The government is changing the rules to make it harder for disabled people to appeal when it takes away their benefits.
And
they are clamping down on job centre staff who try to help claimants, in an
effort to break an “appeals culture”, according to internal memos seen by
Socialist Worker.
People claiming Employment Support Allowance (ESA) can be
stripped of it if they are deemed “fit for work” in controversial tests run by
companies such as Atos Healthcare, known as Work Capability Assessments
(WCA).
WCAs
have come in for massive criticism from doctors as well as disability
campaigners, and almost 40 percent of people who appeal against a WCA decision
are successful.
The
high appeal rate has been a huge embarrassment for the government—as it exposes
how arbitrary and unfair their assessments are.
But
instead of changing the system the government is making it harder to appeal
against it.
From
now on people who wish to appeal must do so by a tribunal instead of through the
job centre. Job centre staff have been strictly instructed not to download and
print the forms for claimants, but tell them to find the forms themselves from
the tribunal service.
This
is a process that many claimants will find difficult, particularly if they lack
internet access and printing facilities or suffer from mental health problems or
learning difficulties.
Before they can even lodge a tribunal appeal, claimants
have to ask the government to reconsider. There is no time limit for this
process, and during this time claimants will not be allowed to claim ESA
(disability benefit).
They
can claim other benefits, such as jobseekers’ allowance (unemployment benefit),
though this may later be counted against them when they argue that they need
ESA.
Once
they move to tribunal appeal they can claim ESA again—but job centre staff have
been told not to make them aware of this right unless they explicitly ask. And
WCA decisions are to be sent directly to job centre advisors in the hope that
this “contributes to a reduction in appeals” too.
One
job centre worker told Socialist Worker, “The government sees job centre staff
as part of the problem for helping claimants stand up for their rights, and they
are trying to curtail that.”
Instead of moving the goalposts they should scrap the
unfair WCA system altogether.
