New assessment threatens benefits
Campaigners for disability rights are protesting that planned changes to the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) will force thousands of disabled people into poverty.
Welfare rights activists have hit out at the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) planned revisions to the WCA, claiming that the new rules will cut off benefits for thousands of disabled people.
In a new paper, “Building Bridges to Work”, the DWP has proposed that benefits claimants are reassessed so that many can be taken off “inactive benefits” and then that they are subsequently put on “more appropriate benefits that provide greater employment support”.
Steve Donnison, disability and welfare rights campaigner and author of a benefits and work blog (benefitsandwork.co.uk) said: “This is barbaric. The DWP is attempting to push thousands of people onto Jobseekers Allowance, even though the Government is aware a lot of those people may never be employed. This is nothing but an ugly way to save money.”
Jaspal Dhani, chief executive of the United Kingdom’s Disabled People’s Council (UKDPC), said that the situation “suggests yet another Government initiative to get people off Incapacity Benefit.”
He added: “This system of assessments is likely to push disabled people into greater poverty. Jobseekers Allowance won’t cover living costs.”
The Department has said that the WCA will ensure that appropriate account is taken of an individual's adaptation to their condition or disability. However, Neil Coyle, policy director at Disability Alliance, said that the system still needs to be more personalised.
“The WCA is not flexible enough to reflect the needs of disabled people. An independent analysis is required to prevent the wrong assessments from being issued, which will put people on the wrong benefits at a lower rate than they should receive and cause a cost to restricted public resources through expensive appeals.”
The paper also advises that the Government should work in partnership with employers to ensure that “no-one is written off”, though it does not state how they plan to tackle discrimination at work.
UKDPC’s Jaspal Dhani said that the DWP needs to do more to encourage employers to give jobs to disabled applicants.
“It seems as though they are blaming disabled people for being unemployed rather than addressing the problem with employers; one and a half million disabled people in the UK are willing and able to work but can’t get jobs, shouldn’t they be asking why?”
A spokesman for the DWP said that DWP is committed to an Independent Review of the Work Capability Assessment every year for the first five years of operation.
The independent review is currently being commissioned and will report its first findings later in 2010.
From the Disability Now website May 2010 http://www.disabilitynow.org.uk/ |
