Work Capability Assessment - means testing process

Question 1

How does it work?

Answer 1

It will examine how people receiving Employment Support Allowance can be helped back into employment without having their benefits put at risk while they search for a job.

Question 2

What does applicants for ESA do normally?

Answer 2

Applicants for ESA have to undergo a work capability assessment to find out if they are eligible and they are re-tested to ensure their condition has not changed.

Question 3

How much does the work-related activity group receive?

Answer 3

They receive up to £102.15 a week in ESA payments while attending employment-focused interviews and training.

Question 4

Who are in the work-related activity group?

Answer 4

Officials have decided a claimant’s disability or health condition currently means they are unable to have a job but are capable of making some effort to find employment.

Question 5

What are the changes for the work related group from April 2017

Answer 5

Payments will fall to £73.10 for new claimants, bringing the rate into line with Jobseeker’s Allowance.

Question 6

What happened to those who were able to find work?

Answer 6

From April 2017, ministers intended to reduce the amount of money people in one category of ESA receive, taking approximately £30 a week from new claimants who are deemed to be capable of making some effort to find work

Question 7

What was Damian Green’s stance?

Answer 7

He is aiming to create a more ‘personalised’ approach to testing the disabled who claim WCA than the ‘sanction-based’ one previously criticised.

Question 8

What does Damian Green’s new approach imply?

Answer 8

People with sever conditions will no longer face reassessments every six months for their benefits.

Question 9

What dose Green pledge for?

Answer 9

Green pledges for change so that it is no longer a binary assessment

Question 10

What is the motive of WCA

Answer 10

Ministers hope the reforms will save money and get more people into work

Question 11

Why does the current system need reform

Answer 11

It fails to provide the right incentives, and acts to trap people on welfare.

Question 12

What would the reform end?

Answer 12

The reforms will help end the anxiety and financial insecurity that claimants may have felt

Question 13

What is Jeremy Hunt’s fact in support of people getting employment?

Answer 13

Jeremy Hunt highlights that it cost £7bn a year to treat long-term health conditions that kept people out of work and suggested that employment could be part of recovery

Question 14

What are the disadvantages of WCA?

• Fear trying to find employment

Answer 14

Claimants would fear taking a job which they might lose later because of health issues, only to then have to return to the lower level of benefit

Question 15

Quotes from the Opposition

Answer 15

The changes would “push sick and disabled people further away from work and closer to poverty’

Question 16

Disadvantages of WCA?

• Anxiety

Answer 16

Reassessment would increase their stress and anxiety levels

Question 17

Failure of WCA in relation to ESA

• Cost

Answer 17

The Office for Budget Responsibility saw an increasing cost for ESA.

Question 18

Why has cost increased for ESA

Answer 18

More people than expected are on benefit due to an increasing number of people successfully appealing against a decision to deny them the benefit, and problems in processing fit-for-work test that decide if claimants are eligible.

Question 19

What are the problems in the process of application of ESA

Answer 19

Some claimants are waiting more than 120 days from making their application to getting the result from the decision-maker at Jobcentre Plus

Question 20

What’s wrong with Atos?

Answer 20

Atos was appointed by the Labour government to carry out the assessments, but the process was dogged by controversy

Question 21

Failures of the WCA

• Death

Answer 21

A number of people assessed as fit for work by the decision-maker at Jobcentre Plus and told to find a job then died.

Question 22

Failures of the WCA

• Success rates

Answer 22

People who thought they had been wrongly assessed as fit for work by the decision-maker at cases to appeal, 4 in 10 cases were successful

Question 23

Supporters

• Scope

Answer 23

The chief executive of Scope, Mark Atkinson, said ‘the current fit-for-work test doesn’t accurately identify the barriers disabled people face in entering or staying in work

Question 24

Critics

• Shadow work and pension secretary

Answer 24

Shadow Work and Pensions secretary Debbie Abrahams called for the assessments to be scrapped, saying they caused ‘needless misery and stress’ for thousands of sick and disabled people

Question 25

Critics

• Mind policy and campaigns

Answer 25

Mind policy and campaigns manager Tom Pollard argues, ‘pressuring people with mental health problems to engage in activities under the threat of losing their benefits is counter productive, causing additional anxiety, often making people more unwell and less able to work