ha, it's that man again Update) The BBC are now running a piece about Grant's number-juggling which is drawn to your attention largely because it contains a marvellous quote from Iain Duncan Smith clone Liam Byrne:

Shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne said: "This is a government that doesn't like to let the facts get in the way of a good story... but it really is outrageous that the Tories have been caught yet again misusing statistics for their own ends."

Yes, it truly is outrageous when governments get caught fabricating evidence. Thankfully, the Labour administration 1997 - 2010 was never guilty of such a thing, and certainly never got caught out doing it, then or since.

Update Update - Some even better Liam Byrne on the official One Nation: The Labour Party site.

'A decision on whether someone is well enough to work is taken following a thorough assessment,

and after consideration of all supporting medical evidence.**'  That is the DWP line. 

She then had to be assessed by Atos assessors in Southend, but despite her regular blackouts and medical history her husband was not allowed to be present.

Mrs Wootton was questioned for 20 minutes and assessors found she was fit to work and subsequently stopped her employment support allowance and disability living allowance.

She appealed, but the Department for Work and Pensions rejected it. Mrs Wootton died in hospital on April 24 with her husband by her side.

** Minister with responsibility for the WCA and all procedures related to it Mark Hoban on 20th November 2012:

"The WCA is the right process for determining who is able to work and who needs support, and we are committed to continual improvement, which is why I am happy to accept all of Professor Harrington’s recommendations. It is in everyone’s interest to make sure the system is as fair and as accurate as possible". 

Among the recommendations made by Prof. Harrington in his 3rd (and final) review of the WCA that Hoban had signified had all been accepted:

• Measures to further improve the collecting of medical evidence as early in the process as possible;
• Ensuring DWP> decision-makers have enough time to make carefully considered decisions while ensuring a timely service;

From HoC Hansard 17 Jan 2013: Column 1080:

Heather Wheeler: I finish on two final points because time is short and many people want to speak. People have mentioned the tick-box nature of the interview; my constituents find it hugely frustrating that they cannot expand on an answer. After all this time, perhaps the interview process could be tweaked to allow that. My last point is about the absolute frustration of GPs and consultants who feel that no account whatever is taken of the fact that they take their time to write the letters. That is desperately frustrating and a huge waste of public money.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mr Mark Hoban): We do ask GPs and consultants to provide medical evidence; we send a form to them. Only 37% of those are returned in time
Heather Wheeler: I thank the Minister for putting that on the record. I will gladly go back to my GPs and consultants and say that they will be taken into account if they please return the forms on time.

** Minister with responsibility for the WCA and all procedures related to it Mark Hoban on 22nd January 2013:

"Getting the Work Capability Assessment right first time is my absolute priority. Those who are fit should work, but those who aren’t need real support. Today’s figures show that the improvements we have made since 2010 are making a real difference.

Whether it’s improving the way people with cancer are assessed, making sure we get people’s medical evidence as early as possible, or refining the assessment of people with mental health problems, I am committed to continually improving the system.

Having a fair and accurate assessment is fundamental to ensuring that those who are able to work get the help they need, and those who are too sick or disabled are fully supported".

** Minister with responsibility for the WCA and all procedures relating to it Mark Hoban on February 8th 2012, responding the PCA report on the content and conduct of the WCA, which said "there had been much criticism of Atos, the firm contracted to conduct so-called work capability assessments (WCA), but it warned that most of the problems lay with the Department for Work and Pensions."

Mark Hoban, the employment minister, dismissed the report as incomplete and failing to take into account the mess that was inherited from the last government.

"This report completely fails to recognise the considerable improvements we have made to the Work Capability Assessment since coming to power in 2010, having inherited a system from the last government that was not fit for purpose," he said.

Because it is obviously perfect now, and anything that was ever wrong with it wasn't and isn't the fault of the DWP or Atos, that is for sure.

"some significant doubts about the quality of the new regime statistics"

Spare a thought for Iain Duncan Smith,  and indeed his junior ministers at the Department of Work and Pensions,  who, as if they aren't burdened enough by having to deal with one needless problem getting in the way of their broadcasting  their success in the mission to solve unemployment, and also having to contend with running needless enquiries into the non-existence of targets up pop two more.

First up some damn fool members of the judiciary have decided  that members of the public ought to be allowed to know which employers and organisations are being public spirited enough to provide work experience places, something which says the DWP the employers and organisations doing it, no doubt through reasons of modesty, do not wish to publicise.

And secondly; having gone to the trouble of establishing beyond peradventure via a rigorous internal enquiry that there aren't any "targets" of any sort operating on the matter of "sanctioning benefit recipients and claimants" the department has now it seems uncovered a few possible inconsistencies in some data it was due to publish on the impact on the issuing of "sanctions" following changes to its procedures last October, and has had to delay publication of these for an as yet unspecified period. 

A similar fate appears to have befallen the data it collects on Employment Support Allowance - the replacement for Incapacity Benefit - claimants and recipients, and the fate of former IB recipients on being given the Work Capability Assessment by Atos, to see whether they qualify for either of the two tiers of ESA, or were simply pulling a fast one all along, something the present government and indeed their predecessors who actually brought in Atos and the WCA have repeatedly said at least a million IB recipients were and are.

So, tough times at the DWP.   On the matter of that judicial decision that despite the wishes of the work experience providers to remain so far as possible anonymous, the public should be allowed to know who they are Iain Duncan Smith might wish to seek another special out of the way meeting with his opposite number in the Labour ranks, Liam Byrne about "another deal” around having some hurriedly introduced retrospective legislation that puts every single aspect of the Work Programme firmly out of the reach of meddling members of the electorate and the damned judiciary...

... and possibly Parliamentary Select Committees too... a matter on which under the deal Labour will once again have a "whipped abstention" on the legislation to ensure it passes quickly and without fuss which Liam will explain via an article on his personal website has been done in order to extract a concession from I D S whereby anyone on the Work Programme breaching the new "confidentiality rules" that will be brought in as part of that retrospective legislation which bar them from ever letting anyone at all know where they are doing or have done some "work experience" that anyone who fails to abide by those confidentiality rules wont have their benefits suspended for more than 12 months as a punishment.

On the matter of those damned stats, well the call has gone out for someone experienced in the matter of presentation to come lend a hand.