Anne Begg, Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee has written to Employment Minister Chris Grayling to express ‘serious concern’ about media misrepresentation of benefit statistics.
By what I assume was a coincidence, the Department chose to release statistics on new employment and support allowance claims yesterday. The coverage of the statistics in some newspapers, notably the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, was a particularly egregious example of the way they can be misused. The headline in today’s Daily Mail was ‘The shirking classes: just 1 in 14 incapacity benefit claimants is unfit to work.
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I am sure that you are therefore as shocked as I am by this most recent misrepresentation of DWP statistics on benefit claimants. It is clear that your efforts to persuade the press to act responsibly when discussing incapacity benefit have not yet been successful.
It is also important that the Department’s press releases always take care to emphasise the distinction between new ESA claims and the reassessment of existing incapacity benefit claimants, which may not have been the case on this occasion.
I trust that you will be contacting newspaper editors again to urge them to ensure that the reports they carry about ESA claims are factually correct and that they avoid pejorative terms such as ‘shirkers’ and ‘scroungers’ which are irresponsible and inaccurate. As we said, ‘portraying the reassessment of incapacity benefit claimants as some sort of scheme to ‘weed out benefit cheats’ shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the Government’s objectives.’ It is clearly important that the Government takes every possible step to counter this ongoing negative portrayal.
There have been failings in the service Atos Healthcare has provided, which has often fallen short of what claimants can rightly expect. This has contributed significantly to the mistrust which many claimants feel about the whole process. We accept that considerable efforts have been made on the part of both Atos Healthcare and DWP to improve the quality of assessments, but the Department needs to do more to ensure that Atos treats claimants properly and that it produces accurate assessments.
Also the report stated that fear and anxiety amongst vulnerable people is being amplified due to their mistrust of private companies like Atos. They also criticised the work capability assessment (WCA), using examples of claimants having their benefit stopped as a sanction due to non-attendance at a WCA appointment when the non-attendance arose because of administrative errors on the part of Atos or Jobcentre Plus, and stating that most of the submissions it received were from claimants who were dissatisfied. vulnerability and fear increased. ConDems figures on ESA are bogus. Surprised? Me neither. Combined with the right-wing press fanning the flames of hate towards claimants with the screeching headlines of “scroungers” “work-shy”……
A good example of the viciousness and callousness of Atos was illustrated by this article:
The Atos staff member who carried out the medical test awarded him zero points. To qualify for employment and support allowance, the new sickness benefit, he needed to score 15 points, and in July he received a letter from jobcentre officials stating that he was not eligible for the benefit (worth around £95 a week) and would be fit to return to work within three months.
He was devastated by the decision, and dismayed to note a number of inaccuracies in the report that accompanied the letter. He decided to appeal against the decision, but before three months was up he died from his lung problems.
Chris Grayling may argue that the WCA were “initially flawed but stressed that significant changes have been introduced”. But these tests should be scrapped as they bully claimants with their head-f*ck assessments and interviews. Where people are treated with no respect nor understanding yet believe they can determine whether someone is fit for work based on very little “evidence”. As the statistics how many claimants have been successful with their appeals if they have been knocked back though the right-wing press don’t announce that it is just so bloody easy to vilify and demonise claimants. Hey, it simple to blame the powerless than the powerful.
In a nutshell it is all about profits, the needs of the individual are not at the forefront neither is training good quality staff. In the language of the market and the corporate sector, why spend time on these people when profits are to be made? These tests are not based on medical judgement but on political and ideological judgement. The attacks on the poor are simply class war.
