Response suggests many people wrongly judged fit to work

There have been a great many interesting responses to the Citizens Advice report – published last week that detailed “grave concerns” over the number of sick and disabled people being judged fit for work by the new Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) testing system.

The report found that terminally-ill patients, people with advanced Parkinson’s Disease or Multiple Sclerosis, with severe mental illness, or awaiting open heart surgery have been registered as fit to work.

The Citizens Advice report was inspired by the high number of people consulting their local bureaux in the wake of being wrongly, they believed, registered as capable of returning to work. Their concerns seemed to chime with those of a number of Society Guardian readers, several of whom wrote in detailing their own experiences of being assessed and found fit, when they felt they were not able to work.

One reader described the fitness test as “the most prejudicial, unfair and downright negligent piece of so called medical practice he had ever witnessed”. He wrote:

“I can barely walk and am about to have a second ankle fusion surgery. I can’t stand or walk for long without intense pain and despite my medical records was given a score of 0 out of 15 for my ankle problem, 0 being completely fine. This was a shock considering I’m about to have a major surgery including bone grafts for which I am in plaster for 6 months. My GP and surgeon can’t believe it.”

One reader wrote of a friend who had her benefit cut off because she missed her assessment appointment, because she was in hospital bed having chemotherapy for stomach cancer; she was penalised for missing the appointment by having her benefits stopped. Another said the assessment process was like being “interviewed by a computer”.

Describing the difficulties his mother has had with the system, another reader wrote:

“She was recovering from one complete knee replacement operation and due to undergo the second in a matter of weeks. A blind man on a galloping horse could tell that she was not fit to work but sure enough the result of the consultation was that she should be taken off benefit.”

He went on to highlight a concern that many readers touched on:

“One of the problems is that the benefits agency doesn’t conduct these examinations, they are outsourced to a private third party who I suspect have a mandate to remove as many people from the system as possible and have a target to achieve.”

Later, a healthcare professional working for the private healthcare company which carries out these assessments, wrote in indicating that there was a target that the inspection team were expected to meet. Under the username rightthewrong, he wrote:

“I probably am going to get fired tommorrow for coming on this forum, but I don’t care. I have been doing these “assessments” for some time now. It’ s rubbish, draconian to say the least and it is designed to get people off the sick benefit. It is designed so that 75% of the people who apply for ESA, come hell or high water, ‘fail’ it.”

Taken from guardian.co.uk

New benefit test will fail to spot illness and disability

People with mental health problems who are frequently unable to complete more than two tasks in a row could be assessed as fit for work, under new revisions to the sickness benefit test outlined by the government last night.

Mind already has grave concerns that the Work Capability Assessment, the current test for sickness benefit Employment and Support Allowance, is not sophisticated enough to accurately measure when someone’s mental health affects their ability to work. However, in a radical tightening of the criteria, revisions to the test proposed today will simplify the test further by slashing the sections relevant to mental health in half, prompting fears that tens of thousands of people with serious mental health issues could be stripped of their benefits and forced to look for work they are unable to do.

Mind’s Chief Executive Paul Farmer said:

“Most people with mental health problems want to work, but need time and support to be able to do so. However we have seen some truly shocking examples of people who cannot be reasonably expected to enter any workplace being assessed as fit for work, including one person who was sent an assessment form while in psychiatric hospital, and another who cannot manage even simple tasks including getting up in the morning without one to one support.

It is clear that the current assessments are failing to pick up on people with major barriers to work, yet the government has responded by simplifying the tests even further, radically reducing the likelihood of spotting serious and enduring mental health problems. People who really cannot work because of serious illnesses who are found fit for work will have their benefits taken away and will be forced to look for work, some without hope of an employer ever taking them on.

Tightening the test may be a move to reduce the sickness benefits bill, but the knock on effects will be felt further down the line. The legacy of these errors would be another generation of people parked on a different benefit, unable to find a job and having to live on reduced incomes, in poverty.

The government proposals are hard on the heals of a Citizen’s Advice Bureau report released just last week finding widespread failings in the whole assessment system, ranging from problems with the test, problems with the guidelines for those carrying out the test, and problems with their knowledge about mental health and disability”.

Examples

Jenny* has worked in the past but when she developed depression and anxiety she applied for Employment and Support Allowance. Despite two GPs, a psychiatrist and a senior nurse stating that she is not able to work or seek work, a 54 minute assessment and report written in the remaining 6 minutes disagreed and she was refused. The report included comments that she ‘did not appear to be trembling…sweating…or make rocking movements”. Jenny feels that her condition has been made light of and the refusal of ESA has caused her very significant distress which is severely impeding her recovery.

Michelle* has a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, severe anxiety and depression. She has very poor short-term memory, relying on a task list to get through daily routines, and avoids social contact and going to new places due to severe anxiety and panic attacks when she is particularly unwell. Michelle had to fight on appeal to qualify for Employment Support Allowance, but under new proposals, would likely be assessed as fit to work.

* names changed

Taken from MIND

Seriously ill ‘forced back to work’

Seriously ill and disabled people are being pushed into finding work without any help or support, a charity has warned.

Citizens Advice said it had “grave concerns” about how sick and disabled people are being assessed for Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).

The allowance was introduced in October 2008 to replace incapacity benefit for new claimants, and to give more support to people who may be able to return to work.

But the charity said that since the allowance was introduced, its advisers across England and Wales had been reporting high numbers of seriously ill and disabled people who were being found “fit to work” under the new work capability assessment.

People who were found to be fit to work included those with advanced stages of Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis, as well as people with severe mental illness, and some who were dealing with acute short-term health problems, such as waiting for open heart surgery. Overall, 69% of people who were assessed for the allowance were refused it.

In its report, which is supported by 18 other organisations, including Macmillan Cancer Support and the Multiple Sclerosis Society, the group warned that the medical test people undergo to assess their fitness to work does not account for the complexities of many illnesses and disabilities.

It said it was also hearing numerous reports of hurried medicals, where vital details were missed and unjustifiable assumptions were made. It added that the assessments did not place enough emphasis on the impact of mental health issues on people’s ability to work.

The charity said that failing the assessment could have an enormously detrimental effect on people. It said people who failed were told they must find work, and they could also be put on jobseeker’s allowance, which it said was a less supportive benefit, while in some cases they may receive no benefits at all.

Citizens Advice also warned that the stress of the test and the prospect of having to fight unfavourable decisions at a tribunal put considerable pressure on people, and risked making it harder for them to return to work.

David Harker, chief executive at Citizens Advice, said: “The current test to determine eligibility for ESA isn’t working. We are seeing cases where the Government’s aim of moving people into work is being totally undermined. Seriously ill and disabled people are being severely let down by the crude approach of the work capability assessment.”

Taken from Yahoo! News UK

DWP report finds doubts about work capability assessments among welfare-to-work staff

Jobcentre Plus staff feel many people who pass work capability assessments are not fit for work, according to a study by the Department of Work and Pensions published yesterday.

They believed this was especially damaging for clients with mental health problems and exacerbated their symptoms.

Work capability assessments decide whether people are eligible for one of the two levels of employment support allowance (ESA) or jobseeker’s allowance, which is worth £25 less than the lower level of ESA.

ESA replaced incapacity benefit in October 2008 for new claimants, with the work capability assessment introduced at the same time, and early evidence has shown that more people have been deemed fit to work under the new regime.

Neil Coyle, director of policy at the Disability Alliance, said he sympathised with jobcentre staff’s frustration. In his experience, many were unable to deliver support they felt clients needed because the assessment made them ineligible for ESA.

The study also confirmed a large backlog of appeals against work capability assessment decisions.

Coyle said the backlog was likely to get worse because the government intends to push all remaining incapacity benefit claimants through work capability assessments. “It’s worrying, not least for those of us who foot the bill because appeals are very expensive,” Coyle said.

The study, based on in-depth interviews with more than 70 staff and customers, found considerable delays in having a work capability assessment and this limited the scope of work-focused interviews. These take place between nine and 13 weeks after a client has made an ESA claim and are aimed at supporting claimants into work.

Some people had received no assessment by the time of their third interview.

Benefit delivery centre staff, who process claims, reported that there was an incentive in the system for appeals because it allowed claimants to continue claiming ESA, as opposed to jobseeker’s allowance, until the appeal was heard. Several staff were acutely concerned about the extra costs this entailed.

Minister for disabled people Jonathan Shaw said: “This research was carried out some time ago soon after the benefit was introduced and we have made considerable improvements since then. We continue to see where improvements and changes are needed to ensure that ESA is working as it should be.”

A Department for Work and Pensions spokesperson said the work capability assessment was currently being reviewed to ensure that it was accurately identifying people for the most appropriate benefit and work was underway to streamline the appeals process.

Taken from CommunityCare

Disability tests in need of overhaul

The Work Capability Assessment (WCA), which came into operation nearly a year and half ago, is the test that is meant to determine whether people are eligible to receive the new employment and support allowance, which offers support for disabled people and people with long-term conditions to get in to work. But as more figures become available showing just how tough this new test is, and as more claimants report bad experiences, have we reached the point where we need to ask whether the test itself is actually fit for work?

The early indications for the test were not positive. While to its credit, the Department for Work and Pensions did engage a large number of disability organisations in the design process, many of the organisations (including Leonard Cheshire Disability) felt that their concerns were not always listened to, and that changes were being made without enough real evidence. It was clear from the outset that the new test was being made tougher, even though the old test had been described by a former secretary of state as “the most stringent” in the world. The result, of course, is that there are far fewer people being assessed as needing additional support to get back to work, and fewer people receiving the additional financial support that the employment and support allowance can provide.

The government contracts out the responsibility for carrying out these tests to a company called Atos, which in turns employ “health professionals” to conduct the assessments. But there have been serious concerns both about whether the people conducting the tests have sufficient expertise to fully understand the huge range of different impairments that they might encounter, and whether the test itself is appropriately constructed. Already research has highlighted problems: the National Autistic Society found that the system was not always working for people with autism; Citizens Advice Scotland reported that the system was causing disabled people “unnecessary financial distress and emotional strain”; Macmillan and Citizens Advice reported that some people with terminal cancer were not being fast-tracked through the system.

Those who feel that they have not been properly assessed can complain directly to Atos. But very often a poor assessment will lead to an appeal, a tribunal and delays, as well as extra expense to both the individual and the taxpayer. Most importantly, of course, every time the test doesn’t work appropriately it can mean someone missing out on the support that they need to find work, and the financial support that they need because of their impairment.

Given all the concerns with the system it might seem positive that a review of the WCA has been ongoing for some months. But sadly the review was not set up in response to the serious difficulties that some disabled people were experiencing with the system. It was set up to make changes to the assessment that the government estimates will mean 10% fewer people again receiving the employment and support allowance.

Benefits should not be about targets but about ensuring the right support is delivered to those who need it. If disabled people can be supported into work then there will be a direct benefit for them, and also for the taxpayer. But if people are forced off the benefits designed to support them and into appeals by an unfair system, then that could lead to wasted opportunities, and even poverty. While the employment rate for disabled people is just below 50%, an overwhelming number do want to work. The employment and support allowance should be seen as the opportunity to deliver the support that many disabled people need to move into employment.

It is not too late to widen the current review of the WCA so that it really examines what needs to happen to make sure that the benefits system meets the needs of disabled people. An assessment that just gets tighter and tighter, restricting support for more and more people, will simply not be fit for purpose.

Taken from guardian.co.uk

Disability: A Claimant’s View

According to a recent OECD report, the UK already has one of the most stringent tests for assessing disability in the world. However, that has not stopped Labour introducing the ‘Employment and Support Allowance’, yet another ‘get-tough’ initiative aimed at reducing the 2.6 million claimants currently receiving Incapacity Benefit (IB). Labour have blamed the Tories for this state of affairs, but have achieved little themselves – apart from enraging the disability lobby.

I first got into trouble with my back in 1993, through working in libraries with work stations poorly adapted for computer use. My GP prescribed anti-inflammatory tablets and advised me to carry on working – advice which was subsequently reversed. Then I tried physiotherapy, which made the pain worse, and acupuncture, which achieved little. I had x-ray, MRI and ultrasound scans, all of which showed no problem, but by now rest days were used merely to recover and get my pain down to tolerable levels. The best advice, which did bear some fruit when followed, came from the GP’s receptionist(!), when she told me sotto voce, “Alan you will get no further with the NHS, you need to see an osteopath”. We are now well into 1994.

I worked spasmodically until 1996, then gave up. I still, 13 years later, have pain every day, which gets worse through repeated stooping, sitting on firm chairs, lifting heavy shopping, or even key-boarding for more than, say, 15 minutes. I thought them weird, but it soon became clear that symptoms like mine are not uncommon. Besides my GP, I also saw two Benefit Agency Doctors, and had no trouble claiming long-term benefits. In 1996 Invalidity Benefit, as it was then called, paid just over £100 per week – not bad – until Major’s government slashed it to just over £60 per week, made it taxable and renamed it Incapacity Benefit. When Labour took over in 1997, there was talk of reducing IB to the level of Job Seekers Allowance (JSA), but instead dramatically raised Council Tax, which effectively cut all benefits and pushed claimants towards means-testing. I received a flyer inviting me to a ‘work-focused interview’, but ignored it since there was no mention of a medical input. Nothing has changed, but Labour’s propaganda, coupled with my inability to prove that I have real physical problems, makes me feel vulnerable.

Things didn’t turn really nasty until 2007, when I was sent a hefty form to fill out. Ominously the word ‘pain’ did not appear on it – until added by me on each page. Another ‘medical’ followed, but this time, while I answered his questions, the doctor was typing away on a lap-top. As became clear later, he was trying to put together a case against my claim. I was shocked when told in a letter that I had scored only two points, my benefit was stopped and my P45 enclosed. The offer of a loan followed soon after, an offer I was fortunately able to ignore.

Having decided to appeal against the decision, my GP provided me with a support­ing letter. When it came, the appeal was heard by an independent doctor and a lawyer, and took about 40 minutes. I had two witnesses; no one appeared for the DWP, but this, it seems, is normal. The verdict, in my favour, came in writing for me to take away: amazing! The DWP’s miserly two points had been increased to 10. I got back all of the benefit which had been stopped, but the whole process took six months, and had done my developing anxiety and depression no good at all.

I had been encouraged to appeal by an ex-DWP employee, who told me that most of the DWP’s doctors would never make it in a hospital or general practice.

Six months passed when I was dismayed to receive yet another form, with another follow-on medical, but this time there was no lap-top and no further trouble. But, I was now quite paranoid about receiving any more brown A5 envelopes from Belfast. This is the reality of ‘welfare reform’.

A. Claimant

Taken from Freedom

Work For Benefit: The New Helots

Welfare reform legislation is due to be one of this Government’s enduring legacies. From this autumn there will be two benefits: Jobseeker’s Allowance, and Employment and Support Allowance. Already there is pressure on medical assessors to channel those on Incapacity Benefit into the former, where many lone parents and others will also eventually join them. JSA brings a lower income – down to the standard rate of £64.30 a week, in contrast to £89.80, the starting point of incapacity allowance – and, after six months, puts claimants on the Flexible New Deal. This, being tried out in large parts of the country, will eventually replace all existing welfare-to-work schemes. For a year the jobless will be farmed out to private companies, intensively advised and obliged to carry out a minimum of four weeks of “work related activity” (they may be “advised” to do much more).

This sounds relatively benign. It replaces 13 weeks in “work placements” of dubious value or simply stuck in “training centres” (where the only “training” is sitting in front of computers “job searching” for work that does not exist) of the previous New Deal. However, the Government has learned nothing from its experience of farming out the New Deal to private companies, two of which at least have been accused of malpractice. The faith-led YMCA has also run schemes. Most have scraped through their contracts with low employment outcomes and feeble training standards. The approximately 600,000 claimants who have faced sanctions for not complying with every aspect of the schemes shows how they are used to punish people. If participants were in charge of inspections, the companies would fail in an instant – yet the DWP has been told to contract out its new scheme to the same bodies.

The new regime will closely regulate people’s lives. Partners of JSA claimants will also have to seek work actively. Those dependent on drugs and alcohol will undergo compulsory rehabilitation. There is no clear notion of what will happen if they fail, other than they will have no benefits.

Most worryingly, after two years unemployment people will be forced onto the Work for Benefits programme. This will involve full time activity in “training options, short term work trials, a remuneration subsidy for employers to take them, or voluntary work in the local community,” (DWP October 2009). With unemployment set to rise to 3 million by October next year, when this policy is enforced, they will have plenty of compelled “volunteers”.

Some argue that since JSA is supplemented by housing and council tax benefit, it is “fair” to work for this money. However, those further benefits are paid at varying rates, making the overall pay rates different between individuals – and still leaving them well below the minimum wage.

This all raises fundamental issues. First, why should those who through no fault of their own have no job be forced to do what has up to now been the task of those sentenced to do community service by the courts? Indeed, what will happen to community service orders when the long-term unemployed start to undertake similar “sentences”?

Second, this will corrupt the voluntary sector, parts of which are already gearing up for it. The character of the voluntary sector will change. The nature of forced labour is to give power to the employer while discouraging the worker, making them dependent on the goodwill of the employer. The rights of volunteers are not the same as those on paid contracts. Groups and no doubt individuals will profit financially.

Third, it doesn’t take a genius to realise that cash-strapped local government will see this as an opportunity to plug gaps in their services. A tied labourer is cheaper than a paid employee. In areas as disparate as home helps to environmental projects volunteering could become a new national service, replacing those working for real salaries.

Those opposed to welfare reform have to date had little impact on Brown’s take it or leave it decision that this is the direction welfare will go in. The umbrella initiatives organised by the TUC have petered out in well-meaning but ineffective lobbying by a coalition of “antipoverty” NGOs with some union support. There are now signs of a more militant approach emerging from unions of the unemployed and other groups. There are web sites promoting opposition and plans for a decent benefit system that could really cope with people’s needs. As mass unemployment returns pressure for change will increase.

Labour looks set to leave behind a new class of helots – the work-for-the dole underclass. An incoming Conservative Administration will have plenty of conscripts for its plans for workfare. Both ideas were pioneered by the same person – once adviser to Labour and now the Tories, the exceedingly wealthy Lord Freud.

Andrew Coates

Taken from Ipswhich Unemployed Action

ESA proves that Labour has betrayed its core values

I spent this evening watching a black labrador slurpily lapping the shoes of a major think-tank director whilst its owner thought up ways to lie to me about his party’s attitude to the poor and needy. In a speech given in conjunction with Progress, David Blunkett MP set out to demonstrate just why the Tories are so very, very different from New Labour. The former Home Secretary quoted Aneurin Bevan, who described the Conservative party’s habit of using government policy to shore up the assets of the privileged as “sucking at the teats of the state”.

“That sums it up pretty well”, said Blunkett, who went on to describe how the evil, ghoulish Tories, are planning to reduce the size of the state by selling off central and local government functions to private companies in an effort to save money, because they, unlike Labour, care about money more than about people.

Mr Blunkett omitted to mention the small matter of the Welfare Reform Bill 2008, with its stated aim of saving cash by getting a million people off sickness benefits and back into work whether they are up to it or not.This week, the BBC has exposed the inhumanities of the new ESA (Employment and Support Allowance) system, which requires all claimants of incapacity and other benefits to attend a ‘compulsory work-focused interview’ in order to assess their capability for work. In almost all cases, the BBC found, after a series of humiliating interviews in which patients with terminal cancer have been asked to demonstrate how far they can walk, applicants were told that they were ineligible for state support and ordered to seek full-time paid work immediately.

After nearly a year of ESA, the government still cannot say how many people this brutal and dazzlingly expensive system has helped back into work, but it can say for sure that 44,000 people are currently waiting for the results of their appeals, costing the taxpayer additional millions.

Dr Chris Johnstone, whose work helped shape the ESA policy, criticised the system, saying,”I have no problem with a rigorous medical assessment done in a supportive fashion, but I think if you have a slipshod one done, as it appears to be anecdotally, that’s unfair for the people going through the system. It feels like some of it is done inappropriately and it’s almost being done to save money rather than to look after people.”
So here we have a Labour policy that involves …well, it involves contracting out functions of the welfare state to private companies, with the explicit purpose of forcing a million people who are sick off state benefits, in order to save money. Which, by the way, they’re not even doing.

When I raised this inconsistency more-or-less politely with Mr Blunkett, he stammered for a moment before claiming that people attending compulsory medical assessments “should be entitled to a choice of providers” of this “service”. This is an outright fabrication. Even where more than one private company does offer ESA assessments in an area, welfare claimants are not informed of their right to a second ‘medical’ opinion. But that’s not the clever bit. The clever bit of ESA, the really nasty, vindictive thing about this scheme, is that accessing the money one is entitled to now involves a fight, a fight that, according to Atos doctors, one is designed to fail:

“When doctors go in for the day’s assessments, they pretty much know the clients are going to be turned down…It’s really tough to qualify for ESA.” Sam, 32, a former research scientist, described his experience of applying for ESA, which was far from ‘empowering’:

”Jumping through the hoops to access my benefits took me six months, during which I was peniless and despairing. It’s not about ‘what you can do’ – what the DWP want to find out is just how incompetent and incapable you are. If you’re to stand any chance of getting the support you need, you have to fail hard enough to satisfy them. And if there’s ever anything calculated to institutionalise failure, that’s it.”

After Blunkett had finished pontificating about ‘choice’ and ‘empowerment’ and how much Labour ‘cares about people’, I waited for the red-eye to subside, made tea, and turned on my computer. Where I found that another friend of mine, Laura, 23, who suffers from severe mental and physical health problems, had received a letter from the DWP telling her that she no longer fulfils their criteria for being unwell:

“… and therefore, I am no longer entitled to my Employment and Support Allowance. And as such I have no income whatsoever.

“Now, when I read the letter I cried for half an hour. Cried so much my throat hurt. But now, now I’m just angry. I’ve spent months in psychiatric institutions, and I struggle every fucking day with feeling like a failure, and what this letter essentially says is, ‘you’ve failed a test you didn’t even know you were taking, and no, we didn’t consult your doctors, but as far as we’re concerned there’s nothing wrong with you, get back to work and stop sponging.”

“Tomorrow I’m going to have to phone some faceless telephone person who I’m either going to shout it, which they don’t deserve, or cry at, which doesn’t help. This seems like a system that discriminates against those who are most vulnerable.”

You can read the whole of Laura’s post here. It’s important to remember that Laura, Sam and people like them are not just recieving rejection letters, shrugging their shoulders and getting on with it. This is a policy that destroys lives, sometimes literally, sometimes inexorably, and always with the tepid tang of faceless beauracracy. If Labour’s only election strategy is to accuse the Tories of not caring about ordinary people, something is badly amiss. It’s not merely a lie: it’s an untruth so fundamentally at odds with the last five years of policymaking that one suspects the cabinet of some terrible mass hallucination of integrity.

In its belated return to the rhetoric of privilege and class, Labour forgets that a significant proportion of its voters and former voters no longer fit the worn Labour image of ‘working class’, because they are not able to work for a living in this stress-inducing, punishing service economy, if indeed they ever were. Labour forgets that people who have the cheek to need state support have votes too, and that their votes matter – indeed, they are, all too often, precisely the disenfranchised ‘urban block vote’ that Blunkett accused the Tories of forgetting.

Labour’s callously outsourced welfare solutions demonstrate that the party has betrayed its core values of decency, fairness and support for ordinary people. In doing so, it has sold the ordinary people of this country, working-class and middle-class, skilled and unskilled, the Sams and the Lauras and you and me, into what could be a generation of failure to thrive.

Taken from Penny Red

Seriously ill patients ‘told to work’

A BBC investigation has heard claims of seriously ill patients being told they are fit enough to work and denied benefit payments.

Two former doctors for the private healthcare company Atos, which carries out the medical assessments have expressed concerns that the checks are being done too quickly and that the system is biased towards declaring people fit for work.

BBC Scotland’s Social Affairs Reporter, Fiona Walker, has been investigating why some of those who had high hopes for ESA say it has been a failure

Employment Support Allowance, or ESA, is replacing Incapacity Benefit. It’s supposed to support the very sick, and as people get better, help them get back into the workplace.

The government said it wanted to get a million people back to work by 2015 but more that one year after introducing ESA, it says it can’t measure how many people the scheme has got back into the workplace.

During the investigation, we’ve heard claims that terminally ill patients are being told to attend back-to-work interviews while they apply for the new benefit.

We also heard concerns that the medicals are declaring seriously ill people as fit enough to go to work.

One of the patients we spoke to was Maureen Leitch. She says she was called in for a medical assessment just a few weeks after undergoing chemotherapy and radiotherapy for vulval cancer.

She was declared fit for work and told she wasn’t entitled to ESA.

She said: “I was struggling terribly with the whole cancer. I was in extreme pain… It was a whole load of hassle, and aggravation that I didn’t need at the time I was going through the journey of the cancer… I feel insulted and badly let down, with the system.”

Maureen appealed the decision and it was overturned, meaning she was eventually awarded the benefit.

Currently, there are 44, 000 people waiting for their appeals to be heard. More than a third of people are winning their appeals.

Charities and organisations including Citizens’ Advice Bureau, say they’re worried that thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money is being wasted because of the number of people going to appeal.

Everyone we’ve interviewed for this investigation agrees that getting people back to work can be good for them.

Frequent appraisals

What they’re concerned about is the way the system is working in practice.

Dr Chris Johnstone is a GP in Paisley. His work to help his patients back to work helped shape the ESA policy.

He said: “I have no problem with a rigorous medical assessment done in a supportive fashion.

“But I think if you have a slipshod one done, as it appears to be anecdotally, that’s unfair for the people going through the system. It feels like some of it is done inappropriately and it’s almost being done to save money rather than to look after people.”

Ultimately the decision on whether you get benefit or not is down to the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), but they have contracted a private healthcare company called Atos to carry out the initial medical assessments.

I’ve spoken to two doctors who used to work for Atos. They say they are concerned about the way checks are being done. They both say they are worried that speaking out will affect their medical careers so we’ve agreed not to reveal their names.

This is what one of the doctors told me: “We would frequently have appraisals. They were all about how many clients you had seen and the average length of time it took to complete each assessment and write the reports.

“I wanted to know if they were happy with the quality of the reports I’d done but they hadn’t even looked at my reports, only at the time it had taken. It’s really tough to qualify for ESA.

“When doctors go in for the day’s assessments, they pretty much know the clients are going to be turned down.”

The other doctor I spoke to backed up those claims.

We asked to do an interview with Atos, but they refused.

Gaining skills

Instead they gave us a statement saying: “We are continually monitored and audited by the government to ensure that it completes the highest standard of assessment and that medical advice is correct.

“Atos Healthcare and its employees are not advised of the result of the assessment and the outcome has no bearing on Atos Healthcare targets or remuneration.”

Helping people back to work is one of the key aims of ESA. But the government can’t tell us how many people this new scheme has got back into work.

The minister for Disabled People at Westminster is Jonathan Shaw, MP. I asked him why his department couldn’t tell us how many people ESA had successfully got back to work.

He said: “What’s essential is that we are providing a programme, across the board, not just for ESA claimants but for youngsters, for disabled people for elderly people, to try and gain the skills that they can to stay in the labour market and return to work.

“We’ve got the pathways to work programme, which as I say is helping thousands of people who I’ve met up and down the country… this is early days, for the Employment Support Allowance.”

Mr Shaw also said he would be looking into the way cancer patients are treated.

Taken from BBC News