Disability Benefit Assessments and the Health & Disability Green Paper

That this House notes that Department for Work and Pensions statistics show that of the 1.5 million Incapacity Benefit claimants who were assessed for Employment Support Allowance (ESA) up until June 2019, 268,000 were found Fit for Work, a proportion of18 per cent, that between 2013-2020, only 66,000 out of 400,000 requests for Mandatory Reconsideration of an ESA-Work Capability Assessment (WCA) decision resulted in a changed decision, that in 2019-20, 75 per cent of WCA appeals to the independent Tribunal were won by the claimant, that by 2020, of 1.5 million disabled people previously in receipt of Disability Living Allowance who had been reassessed for Personal Independence Payment (PIP), nearly half, 706,473, had seen their entitlement either reduced or disallowed completely, that of the six million people who have applied for PIP, 2.7m have been refused, a proportion of 46 per cent, that of those going on to lodge a PIP appeal in 2020-21, 31,720, DWP conceded 10,990 appeals before they even went in front of the Tribunal and lost two-thirds of those that were decided there; further notes that while the July 2021 Health & Disability Green Paper does have some useful operational changes, it does not go far enough in remedying DWP’s poor quality decision-making and reforming the assessments regimes; and calls on the Government to commit to much more fundamental reform of WCA and PIP assessment in the forthcoming White Paper to guarantee disabled and seriously unwell people receive the social security they need to live on and cover the additional costs of their disability or condition.