New rule will leave ESA appellants without ANY income indefinitely

I've been away for a long time - basically being very ill. I'll update you all on my personal travails another time but my first post in over a year will be dedicated to the extraordinary logical brain of Ian Duncan Smith.

He has been lambasted today for the horrendous mess that is Universal Credit - which is over budget, under target, poorly managed, and with no solution in sight on how to get it back on track. But while this central plank of IDS's welfare reform receives all the attention, other smaller, but arguably more costly changes are being introduced with little attention.

On October 28th his department of Work and Pensions introduced a change to the appeal process for Employment and Support allowance, the main disability benefit for those too ill to work. As of last month a claimant who wishes to appeal against a decision that they are not entitled to ESA must first ask the DWP to reconsider the decision before he or she can lodge an official appeal. 

However the DWP has decided during this new 'mandatory reconsideration' stage the claimant will no longer receive ESA income and neither will a time limit be given as to how long this process will take. The reality is that this will leave people without any income whatsoever for an indefinite period of time - its a truly shocking decision given that nearly 40% of appeals are found in the claimant's favour. It is unsurprising that this rule is already the subject of a parliamentary early day motion.

The Government argues that the claimant can claim Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) during this appeal stage but in reality this will be at the discretion of the jobcentre. Today's statistics of sanctions against JSA claimants show that every month 12% of job seekers are referred for sanction. The New Policy Institute clarifies that these sanctions are given if there is a 'labour market doubt', or in their words, "Job Centre Plus may have felt they were not making themselves available for work". It is clear that disabled people will be an easy target for sanctions if they struggle to job hunt while coping with bad health problems. Labour MP, Sheila Gilmore, even documents a case in which her constituent Rose Burgess was told by the DWP she was too well to claim ESA, but told by the Job Centre she was too ill to claim JSA.

This new rule will push disabled people into poverty or into even worse ill health. It won't even save any money as basic rate ESA, currently payable at this assessment rate during an appeal process, is £71.70 and JSA is paid at £71.70. In addition, the concern is that mandatory reconsideration has created a Catch 22 situation - by applying for JSA the fear is that it will be taken as evidence in any ESA appeal that the individual has admitted a capacity to work.

So there we are - IDS's amazing logic shines again - a new rule that saves no money, unless, of course, the idea is to force people off benefit entirely. Instead it just heaps more misery, poverty and persecution on disabled people - anyone would think that's his aim...

The proposed changes to ESA will fail those with incurable illnesses

Last week major changes were announced to disability benefits as part of the Coalition's Spending Review. I didn't blog on it immediately as I wanted time to think through their implications.

The Government intends to limit Employment Support Allowance (ESA) to one year for those who are in the Working Group category. This category is for those people that are deemed able to work if they are given the right support to find a job appropriate for their disability or illness. ESA remains unlimited for those disabled people placed in the Support Group category who are deemed too ill to ever return to the work place. So in theory I guess the Government thinks that those in the Support Group are the vulnerable people it has pledged to protect, and those placed in the Working Group category would benefit from the tough love of a time-limited benefit as it would provide them with an incentive to get back into work.

On initial thought this seems reasonable. I am a person who, though I've had to grudgingly admit I've become less and less able as the years have gone on, firmly believes in the power of work. I've worked all my life since I was sixteen taking on a Sunday job through my A-levels, and part-time and holiday work during University.  Once in the work place full-time I negotiated a four-day week when five days became too tiring. Later, when even those four days became too much, I retrained as a journalist so I could freelance from home. Eventually just before my 29th birthday I realised my desire to be self-sufficient was finally over, I could no longer manage even a part-time job from home. 

So I'm writing this as a firm believer that disabled people will get more from life working than not working and that my personal ambition to work gave me a reason to be healthy and comply with my lengthy, daily medical regime. But it's also strange to write that I'm glad that, when it comes to claiming benefits, I have an illness that will kill me. I was lucky enough to be able to afford to retrain so that I could work from home since 2007. This meant that when I finally had to stop working my lung function statistics had dropped so low it was impossible to dispute how serious my illness has now become and that my death will be a direct result of having Cystic Fibrosis (unless of course I get run over by a bus!). Because when I finally had to turn to the State and ask for help, that help was there for me.

But the proposed changes to the ESA system will not work for those with long-term ill health and incurable illnesses because it creates a health-lottery, even between people with the same illness, as to who will get life-time financial support on ESA and who will miss out.

Someone who is eligible for ESA will receive the payment either based on his or her National Insurance contributions or, if they haven’t contributed enough NI, on their income if it’s deemed low enough. The change the Government has outlined in the Spending Review is to time limit how long disabled claimants can claim contributions-based ESA. This ESA change is modelled on Job Seeker's Allowance. With that you are allowed six months of contributions-based JSA before being moved onto income-based JSA. This means that if you live with a partner who is in work or if you have savings over £16,000 then you will not receive any JSA at all. This rule has now been applied to ESA claimants in the Work Group, but with claimants allowed a full year of contribution-based ESA.

As more details haven’t yet been published on the criteria used to assess when someone will be eligible for more contributions-based ESA after their first initial year has expired, I can only presume that the rules on whether you’ve made enough National Insurance contributions to qualify for ESA are the same as for JSA. With the latter, the Government looks at the last two tax years of your National Insurance contributions to see if you qualify for contribution-based JSA. You need to have been in work for that period, earning more than £97 a week, and “generally, self-employed contributions will not help you qualify for contribution-based Jobseeker’s Allowance”.

But this change to ESA has created a massive loophole for those with long-term illnesses. I’ll take Cystic Fibrosis (CF) as an example as I know the illness so well. It presents itself with differing severity depending on the patient. Some lucky few can work into their forties, some die in their early twenties. But it’s a fluctuating illness meaning that overall although someone with CF won’t get better they might be very ill for a few months or a year and then go on to experience a more stable pattern of illness. So it's feasible that someone with CF who is in work will have to stop working as their illness has taken a turn for the worse, and be put on ESA in the Working Group category - although their health is bad it may be conceivable they could work again if they are young enough and their lung disease not too severe.

After a year spent on ESA they will be forced back into the work place, where after a few months working they may find their health has worsened again, proving to themselves and their doctors that, if they wish for any stability in their health, then their body is no longer strong enough to maintain a job.

So what happens then? They’ve used up their contributions-based ESA in their initial year of ill health but haven’t been able to work for long enough to build up their NI contributions to be entitled to claim contributions-based ESA again. This means that they effectively miss out on years of ESA payments because they had the wrong severity of illness at the wrong time of their life. So it is feasible you could have two people with CF, both unable to work over a five-year period, but one who can claim £24,960 (based on five years on contribution-based ESA in the Support Group) and one who can only claim £4,732 (based on one year contribution-based ESA in the Working Group). This gap in benefit received would just carry on widening the longer each one lived.

It seems to me that the Government is asking people with incurable illnesses to work themselves to sheer exhaustion, and possible irreversible poor health, before claiming ESA, as it seems contributions-based ESA can’t be claimed twice in a two-year period. So if you do put in a claim for ESA you’ve got to do so in the knowledge that either you’re so ill you’ll be put in the support category immediately or be confident that after a year off you can resume working for a lengthy period of time.

The ongoing furore over the controversial Working Capability Assessment test used to decide eligibility for ESA has proven that the Government cannot understand and respond to the fluctuating nature of serious, incurable illnesses, and this change to ESA just reiterates that.

Unfortunately uncertainty is the ruling factor of an incurable illness. People with such illnesses have to have the strength to get out of bed every day and plan a life with an illness that they know will one day kill them or make them severely disabled - they are just not sure when. These are the very vulnerable people the Government has pledged to protect, but instead they are introducing even greater financial uncertainty into their life and an unfair system that will offer a lifetime's support to some disabled people who have a history of working and yet not to others with exactly the same health-problem.

Chris Grayling and his mysterious employment figures

The Government is always keen for school children to improve their basic numeracy skills but don't seem so great at working out sums themselves.

Here's an interesting conundrum.

Speaking at the Tory party conference, Work and Pensions Minister, Chris Grayling said he hoped that about half of those claiming incapacity benefit can be helped back into work. That means from a total of 2.5 million currently claiming incapacity benefit, he is hoping about 1.25million people will be moved back into work.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is expecting 2 million jobs to be created in the next five years. This figure is already considered to be highly optimistic. In comparison, after the recession of 1980/81 it took seven years to create 2 million jobs. Following the 1991/1992 recession it took nine and a half years to create 2 million jobs. And  the average annual GDP growth rate after these previous recessions was 3.6% and 3.2% respectively, which is significantly higher than the current 2.5% GDP growth rate the OBR has predicted.

But for argument's sake, let's say that the OBR is right in its predictions - it still means that Mr Grayling expects those who have been claiming incapacity benefit to acquire 62.5% of these newly created jobs.

I've tried to find some figures on an employer's attitude to taking on disabled people or the long-term ill, but do let me know if you're aware of any more recent studies. In a 2004 study that looked at 1000 small business owners, 45% said they thought it would be 'quite difficult/very difficult' to employ a disabled person. I appreciate it's hard to extrapolate this research out into the wider employment market, but if this attitude was found to be genuinely indicative of the overall employer attitude across the nation, that would mean that of the potential 2 million new jobs the Government hopes will be created, the disabled or those on incapacity benefit would be considered for about 55 % of these positions - or 1.1million of the new jobs. In short, that means someone on incapacity benefit would have to be appointed for every single job available from employers who have a positive attitude towards employing the long-term ill - and there would still be 150,000 jobs too few.

To me it seems very unlikely that someone who has been off sick for a significant period of time, or is disabled with special work-place requirements or has a history of mental health issues will find themselves at the top of the pile when it comes to finding work.

So, Mr Grayling, where did you get your figure from? If I've done my sums wrong then please do correct me.

Or did you actually mean, you expect 1.25million people to be moved from Incapacity benefit onto Job Seeker's Allowance and left alone to figure out how best to get work, without any of the specialist support that the new Employment Support Allowance promises the ill or disabled?

A progressive government: Schizophrenic man who has just spent 6 months in mental institute told to find work

I heard of this story yesterday via Twitter (yes I am a convert) and I thought it worth sharing - mainly because it only happened this week and it shows that the much-derided medical test for ESA is affecting real, vulnerable people now - it's not just a dry political argument with which to bandy insults at Prime Minister's Question Time.

A man with Schizophrenia has just been taken off Employment Support Allowance (ESA) and put onto Job Seeker's Allowance. Earlier this year he was discharged from a mental institution where he had spent the previous six months. He is now living in residential accommodation, which in itself shows he is not yet healthy enough to live a fully independent lifestyle. He has also not worked for 10 years.

The real shock behind this story is the way in which this change has happened. He was asked to attend a medical test which is administered by a company called ATOS, who have the contract from the Government's Work and Pension department. A person has to score over 15 points to be deemed eligible for some form of ESA. This man scored 0. Yes, you read that correctly, ZERO. As he has a clear diagnosis of a severe mental illness this score tells me either that ATOS doesn't recognise the debilitating nature of a mental illness or its test criteria are entirely inadequate for unearthing the effects of mental illness on a person's capacity to work.

Either way the man has been moved from ESA straight onto JSA - he has not even been moved to the lower rate of ESA which would mean he would have been given greater support on how to go about preparing himself for work and identifying which employers are accepting of a long history of mental ill-health and unemployment. How is a job centre employee with basic training on how to get the average Joe back into work going to know how to deal with a schizophrenic not yet capable of fully independent living?

I'm beginning to warm to the Work and Pensions minister Ian Duncan Smith, he seems to be intriguingly genuine in his desire to reform our benefits system so that, in his words, people don't get left behind. And clearly the man of our story has been left to languish for ten years on incapacity benefit. But it's obvious the current welfare reduction drive is more focused on reducing the cost of welfare than exercising any common sense or, dare I say it, empathy towards those with long-term ill health.

Rumours are going round Twitter that Ian Duncan Smith has threatened to resign 12 times since taking office due to consistent, unyielding clashes with the Treasury. With stories such as this schizophrenic man surfacing, it seems clear that the battle is far from over between government members who just wish to reduce the cost of welfare and those who wish to reform welfare to help those who are on it achieve a better life.

I can only hope that the schizophrenic man in question appeals the decision so that at the very least he is awarded lower rate ESA and given proper support in finding work. If not, he clearly has very little chance of ever gaining employment and will be left to live in even greater poverty than before. That's a 'progressive' government for you.