Disability rights campaigners have hit out at a report by MPs which concluded the process used to decide claimants' eligibility for benefits is working well.
Disability Alliance said it was disappointed with the committee's apparent conclusions and disputed its findings citing the increased number of decision appeals and complaints.
The statement came following the release of the latest set of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) claims data which showed only 24% of claimants are successful.
However the Work and Pensions Committee made some significant criticisms of the government's operation of the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) stage of ESA.
Chief among these was the need for government to ‘do more to clarify whether the purpose of the WCA is to be an eligibility test for benefits or whether it is a diagnostic test to assess a person's ability to work'.
‘It is not yet clear whether it is quite achieving either of these effectively,' it added.
The committee also critcised the Department of Work and Pension's (DWP) publicity, saying: ‘More care is needed in the way the government engages with the media and in particular the way in which it releases and provides its commentary on official statistics on the Incapacity Benefit reassessment.'
Other recommendation's made around the re-assessment of those people currently claiming IB being transferred on to ESA included:
• expansion of Professor Harrington's review to include Work Programme providers and sub-contractors to try to design an assessment that identifies a claimant's workplace capabilities and needs,
• government should consider how to address the problem of GP charges for medical reports acting as a barrier to the full range of medical information being available to decision-makers,
• government should consider how information from the WCA can help Work Programme providers to identify the employability needs of customers,
• there should be discretion to place those with a limited life expectancy in the Support Group, where appropriate.
The DWP should conduct research on whether allowing former IB recipients to claim contributory ESA for more than 12 months would provide a more realistic timeframe for them to enter employment, taking account of the two years of employment support available through the Work Programme.
Disability Alliance responded by saying it was: ‘hugely disappointed that the committee appear to conclude that the WCA is now working well.'
‘This is not only disputed by the disabled people now routinely contacting us with concerns, but the rising number of appeals against WCA decisions which are expected to reach 436,000 in 2011/12 and could cost over £25 million.
‘The WCA remains a barrier to an effective system geared towards ensuring disabled people can access appropriate support to get and keep work,' it added.
However the charity did support the Committee's complaint about press releases, noting it had raised many similar concerns before and had one complaint upheld by the Press Complaints Commission.
But it concluded by saying: ‘We cannot offer support for an ineffective assessment process that routinely fails to identify disabled people's needs.
‘Sadly, we do not have an effective process currently and the WCA was toughened further in April 2011 which may see further disabled people inaccurately found fully fit for work.
'We are very concerned that 400,000 disabled people will lose contributory ESA from April 2012 and that government plans ignore the evidence on the time many disabled people need to find appropriate work.'
