I created one of the campaign election videos for Labour, and Jeremy Corbyn,
This is a new version of Emeli Sande, Hope "You Are Not Alone
You can see the video here.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P5o8hRHh9IY
This is the full email.
In this edition we reveal the shameful truth behind the overwhelmingly positive feedback the DWP claims it gets from people who have undergone PIP assessments.
And we discover how the DWP is deliberately inflicting hardship on ESA appeals claimants by misleading GPs.
We also learn that 70% of DWP staff think that the roll out of universal credit should be stopped and discover the millions being saved by preventing claimants getting legal aid.
POSITIVE PIP FEEDBACK
The DWP has repeatedly defended the PIP and ESA assessment systems from criticism by arguing that over 90% of claimants are happy with their experience.
Even the commons Work and Pensions Committee, which was overwhelmingly critical of PIP assessments, was persuaded by the figures. The committee said it accepted that ‘The PIP and ESA assessment processes function satisfactorily for the majority of claimants’.
In fact, Benefits and Work can reveal that PIP feedback is based on around 1% of claimants being asked just one single question:
“How satisfied were you with your overall experience with Capita / Independent Assessment Service’.”
In most cases the claimant is phoned by a Capita or Atos (IAS) employee and asked this question. Occasionally they are written to instead.
So they know that the feedback isn’t anonymous and many will fear that a negative response could affect the outcome of current or future assessments.
For ESA, claimants are asked 5 questions, but fewer than half a percent are asked to give feedback.
For both benefits, claimants are asked nothing about the accuracy of the report or whether any additional evidence provided was taken into account. Yet it is failings in these areas that cause a great deal of dissatisfaction amongst claimants.
And, because the companies have customer satisfaction targets built into their contracts, there is a real conflict of interest for them: why would they go out of their way to collect feedback that might be negative?
It is time that those with a responsibility for holding the DWP to account looked more closely at the quality of the feedback the DWP relies upon, instead of accepting it at face value and letting the assessment companies off the hook.
DWP DELIBERATELY MISLEADING GPs
The DWP is deliberately inflicting hardship on claimants who appeal against ESA decisions by misleading GPs into refusing to issue sick notes.
Claimants who challenge a fit for work decision cannot claim ESA during the mandatory reconsideration stage. They may be able to claim JSA, but many claimants don’t for fear of sanctions.
However, if the mandatory reconsideration is unsuccessful, claimants can then lodge an appeal and reclaim ESA whilst waiting for their case to be heard.
But the DWP have changed the letters that they send out to GPs when a claimant is found fit for work. The letters tell the GP not to issue any more sick notes and no longer say they can do so if the claimant appeals the decision.
The result, as legal advice charity Zacchaeus 2000 Trust discovered, is claimants going hungry because they have no money for food. Claimants may also have to change to a new GP practice to try to find a doctor who will issue them with a sick note.
The DWP have offered no explanation whatsoever for the change in the wording of the letter, except that it was altered as a result of a ‘ministerial requirement’.
That it is a ministerial requirement that claimants be caused as much suffering as possible, regardless of the law, will probably come as no surprise to our readers.
OTHER NEWS
A Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) survey of members working at the DWP has found that 70% want the roll out of Universal Credit to be stopped.
And 79% say that there are not enough staff to cope with demand.
The claims were aired in a Dispatches programme earlier this week.
Meanwhile, the savings to the public purse from preventing claimants getting legal aid for help with benefits have now been revealed.
For ESA, savings of almost 97% have been made, from £2.8 million for help with ESA in 2010/11 down to £92,000 last year.
In 2010 the cost of legal aid for DLA was over £7 million. Last year the combined figure for PIP and DLA had plunged to £50,000 – a drop of over 99%.
And, of course, beyond these savings are the tens of millions more that have undoubtedly been saved.
Because many thousands of claimants will have missed out on benefits they were entitled to because they had no-one to help them through the claims and appeals process.
Good luck,
Steve Donnison
To: Professor Mayur Lakhani, President of the Royal College of General Practice
CC:
Editor Pulse Today
Editor Disability News Service
Second copy to : Chair of the General Practitioners Committee UK Dr Richard Vautrey
Dear Mayur
We write as a group of concerned health professionals and disability campaigners regarding a recent change by the Department of Work and Pensions which we feel will gravely impact on the doctor / patient relationship between GPs and disabled people claiming benefits.
The DWP has issued a new ESA65B, the form used to inform a patient’s GP of their WCA outcome. This form which requests GPs not to send any further fit notes for ESA purposes after a claimant has been found fit for work, unless they appeal had already been at the centre of a controversy.
A claimant, James Harrison died 10 months after being found fit for work and after the jobcentre asked his GP not to issue further fit notes for ESA purposes. James Harrison wanted a fit note because he was too ill to attend the jobcentre appointments, but his GP refused to issue them (Metro), this being just one bleak example of the distress and hardship enacted on people through the current callous benefit regime.
The new ESA65B form which is headed ‘Help us support your patient to return to or start work’ has an added paragraph
In the course of any further consultations with [Title] [First name] [Surname] we hope you will also encourage [select] in [select] efforts to return to, or start, work. (extract from the DWP’s letter to GPs)
It is all in keeping with DWP’s insistence that not only work is good for health, but also should be a ‘health outcome’. This recurring mantra from the DWP is based on the thinnest veneer of evidence, a single study, which was commissioned by the DWP itself in 2006, which does not even fully support the generalised conclusion that “work is good for you”.
The DWP has also not taken into account other, more in-depth research that concludes that unemployment is less harmful for mental health than a poor quality and insecure job..
There are many reasons, from a clinical point of view, why this action of co-opting doctors by the DWP is wrong and Dr Jay Watts, Consultant Clinical Psychologist, lists some of them:
Health professionals across the country will be horrified at this latest interference from the DWP – a move that undermines clinical expertise and threatens the safety of patients. There are a number of problems. First the letter places the expertise of DWP-funded ESA assessors above that of GPs. This is despite the fact GPs are more qualified to assess mental health, and can do so with the benefits of having known the patient for years, often decades (as opposed to in a one-off assessment).
The DWP letter makes clear that they wish claimants to return to work at any cost, even if that means leaving a current occupation – an attack on the core identity of patients likely to have a damaging effect on mental health.
Second, the letter states that “we know most people are better off in work”. This ignores a considerable literature showing that work can be damaging for mental health, with poor work environments a frequent trigger to mental breakdown. Economic evidence shows that rushing people back into work increases the likelihood of long-term illness.
How then can it be right to encourage GPs to coerce patients back to work, a pressure likely to increase the feelings of shame, despair and anxiety at not working that have been exacerbated by the governments relentless and damaging campaign to associate worklessness with worthlessness?
Third, the pressure the DWP is exerting on GPs to ‘encourage’ patients back to work, and desist from providing fit notes, is an attack on clinical expertise and the sanctity of the clinical space and clinical decision-making.
Without a firm denouncement of this letter from Royal College of General Practitioners, we risk a situation where claimants will feel unwilling to make appointments with their GPs, given the level of fear the DWP and the work agenda elicits, with damaging and potentially life-threatening effects on the physical and mental health of claimants.
It is vital that health professionals speak up for claimants rights, and insist that fit notes and therapeutic conversations are dictated by the needs of patients not the DWP.
We the undersigned, both medical professionals and disability campaigners ask that the Royal College of General Practitioners inform its members of the risks to patients from this measure, ask doctors and allied health professionals to use caution and discretion when following DWP instructions.
We will be publishing this letter to you on the Disabled People Against Cuts website, and look forward to publishing your response.